The new Frequency Studio feature Repeat Scheduling is making the 730 hours of content every channel must program per month an infinitely easier task. 

Frequency is the first in the industry to automate the very repetitive and time-consuming task of placing repeat blocks of content into a schedule. With Repeat Scheduling we’ve addressed a wide range of business logic our customers require, especially since FAST channels contain a lot of recurring programs, day and week-parting needs, and/or episodic stripping.

Programmers can now schedule content, complete with ad pods, interstitials, bumpers, etc. within minutes, when previously this could take many hours or even several people to schedule a channel. 

The powerful automation within this new feature provides precise control to handle thousands of entries into a scheduling system like they were a grouped block, similar to how many graphics applications in use today work. Content can be scheduled on a looped playback for either X amount of times or until a specific date. 

Once a block has been created, there’s the ability to take a fully scheduled chunk of programming and then duplicate it. Hovering your mouse over a Repeat Schedule grouping will show locations of content blocks designated by a unique color pattern. These schedule blocks can also be copied into another channel or batch deleted if you no longer want this programming. Single series programming scores the biggest win with this feature. 

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Common Use Cases

These are several common use cases channel creators need which are fairly straight forward: 

• Scheduling single-series channel - 24/7 programming, more often episodic content.
• Scheduling based on recurring day-part - programming on a recurring pattern - daily or specific day(s) of the week. 
• Repeating a programming wheel  - controlled by looping X number of times or constrained for a specific end date.

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Advanced Control

Next there are programming requirements which have one or more exceptions to typical programming rules. 

• Controlled day-parting - restrict programming to start and end date within a specific time range
• Restrict by Seasons - target programming from certain seasons for series
• Program Variants - choose specific program variants per episode.
• Management of multiple episode versions - for when there are multiple versions of a specific episode.
• Scheduling conflict resolution - Schedule over existing programs (overlap, skip over, replace)

Restrict by Season offers detailed control to which seasons and which episodes will be included in a schedule. Programmers could choose to only show the most popular episodes or the ones they feel are more interesting to both customers and advertisers.

Program Variants has the controls to restrict programs to a specific start and end time where programming is only added to a schedule when it fits within those predefined times. This improves scheduling channels which have multi-series and/or date-parted blocks. 

Management of multiple episode versions assists scheduling when there are multiple versions of a specific episode, ex. The same content could have different play times, different ad loads,  with sponsorship, etc. Automation intelligence determines which episode of multiple versions would be the right one to program, based on previous activity.

Scheduling conflict resolutions can be especially tricky. Sometimes half of the future is already planned. There may be live events Monday through Friday already scheduled and you’d like to run a content marathon. When this marathon hits the live events, do you want to create an overlap which needs cleaning up before you submit the final schedule? Or do you want to skip over existing scheduled programs and continue the sequence afterwards? You can determine which logic to follow, skip over or stay there and overlap it.

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Repeat… Everything

This automation is not only for episodic content, it can also be used with non-episodic VOD, Live and automation programming. Any type or combination of content can be scheduled with the above functionality. Regardless of which programming pattern you design for your customers, Repeat Scheduling is going to make things more efficient and much simpler to schedule than any other programming automation. 

Creating intricate programming at scale was incredibly tedious and repetitive beforehand. Repeat Scheduling is the most powerful control in the industry, enabling complex automation for every use case we could think of and it’s available now to all Studio users. 

Leverage this capability today when scheduling your channels or contact your account manager to learn more.

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