NPR Digital Services Blog

Here’s how to make a temporary program change, e.g. for the summer or for the holidays, meaning that you’re temporarily airing Program B in place of current Program A.

If the hours match up exactly, simply replace current Program A with temporary Program B:

• Go to the first day that you’d like to show Program B, and edit the current program A.
• It will default to Temporary Edit.
• Enter Program B, including both a start and end date.
• Save. You’re all set, after the temporary edit ends, Program B will ‘go away’ from that date forward. Your grid will go back to showing program A, and Program B will remain historically.
• NOTE: The program grid will now say ‘conflict’ because 2 programs are scheduled at the same time, but that’s okay, it’s an intentional conflict.

Please join us for our next Composer Pro Webinar on June 9!

Date: Thursday, June 9, 2011
Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/996971176

This webinar will be an overview of Composer Pro, focusing on Program Guide changes. If you are new to this service or would like a refresher, then this webinar is perfect for you! If you have specific questions, please share them with us ahead of time. And yes, it’s free to our clients.

Not able to make this webinar?  We will schedule another Composer Pro webinar towards the end of June.  Check back for details.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

We have added a new, easy way to export a single playlist in tab-delimited text format from Composer Pro.

Handy if you need to move a playlist to another date. Simply export the playlist, make a few quick edits if needed (e.g, date and times) and easily re-import this file on the correct date. This also comes in handy if you want to copy a playlist.

• Go to Add/Edit a Playlist
• Edit your playlist.
• In the upper right, you’ll see an Export Playlist Button 
• Click this button, and it will export the file in tab-delimited text .txt format.
• You’ll see a link that says:  Click on this link to view your report. Follow the directions to save the file to your desktop.
• Open the file in Excel, make any necessary edits.
• Save as tab-delimited text .txt format, and then import on a different date.

Did you miss today’s Composer Pro playlist training? Never fear, here are the slides used today. Learn about

• Adding Playlists
• Searching the Song Database
• Importing playlists
• Dealing with Duplicate Playlists
• Lost playlists
• More!

Download the slides

We’re going to try to edit and upload the full webinar recording as well. Stay tuned…

When adding or editing your playlists using Composer Pro, you now have the option to search the Song Database in two ways. In the Manage Playlists section, when adding a song to your playlist, you can:

1. Search our station’s database: This searches for songs entered by anyone at your station only. HINT: Much faster search.
2. Search the full database: This searches the entire song database which contains songs entered by all stations. More comprehensive, but also slower.
3. Add Songs Manually: This option is still available. HINT: It helps you build your database. Add song manually once, then search for it the next time.

Then proceed as usual.

• Enter at least one character in both the Name and Song Title fields.
• Click the Search for Song button at the bottom of the page. The system searches and displays all matches.

Here’s some background on how searching for your Composer Pro playlists works.

Listener Search:
Listeners can search for playlists for up to 30 days at a time. They can set the date range for those 30 day periods as they choose.

Admin Search:

Logged into Composer Pro

Stations can search their entire playlist archive, you just need to log in to Composer Pro first. Once you’re logged in, you can  search for all the playlists for a particular program, going back to day one.

• Log into Composer Pro Admin.
• Click ‘View your Guide’ in the upper right corner.
• Click search playlists. Near the top of the screen, you’ll see a small green bullet ‘You are logged in as yourusername’
• Now when you search, you’ll be able to see all the playlist results.

We’re planning some more Composer Pro training webinars for you over the next few months. The next one will focus on working with playlists.

Please tell us what you want us to cover, such as specific scenarios for importing or exporting playlist information, and we’ll do our best to include your questions in the trainings.

Don’t be shy!

Trying to submit information for your SoundExchange reports, but not sure where to go? Log in here.

Composer Pro or Basic
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/xxxx/guide.guideadmin
Substitute your call letters for the xxxx

Forgot your password?
Happens all the time. Write to us at help AT publicinteractive.com and we’ll get back to you during business hours. Usernames and passwords are case-sensitive.

If you use other services, you can also log in here:
http://www2.publicinteractive.com/affiliate/login.html

NOTES:

• Your user name and station ID are the same, both are case-sensitive and most likely lower case.
• If you have a limited access log in (Events, Composer, Platform), please go directly to the admin URL listed above.

For more details, see the SoundExchange blog.

Buy Song from iTunes

A new Composer Pro playlist option — you can now give your site visitors the option to buy songs from iTunes, as well as Amazon and Arkiv.

See it live:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wfuv/guide.guidemain?action=viewPlaylist&playlistID=665324&eventID=99648

All you need is to be an iTunes affiliate. For information on iTunes affiliation, please visit their Web site: www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates. The process is pretty simple, you fill out a form and they should get back to you within three days.

To add this option to your playlists:

• Go to your main Composer Pro tools index
• Click ‘Manage Commerce Links’
• Enter your iTunes ID on the Commerce and click submit. You’ll find your iTunes ID hidden in your click-through link. Depending on your iTunes link format, copy everything after id= and before & or copy everything after siteID=

Examples:

• Copy everything after id= and before &

  http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=V0y3ifvJfM&offerid=146261.10005949

If you use Composer Pro, you really don’t need to do much for SoundExchange Reporting. By default, PI will report on all playlist data for a given quarter that is in Composer Pro. However, you can specify a 14-day period to report on, if you like.

In that case, all we need are your reporting dates.

• Go to the Select Reporting Dates screen, via the Edit Report Dates link on the View Reports screen.
• Choose to report on the entire quarter by checking the “Disregard dates and use full quarter instead” checkbox.
• Otherwise, to specify a 14-day reporting period, enter the first date of each 7-day period using the date dropdowns and click Save. They do not need to be consecutive weeks.

Composer Basic stations must specify their chosen reporting period within each calendar quarter for each content stream. For most stations, this is a 14-day sample (two 7-day consecutive periods); a handful of stations (they know who they are) are required to do census (full-quarter) reporting.