The fine folks of WBCR-LP in Great Barrington, MA use MegaSeg? for radio automation.

We use MegaSeg?.

1. Why did you decide to use automation? Do you know that LPFM's only have to broadcast 6 hours per day?

Why turn off? Why not be on the air for people who want to listen? Automation can do anything (well, within reason of course). We use it to schedule and air syndicated programming, locally produced shows that are pre-recorded, etc. When there are no shows on the schedule (increasingly only the overnight hours (at this point mid-6am)) we run a fully random mix of music with scheduled station IDs?, show promos, PSAs? dropping in the mix (we actually only schedule categories and allow randomness within those). Some people love the full-on random, some less so. We also allow DJs? to come in and sequence the automation from our digital music library or drop on air when no programming is scheduled, but limit DJs? to 3 hours per week of that. Only a few take advantage of the opportunity.

When we filed our initial application we took the preference point for 12 hrs/day. No problem on that anyhow.

1. Describe your automation system and what you or your programmers use your automation system to do?

MegaSeg? is a pretty flexible program with a selection of interfaces, from a more digital DJ type 2-deck interface to the one we use which is more geared towards "station" use. Some of what we do with it, I referenced above. We also run a second computer that we installed a second copy of MegaSeg? on to use as a "DJ Assist" machine so that they may access the digital library without mucking with the automation computer.

1. How did you decide what type of automation system to install?

Well, since we went mac-based, it seems like the front runner for doing what we wanted to do and it was quite reasonably priced compared to some of the main pc-based options geared towards radio stations. We decided to stay away from the basic itunes setups that some stations were doing and invest in a more powerful and flexible system.

1. Have you ever changed your automation system?

nope. and I don't see any plans to do so in the future, but we will see what we see.

Asa can tell you the specs of what computers we are using and whatever else he want to on all this.

One annecdote. We raised our antenna 2 days before the expiration of our CP. At that time we didn't have a studio, so we went "live" with megaseg running on a G4 tower (or is that a G3?). Asa and I sat on the roof of the hospital where the antenna was raised putting MP3s into the computer as the wiring was being connected. I'll include a picture.