Whether you are receiving quarterly ratings surveys or adapting to the new realities of weekly and monthly PPM reports, a periodic review of your scheduling software is imperative. Just like your garage, closets, or that special drawer in your house, junk accumulates over time. Given the increased workloads of todays programmers, it is easy to put this off for another day. You need to make an appointment with yourself for a periodic house cleaning TODAY. Shut your door, hold all calls, and shut down your email. Depending on how diligent you have been in the past, this may take awhile.


Make a back-up.


Like a professional athlete you need to get warmed up so you don't pull a muscle. Start with the easy stuff first so you are not overwhelmed with tough decisions. Go to your resting/hold categories and scrutinize every title using whatever qualitative tools you have at your disposal. These categories tend to end up being the dumping ground for a lot of stiffs that didn't achieve hit status, or are no longer relevant for your target audience. If so, why do you still have them in your scheduling system and taking up space in your automation system? Trust me, your first delete will be the hardest. If you just don't feel comfortable totally letting go just yet, at least create a new category called TRASH which you can dump later. Psychologically, it may be easier.


Next dive into your active categories. Start with the deeper slower categories and work your way to the fastest. It may be time for some songs to be moved down to a slower category because of age or popularity. Hopefully, you won't find any songs you would consider trash here as they have been in rotation. Those that are marginal should be moved down to resting/hold to be revisited later. See first step.


Once you have purged your active library of unwanted material, run "library analysis" on all categories combined and individually. Your analysis should include artist and each attribute such as tempo, sound, era, etc. If you have any research data applied to each song, these scores should reviewed as well. The goal here is to make sure that your library still meets the listener expectation your programming strategy dictates. For example, have you become too old/new, fast/ slow, pop/rock, dance/rap, etc. since your last review? Now that you have cleaned your library you should optimize the schedule order of each category.


Since you may have made considerable changes to the make-up of each category, make sure you run Turnover Analysis to make sure each category will perform to your expectations in terms of horizontal and vertical rotation. Adjustments to the category size or the clocks may be necessary. The goal here is to make the clocks work with the best music library possible, not the other way around.


Make a back-up.


Most radio stations spend a considerable amount of time, money, and energy on imaging elements such as sweepers, artist drops, and jingles. Some refer to them as the mortar that holds the musical bricks together. They also get a lot more airtime than most programmers realize and can add significantly to perceived repetition. Non-music elements can be managed very effectively in MusicMaster and you should analyze these just as you did your music library. Pay special attention to the freshness of each element and rotation history. Are some playing more frequently then others? Are there rotation or clock rules to prevent from playing in the same position to frequently? Maybe it's time to give some of your sweepers a fresh coat of paint with new production elements underneath.


If you are finished with time to spare, resist checking your email just a little longer. Take a moment to see what clocks you may have sitting in your system that are simply taking up space and will never be used again. What log-notes and trivia are no longer relevant? You'll find that rebuilding these later if you need them may be easier than constantly working around the extras you don't need on a regular basis.


Make a back-up.


You now should be prepared for your next survey period, and that nagging thought that you need to review your music library one of these days will have passed. Now, before you do anything else make an appointment with yourself for your next check-up.