| Field | The Ridge | What it does | In every cut |
|---|---|---|---|
stationName | The Ridge | The call letters or the on-air name, spelled the way it should be sung. Four letters that have to land as four letters get typed as four letters, because the singer reads what you wrote.Legal identification. Every piece of imaging carries it. | Sung, and checked |
dialPosition | 101.5 FM | A string rather than a number, because the sung form is what matters and half of these are not decimals at all. Point five, dot five and FM all belong in this field if that is how your air staff say it.An ID without the frequency is not an ID. Checked in the finished lyric. | Sung, and checked |
format | Country | The strongest style signal there is. Imaging for a country station and imaging for a news talk station share no instruments, so this is folded into every caption rather than being a label on a folder. | Steers the music |
positioner | The valley's best country | The line the station is trying to own. Wanted in every piece, and dropped first when a :10 has room for the name and the frequency and nothing else.The line the station is trying to own. Wanted in every piece, but a :10 shotgun ID that only has room for the name and the frequency is still correct. | Sung where it fits |
city | Ridgeway | City of licence, included where the format and the length allow.Included where the format and the length allow. | Sung where it fits |
imagingNotes | Female lead, big and proud. The slogan lands after the station name. | How it should sound and be sung: voice gender, energy, whether the slogan lands before or after the station name. Written once, read by every render. | Steers the music |
The dial position is matched as digits rather than as text, which is the only way the check can be honest: the profile holds 101.5 and the singer sings one oh one point five, and those have to count as the same promise. A piece of imaging that never says the frequency is not an ID, it is a piece of music with a name in it, so that one comes back rather than being reported.
| Piece | Length | Voice | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shotgun ID | :10 | Fully sung | The short one. Station name and dial position sung over a stab, for dropping between songs. The most-played piece of audio a station owns. |
| Station anthem | :15:30 | Fully sung | The full sing. Name, dial position and positioning slogan over a proper hook, for a top of hour ID or a station promo open. |
| Power sweeper | :10 | Fully sung | A whoosh into a sung station name, ending hard so the next song can start on the button. For a rhythmic or rock format. |
| News theme | :10:15:30 | Instrumental bed, nothing sung | An instrumental news open and bed. Nothing sung: the newsreader carries the words, and a sung news theme dates in a month. |
| Traffic theme | :10:15 | Sung tag over a bed | A short motion-flavoured open with the station name sung over it, dropping to a bed for the report. Also works for weather. |
| Morning show theme | :15:30 | Fully sung | A show theme with room to sing the show name as well as the station. For a breakfast programme that needs its own identity inside the station's. |
The emerald length on each row is the one the archetype was written for. The others are lengths the same piece genuinely works at, and the form will only ever offer you those: a length missing from a row is a length that piece does not hold, which is a cheaper thing to find out here than on a traffic log.
Every archetype declares a tempo range, and the six in the default package overlap between 112 and 116 BPM, so the whole set is held at one number inside it. That is what lets a sweeper butt against an ID without a lurch. The overlap is checked when the library loads, so an edit that broke it stops the build rather than quietly shipping a package that no longer agrees with itself.
The seed comes out of the station profile itself, which is what makes a show theme cut in March sound like the ID cut in January. A package is a station’s sound rather than a batch, and pieces get added to it for years.
A seed only reproduces a render for the same caption, so believing the seed alone is enough is the trap. The shared half of every caption is built once for the package, and each piece appends only what makes it that piece.
Ask for four and you get four alternates of one piece: one title, one place in the library, four things to listen to. Each take is a render and is billed as one, and the studio states the cost of the whole set before you press it.
A cut you liked can be made again, and a cut you rejected is never repeated by accident. The model is on the record for an unglamorous reason: a track rendered a year ago must not claim to have come from today’s checkpoint.
Some of what a station plays wants a read from your production director, so stem export pulls the instrumental out from under a finished piece and the sung package underneath still ties the hour together. It is one pass however many parts come back, and re-exporting a piece overwrites rather than accumulating.
Change the positioner next spring and the next render carries the new one. Nothing already delivered is rewritten, because a finished cut keeps the words it was sung from, and a reproducibility record that quietly stops being true is worse than none at all.
The short one. Station name and dial position sung over a stab, for dropping between songs. The most-played piece of audio a station owns.
The full sing. Name, dial position and positioning slogan over a proper hook, for a top of hour ID or a station promo open.
A whoosh into a sung station name, ending hard so the next song can start on the button. For a rhythmic or rock format.
A sung line into the station name, with room for the positioning slogan. For an adult contemporary or country format where a whoosh would be wrong.
An instrumental news open and bed. Nothing sung: the newsreader carries the words, and a sung news theme dates in a month.
A short motion-flavoured open with the station name sung over it, dropping to a bed for the report. Also works for weather.
The same motion feel with nothing sung, for a station whose traffic and weather reports are read live over a bed rather than opened with an ID.
A long instrumental bed for a produced promo: a contest, an event, a show launch. Built to sit under a full voice read with a lift where the payoff goes.
The same job as the promo bed but opening on a sung station line, so a contest promo still identifies the station in the first two seconds.
A show theme with room to sing the show name as well as the station. For a breakfast programme that needs its own identity inside the station's.
