For an article in our latest Buyer’s Guide section, software supplier RCS asked its customer Brett Patram of Hubbard Radio in Cincinnati about his experience with its software.
RCS: Tell us a little bit about your position.
Brett Patram: I am the director of engineering for the Hubbard Radio Cincinnati market.
I originally came on to handle their local IT/network infrastructure needs. But I was also handling all the RF needs at the same time. My background is pretty heavy in both RF and IT. Eventually I took over as director of engineering, which made the most sense for everyone.
RCS: What products have you installed from RCS?
Patram: GSelector and Zetta primarily but now we are also using Revma to carry some of the point to multiple DR [disaster recovery] streams to our transmitter sites
RCS: Why did you choose to install Zetta and GSelector?
Patram: As a previous NexGen facility we were used to, let’s say, certain luxuries that NexGen offered. When it was time to review our automation choices we were a bit surprised to find that the other vendors were still playing catchup to NexGen. Zetta in comparison was years ahead, and was a mature product with years of development behind it.
The choice to also migrate from Selector to GSelector was one that made the most sense based on the full integration the two products shared with each other. We have a very particular staff that are passionate about the tools they use to program and run their stations. We saw several workflow improvements that they couldn’t do without the Zetta and GSelector integration existing.
RCS: You have added Zetta Disaster Recovery, can you elaborate on this feature and why is helpful for Hubbard?
Patram: Zetta Disaster Recovery was another draw to the overall offering. I needed a backup solution that was multifaceted.
It helps us in several ways. We are always sending a current backup snapshot of our database and audio assets into the cloud. We don’t have to be directly responsible to maintain this environment.
Our logs are also being synced and played out in the cloud environment. This creates the ultimate backup audio solution for us. When we need it, it’s always available and it’s actually going to be what we programmed and scheduled — not some canned fill audio. At our transmitter sites and even in the studios the streamed feed of the Zetta Cloud DR instance is made available to switch into. Because all our logs and assets are backed up into this environment, all our spots would continue to play if we needed to use it for any length of time.
On top of that, being able to control these sequencers from a very familiar looking interface makes it that much easier in a true DR scenario to take control and “run” the station from that environment.
For info: Contact RCS at 1-914-428-4600 or visit www.rcsworks.com.