Every time on this page is UTC
This is the single thing that catches everyone.
Breaks are scheduled in UTC, not your local time, and they are not timezone aware. A break set for 16:00 fires at 16:00 UTC, which is late morning in Denver, afternoon in London, and the middle of the night in Sydney.
The reason is that a station is one synchronised stream. Every listener, wherever they are, hears the same break at the same instant. A break anchored to the owner's local clock would drift against every other listener, so the schedule is anchored to one clock that everybody shares.
Convert before you type. If you are UTC-6 and you want a break at 4:00 PM your time, enter 22:00.
Two consequences worth planning around:
- Daylight saving will shift your breaks. The UTC time never changes, so a spot that runs at 4:00 PM in summer runs at 3:00 PM in winter. Nothing is broken; the clock underneath simply does not move with yours. If a break must hold a local hour year round, adjust it twice a year.
- The timeline "now" marker is UTC too. It shows where the stream is on the shared clock, not on your wall clock.
Two ways to schedule a break
Every N hours (cadence). Fires on a fixed rhythm through the day. This is the simplest option and it suits station IDs, which are meant to be regular rather than tied to a moment.
Set times (slots). Fires at specific times of day that you list. This is what you want for anything that has to land at a particular hour, and for anything anchored to a local time.
The cadence rule nobody guesses
Cadence always counts from 00:00 UTC. There is no "starting at" option, because there is no anchor to set. "Every 4 hours" means 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 UTC, and nothing else.
Most of the time this does not matter, and here is why: an anchor that is a multiple of the interval collapses into the same schedule. Every 4 hours starting at 04:00 produces 04, 08, 12, 16, 20, 00 - the identical set. So asking for "every 4 hours starting at 4" already gives you exactly what cadence produces.
It matters when your intended anchor is not a multiple of the interval. Anchoring every 4 hours to 4:00 PM local (22:00 UTC) would give 22, 02, 06, 10, 14, 18 - a schedule cadence cannot express at all.
When cadence cannot say what you mean, switch to set times and list the hours. For every 4 hours starting at 4:00 PM in a UTC-6 zone:
22:00 02:00 06:00 10:00 14:00 18:00 UTC
4 PM 8 PM 12 AM 4 AM 8 AM 12 PM local
Why a break did not air
Almost always one of these two.
It has no audio. A break is skipped entirely unless it is enabled and has audio attached. A spot can sit in the list looking scheduled, with its times on the timeline, and never make a sound, because the slot is empty. The card tells you: "No audio yet". Upload the file, then press Preview to hear exactly what will go out. A break airs unattended to every listener at once, so it is worth the extra click.
It is not enabled. The On air switch on the card. Off means it keeps its schedule and its audio and simply does not play, which is the right way to park a seasonal ad rather than deleting it.
Shows use a different clock rule
Shows are not breaks, and they are scheduled differently.
A show has a real start date and time, and repeats as one-time, daily, or weekly from that moment.
A show runs for exactly as long as its audio, not as long as its Duration field. The stream adds up the segments that actually have playable audio and returns to rotation the moment that total runs out. The Duration you typed is a label for listeners; it does not extend or shorten the broadcast. A show with four segments totalling 23m16s occupies the stream for 23m16s, whatever the field says.
Two more things follow:
- A show scheduled in the future does not air until that moment arrives. To test a show right now, set its start time slightly in the past, not the future.
- A show whose segments have no playable audio is skipped, exactly like an empty break, and the station falls back to rotation. If a show did not air, check its segments before you suspect the schedule.
Shows outrank breaks, so schedule around your breaks
When a show is on, nothing else can reach the stream. A show is checked before ad spots and station IDs, so your programme can never be interrupted by an ad. That part is automatic and needs no thought.
The catch is the other direction. Any break whose moment falls inside a show is lost, not delayed. It does not queue up and play afterwards. A break is only eligible during its own short window, and by the time the show ends that window has long closed, so the spot is simply skipped until its next scheduled occurrence.
This gives station managers a simple working rule:
Breaks keep a rhythm. Shows take a time. So move the show, not the break.
An ad on a cadence is meant to recur evenly all day, and dragging it around to dodge a programme spoils the spacing everywhere else. A show already sits at one chosen moment, so it is the cheaper thing to move.
Leave enough room for the break to finish. Nudging a show by one minute is usually not enough. If a 70 second jingle starts at 17:30, it is still playing at 17:31, and a show starting then cuts it off mid phrase, which sounds worse than not playing it at all. Start the show after the break has finished: for a 70 second spot at 17:30, begin the show at 17:32.
The same applies at the end. Your show occupies the stream until its audio runs out, so check whether anything is scheduled inside that stretch. A 23 minute show beginning at 17:32 runs to 17:55 and will swallow any spot booked in between.
Or nudge the spot instead. On a cadence break, the +5 min button moves that spot five minutes later every time you click it, wrapping back to :00 after :55. This is the gentler option when a break lands somewhere awkward: you shift it just far enough to clear the obstacle rather than relocating it to the next quarter hour. The whole rhythm moves together, so a spot nudged to :05 then plays at :05 past every hour, and the timeline pins move with it.
A quick checklist before you walk away
- Times entered in UTC, converted from your local clock
- Audio attached to every break you expect to hear
- Previewed, so you know it is the right file
- On air switch on
- For shows: start time in the past if you are testing, and every segment has audio