[BC] Fox XDS closures

[Kevin Trueblood]

I can't speak specifically for Fox Sports, but I can tell you that we've had
some problems with missed closures on Delilah and Glenn Beck.  I've talked
to the folks at Premiere a couple of times who have admitted the mistake and
I know they'll fix it.  They've always been very reliable, in my experience.
 Just bugs in the new system, I guess.
I definitely found a "gotcha" at the end of the hours on XDS-captured shows.
 For us, we delay Glenn Beck by one hour.  Two days in a row we missed what
would have been the 9:58:50 closure.  Come to find out that they sent the
closure 2 seconds late each day.  Well, our XDS didn't catch it because the
"feed time" ends at 58:50, thus not capturing the closure that came in 2
seconds later.  So our automation sat there waiting until someone caught the
missed break and moved it on manually.  We put in a failsafe by hard-syncing
the 58:50 break to 58:52, so if the closure is missed the automation will
move on by itself.  If the closure is received the automation will already
have moved on beyond the sync point.

Kevin Trueblood
Engineer
Mid-West Family Broadcasting
Madison, WI