Careers

What Do They Do?

A Commercial Scheduler as an essential role in commercial radio, as they make sure the adverts are broadcast.  It is a fast paced and sometimes stressful role, with tight deadlines and last minute changes.

Commercial Scheduling is sometimes known as Traffic, but it isn’t the sort of traffic bulletin you hear after the news.  This team “traffic” the ads to air and make sure they are played at the right time, in full and as often as the campaign requires.

A scheduler’s daily tasks may include:

• Ensuring the correct play-out of commercials
• Scheduling local and national ad campaigns, and resolving any scheduling conflicts
• Working with the writers and audio producers that actually make the adverts to ensure they make it to air in a timely fashion
• Clearing adverts with RadioCentre to make sure they are compliant
• Checking audio and uploading it to the playout system
• Liaising with production about the broadcast of adverts
• Assisting with different technical requests (commercial schedulers are very tech savvy)
• Meeting PRS deadlines and delivering commercial logs
• Monitoring clients’ campaigns to ensure that they are hitting all the relevant targets

Who Do They Work With?

• Commercial Scheduling is a role that is great for collaborative working as Schedulers work with commercial and inventory planners, creatives, producers, sales executives and other scheduling teams as well as programming.

What Skills Do I Need?

• Commercial Schedulers need excellent time management and planning skills to ensure that adverts make it to air at the right time and in the right slot.
• Commercial Schedulers need excellent attention to detail to make sure the correct, cleared advert is broadcast.
• Commercial Schedulers are great multitaskers and must stay calm under pressure when working to tight deadlines.
• Commercial Schedulers need strong interpersonal skills, as they work across multiple teams.
• Commercial Schedulers need to be confident communicators with strong writing skills, as they may need to adjust advert scripts.
• Commercial Schedulers need to be technically confident with various different computer systems.

How Do I Get This Job?

There are no specific qualifications needed for this role, but an interest in radio is crucial to understanding the bigger picture and how campaigns are received on air.  Full training is usually given for this role.