03: Content Modules

Overview

Each content “module” available in NewsTicker is listed below. These modules appear on NewsTicker’s main menu, allowing authorized personnel to update content quickly and intuitively. The exact items that appear on your menu may differ slightly as some standard but some are optional.

Currently, Newsroom Solutions is in the midst of provisioning a rolling upgrade from the 2-series of NewsTicker to the 4-series. This is made possible as a result of NewsTicker’s unique modular-based infrastructure. This provides for faster versioning since it allows older version 2 modules to co-exist with newer version 4 modules – you get new features as they are released, versus waiting for all modules to be converted. The version series for which the description applies is provided in the square notation after the module name below.

Content Module	Standard or Optional Module	Series
Breaking News	Standard	4-series module
Closings	Optional	2-series module
Currents	Standard	2-series module
EAS	Standard	2-series module
Elections	Optional	2-series module
Finance	Standard	2-series module
Gas Prices	Optional	2-series module
Headlines	Standard	4-series module
Lottery	Standard	2-series module
SevereWx	Optional	4-series module
Ski	Standard	2-series module
Sports	Standard	4-series module
Terrorism	Standard	2-series module
Globals	Standard	2-series module

Breaking News

(Standard 4-series module)

The Breaking News module is actually a subset of the Headlines module. Within Headlines, you create data categories where you enter your content. You can then designate a “breaking news” category.

Once assigned, Breaking News appears on the main menu as the first module.

Clicking on the name acts as an alias. It takes you into the Headlines module, hiding everything but the designated “breaking news” category. This allows you to get urgent headlines into NewsTicker, quickly.

For information about assigning a “breaking news” category, see Headlines below.

Closings

(Optional 2-series module)

Closings is an optional module for automating the intake of school and business closures via a touchtone telephony and web-based interface. It is integrated with the rest of the NewsTicker platform, allowing you to show Closings data alongside content from other modules.

Due to the complexity of the module, dedicated documentation is available. Consult the Closings User Guide for complete details.

Currents

Currents keeps your viewers up-to-date with the latest weather conditions from around your state, region or the entire country.

Clicking on Currents from the main NewsTicker menu takes you to a summary screen of all the cities you have configured from which to gather current weather conditions.

The module is capable of gathering the current sky condition, temperature, dew point, relative humidity, winds, and barometric pressure from most any city that reports to the National Weather Service.

In addition, if you are an AWS WeatherBug client, or have a local network of temperature probes, they can be ingested into the Currents module too.

Configurations

To customize Currents, click on Configure. You will then be presented with the following options:

• Edit Cities: Change or add which cities you want to display current conditions for
• Edit Display: Order Customize the order in which NewsTicker displays each city
• Edit Condition: Change the text shown for each condition and assign weather icons (if used)
• Edit Default City: Change the default city for temperature in time/temp display

First you need to decide what cities you want to display current conditions for, so click Edit Cities.

Enter a zip code, the name of a city (and state), or the four-letter identifier used by the National Weather Service, and click Add.

The Currents module queries the central NewsTicker servers for the city you requested, returning possible matches.

You can also use this same screen to edit the on-air name, or delete cities you no longer want in your display.

Once you have all the cities entered, you can tell NewsTicker what order you want them displayed by going to the Edit Display Order option from the Configure menu.

Choose the order you would like each city to appear on-air by selecting a city and using the arrows on the right to move it up or down in the display order.

Now, you’ll need to tell NewsTicker how to translate the default sky conditions fed by the National Weather Service in an abbreviated format to something your viewers can understand, or is in the “vocabulary” of your meteorologists. Click Edit Conditions from the Configure menu.

Default condition names are entered for you, but you may edit them by changing the text and clicking Save.

If you will be using graphical icons in your display, you’ll need to create a keystroke that associates the condition with an icon on your CG. This should be done in coordination with the person writing your LOGIC files.

If NewsTicker generates your time/temp bug, you need to decide what city you want to use for that temperature. Click Edit Default City from within the Configure menu and choose an entry from the dropdown box. The cities that appear in this option are the same cities that are set in Configure > Edit Cities from earlier.

When using the default National Weather Service information, the data will be updated hourly.

EAS

(Standard 2-series module)

EAS is a standard module designed to pass through emergency messages from your endec to the specified NewsTicker character generator(s). It prevents a station from needing a dedicated EAS CG since it re-purposes those you use daily for NewsTicker. And, it can feed multiple CG streams at the same time. Consistent with FCC regulations, the audio tones must originate from the endec itself.

NewsTicker EAS supports the two major endec manufacturers: TFT and Sage, although the module operation differs between the two.

• TFT: Endecs from TFT offer you the greatest flexibility within NewsTicker because NewsTicker is able to control the unit. When an EAS comes down, the TFT unit immediately delivers it to NewsTicker and waits for a reply. If you control EAS’s manually, the intelliCommander will alarm. If automated, a runlevel will start and may, if configured, wait for a local commercial break to end before proceeding. Once ready, NewsTicker will begin airing the EAS message and tell the TFT unit it is on air. At that point, the TFT plays the audio tones and prints the verification.
• Sage: Endecs from Sage treat NewsTicker like a CG, so all of the control and automation is in the Sage unit itself. When an EAS comes down, the Sage will do whatever you have configured (e.g. alarm if manual, or trigger if automated). It will then play its audio tones and send the message to NewsTicker at the same time. You cannot take advantage of NewsTicker automation to delay the start until after the local break because NewsTicker can’t control the playing of the audio tones within the Sage unit. The tones play at the same time the module receives the message.

In both cases, the physical text of the message is formatted in the endec.

Configurations

From within the EAS module, click Configure > General Configurations. Enter the port and baud settings for your endec. Typically, 9,600 baud is used. Be sure that the port on your endec is set for “generic” or “standard”.

The runlevel used to display EAS messages is set in the configurations of the Broadcast module.

If you are using a Sage, then there are no other configurations. If using a TFT, proceed to Edit Event Codes. Here, are the various codes fed from the endec. Clicking on an event name will allow you to configure it.

• Event Code: Three-character event abbreviation. This must match what is fed from the endec.
• Event Name: Textual name of the event, used for internal reference.
• Event Type: Category that the event falls into. Useful if you’ll filter by event type in the LOGIC file.
• Severity User-defined severity level of event. Useful if you’ll want to react to severity within the LOGIC file, such as using a different background color for the crawl.
• Action: Determines what should be done when this event is fed into NewsTicker. Ignore Event will cause the event to be skipped over. Prompt to Air will signal an alarm on the intelliCommander and execute once the operator presses Play. Automatic to Air will immediately launch the runlevel without user intervention.
• Description: Details about the event, used as an internal reference.

There is no manual entry into the module. The best way to test the interaction between your endec and NewsTicker is to launch a Required Weekly Test on the endec.

Elections

(Optional 2-series module)

Elections is an optional module for handling the collection of election results from multiple sources, and displaying the results on-air and on the web. It is integrated with the rest of the NewsTicker platform, allowing you to show election results alongside content from other modules.

Due to the complexity of the module, dedicated documentation is available. Consult the Elections User Guide for complete details.

Tip: Most stations don’t have publicly traded companies headquartered in their DMA, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use Finance. Pick public companies that affect your work force, such as large employers in the area or companies that local businesses sell product to.

‎Finance

(Standard 2-series module)

NewsTicker Finance is a great way to keep your viewers updated with what’s happening with the stock market as a whole, individual securities, or both. It doesn’t matter whether it is a bear or bull market, you can use Finance to display a wide variety of data elements for individual stocks. Your display may be as simple as the name of the stock, its closing price and the amount of change from the previous day’s close. Or, you may give viewers a more complex business display that includes the PE ratio, volume, 52-week high and low, as well as the day’s open, high and low.

The Finance module is designed to be completely self-updating. Thus, after you initially configure it with the securities you are interested in, the data is automatically updated without any intervention from the station. No third-party contracts are required as Newsroom’s TickerWire data service provides all of the content you need.

While it is most common to include end-of-day data in morning shows and in hour-long late news formats, you can show 20-minute delayed quotes while the markets are still open, such as during your midday news. By combining local business headlines into a “business” category in the Headlines module with stock quotes from the Finance module, you can provide your audience with a complete picture of business- related news specific to your market.

‎Configurations

To get started, develop a list of companies that you’d like to track and look up the stock symbol of each security. You’ll need the symbol to configure NewsTicker. You can easily get the symbols through a variety of Internet websites, such as:

• quote.com
• moneycentral.msn.com
• finance.yahoo.com

Once you have your list developed and the symbols for each:

1. Launch NewsTicker
2. Click Finance > Configure.
3. Entering stocks is a two step process: you’ll enter the symbol, and then give it an on-air display name. Take the first symbol on your list and enter it into the box next to the Add button. For General Motors, you would enter GM and press Add.
4. NewsTicker will next present you with the name of the security which, in our example, would be “General Motors Corporation.” To save space on-air, this can be easily shortened to “General Motors” or even “GM”.
5. Once you’re happy with the name as you want it displayed on- air, click Save.

Tip: Most stock names can be edited down for brevity by removing unnecessary suffixes like “Inc”, “Ltd”, “Co”, “Corp”, as well as the stock’s class designation (“CL A”).

Simply repeat this process for the remaining companies on your list. After you add each symbol, you’ll be taken back to the configuration screen where you will see your entire list. Now, look closely at the underlined List Common Indices link which is directly below the Add button. Clicking on this will take you to a pre-defined list of stock indices such as the Dow Jones Composite, Dow Jones Industrials, NASDAQ Composite, and the S&P 500. Just click-on the index you’re interested in and it will be added to your list for on-air display.

If you need to refine, or delete the names of your stocks or indices you can edit those from the configure screen by clicking on the appropriate choice.

There is one other setting on the configure screen and this controls the way your stocks and indices are sorted for on-air display. Your choice here depends on whether you want your stocks displayed by the symbol or stock name. If you’re displaying by symbol, the default choice of sorting All stocks, alphabetical by symbol, is the most common choice. You could refine that even further by opting to sort first by the exchange and then by the stock symbol, which only makes sense if you are actually displaying the name of the exchange on-air, which most stations don’t. If you are using the stocks full name, then All stocks, alpha by name might be your choice. Sorting alphabetically by exchange and then stock name is also an option. If none of these choices work, you can further refine your on-air display in the LOGIC broadcast automation file, such as ordering from biggest gainers to biggest losers.

Entering finance data

The main Finance screen conveniently lists all of your stocks and indices with a timestamp indicating the last time each entry was updated.

By default, updates occur at market close. But, updates can be done more frequently to accommodate midday newscasts. Contact NewsTicker Support if you need updates during newscasts that happen when active trading is underway.

The overwhelming majority of time, stock data is updated via Newsroom’s TickerWire service. In the unlikely event your data isn’t updated due to a network outage or other event, you can update the values manually by clicking a stock symbol. A screen will open with the underlying data. Just update the necessary values and click Save.

Obviously, you only have to update the fields you actually display on-air.

‎Forecasts

(Standard 2-series module)

The Forecast module is designed to give your meteorologists a framework for quickly entering a forecast for distinct weather regions in your coverage area, whether these are cities in a hyphenated market or a hyper-local forecast.

The forecast can be text-only, a combination of text and weather icons, or icons-only. When picking an icon, your met will simply choose from a dropdown box of available options, greatly speeding-up the process of entering a forecast for the morning meteorologist who is constantly on deadline. For example, entering today’s forecast can be as easy as just selecting “Sunny” from the icon dropdown box and entering the high temperature for the day in the temperature box.

Newsroom Solutions doesn’t provide automated weather data for the Forecast module because a “generic” forecast from the National Weather Service will more than likely conflict with the forecast from your meteorologists.

Tip: If you want to show more forecast cities on your digital weather channel or on the web than on your normal display, configure all the cities here and filter the cities from within the LOGIC files.

To get started using the module,

1. First, decide what cities or regions you want to provide a distinct forecast for, and the day parts to be used with those forecasts.
   • The day parts will be the same for each city or region. In NewsTicker, you can be creative with your day parts. You could use the more traditional “this morning,” “today,” and “tonight.” Or, you might choose “wake-up,” “at the bus stop,” and “lunchtime.” With NewsTicker Forecasts, you can match the day parts to your weather lexicon.
2. Next, have your meteorologists decide how to use the three available temperature label boxes. Temperature boxes are just short text boxes – you can use them for data items besides temperatures.
   • Maybe you want to use the Air Quality Index, tide information, or the probability of precipitation. It’s up to you. NewsTicker gives you total control in localizing your weather information. Just keep in mind that whatever content you decide to show, your graphic artist needs to make it fit into your on-air template.
3. Finally, decide if you’re going to use weather icons and, if so, get your design department working on them.
   • Note that it is unlikely that weather icons used by your main weather system will translate well to ticker icons. More often than not, the weather system icons contain too much detail to render nicely in a ticker. As you are making these icons, keep in mind the need for day and night versions when forecasting overnights.

Tip: Many of the icons used in forecasts can also be used for current conditions, in the Currents module

Configurations

Now that you’ve made the basic decisions on what you want the Forecast module to display, let’s get it setup in the software. From the NewsTicker main menu, click on Forecasts and then scroll to the bottom of the page and click-on Configure. You’ll be presented with four options.

Let’s start with the top button: Edit Cities. To enter a city name or forecast region, just type the name in the white box next to the Add button. Once you’re satisfied that the name you have entered is the way you want it to appear on-air, and that it is spelled correctly, click-on the Add button and you’re done. Simply repeat this process for as many cities or regions as you need.

‎To delete a city, completely erase its name and click Save. Edits will not take effect until you hit the Save button.

Next you will need to configure your day parts by clicking on the Edit Day Parts button from within the Configure menu. This option allows you to change the number of forecast boxes per city, and how they are labeled. The process is the same as the one you did for entering the city/region names.

Tip: NewsTicker skips displaying day parts that have no data entered. So, if you want to configure a day part that you use less frequently, it won’t go to air until you actually use it.

We’re halfway through setting up Forecasts. Now click-on Edit Temp Labels from the Configure screen. Again you will fill-in the white box ‎with your description for each of the three Temp Label boxes that are available and hit Save.

Finally, if your on-air NewsTicker forecasts display is going to include the use of weather icons, you can set those up in the Edit Weather Icons section. The concept works like this: When entering a forecast, your meteorologist will select a textual description from a dropdown box.

Those text-based descriptions are what you enter into Icon Description. When the forecast goes to air, NewsTicker will send a special code to the character generator which displays the icon. The special code is what gets entered into Keystroke.

On the Freedom graphical platform, there are two ways to store weather icons: they can be pre-loaded into the template as logos, with their label matching the keystroke entered here, or a dynamic graphic field can be set and the icon loaded from disk when needed, with the icon’s filename matching the keystroke (plus .tga), as in S.tga for “Sunny”. We recommend the latter method.

With the flexibility of NewsTicker Forecasts, some stations make changes daily to the names of the cities they provide forecasts for. Others set it up once and forget it. It’s up to you!

Once configured, return to the main Forecasts screen. You’ll see your cities/regions in a darker purple box with your day parts and temperature labels underneath and the Weather Icons drop down if you entered any icon associations.

If you’ve entered a large number of cities or day parts, you may have to scroll down the page to see everything. Once you’ve checked your spelling for typos, your display framework is ready.

Tip: You can still use the time- saving feature of weather icons in NewsTicker, even if you don’t use icons!

Simply configure a bunch of textual forecast descriptions, which will appear in the dropdown box, and have your met choose those instead of typing a forecast into the text field.

Entering forecast data

Day-to-day operation of the Forecast module works like this.:

1. Open NewsTicker and click-on Forecasts.
2. The module opens and you’ll see all of your effort in configuring the module display.
3. Entering data is as easy as clicking-in the white box you want to update and typing your text.
   1. If using weather icons, then select the appropriate option from the dropdown list. Continue this for every city and day part, as appropriate.
4. Once you’ve finished updating all the necessary fields, scroll down and hit the Save button.
5. Your forecast is now ready for air.

You can continue to update the forecast information throughout a broadcast and your changes will be reflected on-air without having to start and stop the display.

Tip: Anytime you have a text entry box in NewsTicker, you can cut and paste text in from another application. At this point, the Forecasts module does not have a spell checker like other NewsTicker modules do, so you may wish to write in Word or some other application that does have a spell checker.

When you see that your text is free of errors, cut and paste it into NewsTicker.

Gas Prices

(Optional 2-series module)

As the price of a gallon of gas continues to set new record highs, viewer interest in saving even a penny-a-gallon grows too. NewsTicker Gas Prices is an optional module designed to keep viewers informed about where they can find the cheapest gas in town.

NewsTicker Gas Prices allows you to configure multiple cities or regions in your DMA in which you are interested in showing gas prices. Our automated data service will then feed you the lowest known places to purchase gas, based on automated processing of credit card data and a nationwide network of volunteer spotters. You can also include a link on your website where viewers and gas station owners can input the price of gas, getting them actively involved in keeping the data fresh.

‎Typically, a station would show the price for regular unleaded, the name of the gas station, and its address (and cross-street, where available). For example, a station with a channel assignment of "6" may decide to show "6 at the Pump," with a display of the six cheapest places to buy gas:

• $3.96 Speedway: Johnson St NE at Fuller Ave
• $3.97 Shell: Leonard St at I-75, x32B
• $3.97 Amoco: 5781 Wyoming St NW

Tip: You could also create graphical icons for the most common gas brands (Amoco, BP, Shell, etc.) and use those instead of the name.

Configurations

To configure NewsTicker Gas Prices,

1. Launch NewsTicker and click Gas Prices,
2. Clcik Configure at the bottom of the main Gas Prices screen.
3. When the configuration screen appears, click Edit Groups
4. Click Add New Group.
   • A “group” is simply a logical container of one or more cities. Its main benefit is in allowing you to group multiple cities together and find the cheapest place to buy gas in all of those cities combined. You can have several groups, which is useful in a hyphenated market where you have a larger geographic area to cover. For example, in the Flint/Saginaw/Bay City market, you might create three groups, each with various cities surrounding the central city (i.e. Flint and surrounding cities).
5. Begin by entering a display name for the group. Following our example, you might type in “Genesee Co” since Flint is in Genesee County, and click Save.
   • Anytime you are doing initial set-up on a module, be sure to enter everything in Display Name 1. The second field can be used for more advanced displays or as a web link when doing a web export.
6. Now that your group is created, you can add one or more cities into the “Genesee Co” group.
   • Example: We are going to add Flint, as well as two other cities in Genesee County: Clio and Fenton.
7. To the left of the group name, click the Add button (not the Add New Group button at the bottom of the page). Simply enter the city and state abbreviation, such as Flint, MI and click Add. You’ll repeat this process for all three cities within the group, and the overall process for adding more groups.
8. When you’re finished, press Cancel and you’ll go back to the configuration screen.

Next, let’s check to make sure the groups we created are in the order we want them displayed on-air. Click on Edit Display Order from within the Configure screen. You’ll see all of your groups inside a white box that has two arrows next to it. Highlight the group you want to move and use the arrows to move it up or down in the list. Continue this process until the group order is to your liking.

Also on this screen is a drop-down box that allows you to set how many gas stations you want to show for each group. In the above illustration, we have two groups configured with a maximum of five stations per group, for a total of ten stations. Once your configurations have been set, click Save.

Since NewsTicker Gas Prices is automatically updated there is nothing for you to do on a daily basis with this module unless you want to tweak the automated data. From the main Gas Prices screen, click-on the name or location for any gas station. It will open an edit screen that will allow you to modify the station’s name and location. As an example, this would allow you to change “S Dort Hwy between Court St and Robert T Longway Blvd” to “Dort Hwy between Court St and Longway Blvd”. Once you save your edits, it will become part of your “exceptions” file, and whenever that gas station appears in future listings, it will use your manual edits. Certainly with your initial use of the module, you’ll have more exceptions to configure than after you have used it for awhile.

Headlines

(Standard 4-series module)

NewsTicker Headlines, when combined with the functionality provided through filtering in the Broadcast module, gives you unparalleled flexibility to inject any type of text data, quickly and easily, into your runlevels.

Headlines also features an automated feed of national and international headlines. These are written exclusively for ticker displays and are thus designed to stand on their own. The automated headlines feed is prepared around-the-clock by Newsroom Solutions’ experienced staff journalists from our newsroom in the metro-Pittsburgh area.

Before we describe how to configure the module, we’ll look at an example of how you could use it, which should stimulate your thinking about how you can best use Headlines in your own ticker display.

Within Headlines, you can create any number of categories in addition to the national feed that comes to you as part of NewsTicker’s TickerWire service. In this example, we’ll add four categories: State News, Local News, Sports, and Medical News.

To fully comprehend why we are breaking these into categories, you need to understand how a “runlevel” is constructed in NewsTicker’s Broadcast module. A runlevel, also called a playlist, is simply an ordered list of NewsTicker modules that you want to show at a particular time. While you can create as many runlevels as you need, virtually everybody has one named “Morning Show” which loops all of the content you display during your early morning news. When you build the “Morning Show” runlevel, you might configure NewsTicker to display Headlines, then Currents and Forecasts, followed by Sports.

Once Sports is done, it would loop back up to Headlines. If you didn’t take advantage of headline categories, then NewsTicker would simply show all headlines on air before proceeding to Currents.

Through headline categories and broadcast filtering, you have the powerful ability to segment out particular categories, versus all of the headlines at once. With this feature, we can enhance our morning show runlevel to play out like this:

• Headlines - Local News Only Currents
• Headlines - State News Only Forecasts
• Headlines - National News Only Sports
• Headlines - Medical News Only Lottery

After Lottery, the runlevel will start back at the top with Headlines - Local News Only.

To build on this example, we’re going to add our “Sports” category of Headlines into the mix, directly after the Sports module:

• Headlines - Local News Only Currents
• Headlines - State News Only Forecasts
• ‎Headlines - National News Only Sports
• Headlines - Sports Only Headlines - Medical News Only Lottery

Tip: Other examples of popular categories include Amber Alerts, breaking news, lake/surf levels, entertainment headlines, and consumer alerts.

In this example, we would display scores from the Sports module, which may also include game-specific comments like, “Jimmy Smith ran for three touchdowns.” Then, the display would proceed to sports headlines, which would be used for the major sports stories of the day, like “Tiger Woods Wins the U.S. Open.” And, don’t forget you can cut and paste this type of data from your sports wire feed.

Configurations

To create a new category:

1. Go to Headlines.
2. Click Configure.
3. Click the New button next to the word “Categories”.
4. A popup will appear asking for some information.
   • Category Name: This is the label of the category, as you would like it to appear on the main Headlines screen. In some displays, you may wish for it to appear on-air, such as in a tabbed display.
   • Default Air Status: When you create a new headline in this category, if you want the information to be immediately available for air, then leave the setting at Set new headlines to air. If you wish for somebody else to approve the headline first, such as an executive producer, then set it for Do not auto-set headlines to air.
   • Display Lines: This sets the number of lines that will be presented when entering a headline into this category. If you are using crawls, then you will use a value of 1. If you do a dissolve or page-turn display, you may wish to set this to 2 or 3.
   • Max Characters Per Line: This determines how many characters are available for a user to type in a headline. If you leave this blank, NewsTicker will default to 999 characters, which is more than suitable for a crawl. If you’re using a page turn display, you’re going to have to worry about setting this field length too long and subsequently your headline is going to be truncated, or compressed too small by our “scale to fit” feature. You may want to count characters for an approximate “fit.”

You will follow this same process for creating all of your categories.

The configuration screen will present each category in order, which is the same order they will appear on the data entry screen. To change the order, such as putting a breaking news category at the top, left-click and hold the dark purple drag handle on the far left of the category, and re-position it by dragging it.

The icon will delete the category and the icon will add a new category below the current one.

Clicking on the name of the category allows you to edit its properties – the same things you set when creating the category. Finally, the checkbox indicates whether headlines in that category are automatically flagged for air, or not.

‎Breaking News Category Once you’ve created a category to enter breaking news into, you should select it here. By doing this, a “Breaking News” link will appear on the main menu, at the very top, giving you the fastest access possible for getting breaking news on the air. Note that clicking on the “Breaking News” link takes you directly into the Headlines module, but only makes the designated breaking news category visible. You could alternatively click on “Headlines” and type your information into the breaking news category.

Tip: You can name the breaking news category anything that matches your brand, such as “Happening Now” or “Developing Story”.

Entering headline data

When you open the Headlines module from the main menu, you’ll see the categories you created. To add a headline, click  in the category of your choice and a text box will open. The number of boxes in which to enter your headline will match the Display Lines setting you used when you configured the category.

As you type, you’ll see the number of characters remaining until you reach the margin limit you set. When you’re finished, click Save and the spell checker will launch. Make any necessary corrections and the spell checker will close and save your headline.

When entering a headline into a category set for only one display line (i.e. a crawl), you can enter more than one headline at a time in a single headline box. You do this by entering each headline on a separate line like this:

Tip: When writing headlines, you don’t want the text to be too short or you risk alienating your audience by not giving them enough context and degrading your on-air look with several crawl separators on screen at once. You also don’t want them too long where viewers have a hard time keeping up.

You are usually best to break a longer headline into a couple, medium- lengthed headlines, that complete a thought when shown together.

When you click Save, the spellchecker will handle all three headlines at once, then NewsTicker will separate them into three boxes with a headline in each one:

When airing a crawl, a graphical separator is typically used between each item within a category.

After you’ve created a few headlines in each category, you can drag and drop then within a category, or even drop them into another category. Place your cursor on the dark purple grab handle to the left of the trash can. You will get a four-way “move arrow.” Simply hold down the left mouse button, drag the headline to where you need it, and let go of the mouse button. Once dropped, the new position is automatically saved. Drag and drop is a great way to prioritize your headlines.

Just like when you created the categories, the icon will delete the headline and the icon will insert a new headline below the current one.

Under each category there is a Delete Headlines link. Clicking on the text will delete all headlines in that category.

The last element of the Headlines module is to the right of each headline. There is a small checkbox that can be toggled. If the box is checked, the item will go to air. If the box is unchecked, it will not be sent to the broadcast engine. This is most used when one person is responsible for entering headlines, and a second person is responsible for approving them prior to air. To use this feature, set the Default Air Status within the category configuration screen to Do not auto-set headlines to air. From that point forward, all new headlines entered into that category will be unchecked, allowing a supervisor to selectively check those they wish to air.

Lottery

(Standard 2-series module)

NewsTicker Lottery is an easy and convenient way to publish lottery results in your ticker. Results are fed automatically via TickerWire so that you don’t need to enter them manually.

Tip: In your LOGIC file, you can limit which games get shown to only those with recent results. This prevents games that aren’t drawn daily from constantly showing in your display.

‎Configurations

When your system is installed, it will be configured with the games relevant to your market. At this time, only NewsTicker Support can add or remove games.

From within Lottery, click Configure. The first set of options allow you to change the display name of the lottery game. This is the way in which the game will appear.

The second set of options lets you define the order in which the games will appear on air.

The final option is to set the character used between each number in the results set. By default, this is a hyphen. If the three winning numbers in a particular game are “2”, “5” and “9”, a hyphen delimiter would present the results on-air as 2-5-9.

Entering lottery data

Lottery results are fed regularly from Newsroom’s TickerWire service. Typically, numbers are received within an hour of the game’s drawing. However, you may have a need to display the results more quickly, such as within minutes of the drawing.

To enter results, simply type them into the main Lottery screen and press Save.

SevereWx

(Optional 4-series module)

SevereWx is an optional module for automating the display of severe weather information on-air and on the web. It is integrated with the rest of the NewsTicker platform, allowing you to show severe weather data alongside content from other modules.

Due to the complexity of the module, dedicated documentation is available. Consult the SevereWx User Guide for complete details.

Ski

(Standard 2-series module)

NewsTicker Ski is a unique and highly sponsorable module to provide ski enthusiasts with conditions from area ski resorts. Information is updated automatically taking the work out of maintaining it.

The following data is available for each resort:

• New snow in the last 24-hours (in inches)
• Base depth and top depth (in inches)
• Number and percentage of lifts open, and number of runs open
• Kilometers of cross country trails open

Configurations

From the main Ski page, click Configure, followed by Edit Ski Areas. A dropdown box is presented with each US state and Canadian province. Select the state or province you are interested in, and click View. The resulting screen provides a listing of all resorts in that region for which we feed data. Simply select the resort, edit its on-air display name if desired, and press Save. You will be returned to the Edit Ski Areas screen where you can add another resort, remove it from your list, or re- edit its display name.

Once you have selected all of the resorts you wish to track, click Configure > Edit Display Order. Here, you are presented the familiar NewsTicker interface for determining the order in which the resorts should appear on air. Select the order and click Save.

Entering ski data

As you add new resorts, they will appear on the main Ski page. The most recent data available for the resort will also appear. If you are adding new ski areas during the off season, the updated timestamp will be old.

During the ski season, the data will be updated automatically each morning.

If you wish to manually update the data, simply click on its name from the main Ski screen, update the fields, and press Save.

Sports

Standard 4-series module

NewsTicker Sports is designed to meet the needs of demanding sports departments. You have complete control over which leagues and teams within leagues are shown. In addition to automated game data fed by Newsroom’s TickerWire, you can create your own local leagues, such as high school. You can even pre-load local schedules and enter game notes.

Configurations

Begin by clicking Configure from the main Sports screen. You’ll see a list of leagues currently configured. If this is a new installation, then it is likely configured with those leagues fed automatically through TickerWire, Newsroom’s data service.

Proceed by clicking CFB. On the next screen are the various options for the league, starting with League Information. Clicking on the league name (CFB) from within the League Information section will open an edit screen.

• League Name: There are three text boxes for you to enter the name of the league. Most stations will only need to enter a value into League Name 1, but others are provided if you wish to display an alternate name in different runlevels or on your website (such as College Football on your website, but CFB in your on-air ticker.)
• Autofill status on game edit: By default, when you manually enter a score for a scheduled game, such as when a local high school calls with their results on game night, you would enter the score of each team and select a status. If schools only ever calls when the game is over, the status is likely always going to be Final. This feature allows you to pick which status, if any, to set as the default when you edit a game so that you don’t have to repeatedly choose Final for every game you enter. It does not apply to game updates fed via TickerWire.
• Flag newly fed teams as visible: If the league you are editing is one where schedules and scores are fed by TickerWire, then this option will be present. As new teams are added automatically into the database, this option determines whether or not the visibility flag is checked for the teams. If it’s a league where you typically show all teams by default, you’ll want this to be Yes. If it’s a league where you have hand selected those teams you want to air, then you’ll likely want this to be No.
• Team rankings source: There are three leagues for which TickerWire can feed team rankings: CFB, CBB, and CBB-W. For those leagues, a dropdown box is presented allowing you to specify if you want to use the rankings fed by TickerWire and, if so, which source.
• Show or hide this league: This option allows you to make the entire league invisible. It is different than deleting the league as all of your settings, teams and statuses remain in the system, however no games will appear for the league. At any time, you can show the league again and all of your settings will be re-activated.

Within the Edit League Details screen, the next section is the team listing. Whenever a game is shown from this league, it pulls in display preferences about each team from this listing. This allows you to do things once, like abbreviate longer team names, and have them always appear the same way every time they play.

To edit a team, simply click on its name.

• Team Name: Just like with the league name, the team also has up to three text boxes so that you may be selective with what airs. For those teams fed via TickerWire, you’ll find Team Name 1 is set as the location portion of the team name (Alabama), Team Name 2 is set as a unique abbreviation (ALA), and Team Name 3 is the conference or division (SEC). This isn’t a required use of these fields – they are there as a time-saver for you if you plan on grouping your teams by division or showing abbreviations.
• Rank: The rank field is where you would enter the rank for the team. Any numeric (up to 255) is permitted. Uniqueness is not enforced, so two teams tied for third place could have a value of 3.

Tip: In NCAA leagues, there are hundreds of teams. To only show those games relevant to your market, simply toggle the VIS of the teams to limit which games will appear.

• ‎Visibility: This checkbox allows you to hide a team. Typically, NewsTicker will only show a game if at least one team has their Visibility checkbox toggled on. If you don’t ever wish to show a particular team except for when it plays a team you do care about, then turn the Visibility checkbox off.

The final section is Status Options. This area deals with the periods or statuses for the league.

• Status Name: Three options are provided for formatting the status name. Most stations will only use Status Name 1.

Final You are free to enter any text you like for a status option. You might use F, Final, or even a graphic (final.tga) to denote the status of “final”. NewsTicker needs to know which statuses represent a final score for the purpose of highlighting the winner in a different color. If the status represents the game is over and a winner is declared, then turn this checkbox on.

When done configuring the league, you can press Cancel to return to the main Configure screen. There, once again, you’ll see all of your leagues.

You can change the order of the leagues by holding down the left mouse button on the left drag-handle and moving the league to a new position. The order you choose will affect the order of games on the main Sports screen, as well as represent the default order when airing.

Create a new league

You may wish to create your own leagues for area high school sports or regional college games. From the main Sports screen, click Configure.

As described in the previous section, you will see all of the leagues currently configured in your system.

Tip: To save time, you can copy one high school league, such as boys basketball, to create another, such as girls basketball. To make a copy, click the icon next to the league you wish to duplicate. All of the league, team and status settings will be copied. Then, you may need to edit the statuses to make them league specific.

‎To create a new league from scratch:

1. Press New at the top of the list.
2. First, you will be prompted to enter a name for the league. We suggest a short abbreviation suitable for air, such as HSFB, HSBB-B, or HSBB-G.
3. Second, you can tell NewsTicker to automatically create statuses for the league to save time. You have the following options:
   • Finals: Only This option will only add F (final), F/OT (final after overtime), F/OT2 (final after double overtime), PPD (postponed) and SUS (suspended). These are added by default to all of the other options below (except for baseball which will not include F/OT or F/OT2.)
   • Baseball (Top/Bot): This will add 12 innings, separating the top and bottom. For example, Top 1, Bot 1, Top 2, Bot 2, etc. In addition, there is DLYD (delayed), and final after extra innings (F/10, F/11, F/12).
   • Baseball (No Top/Bot): This is similar to the previous option, except innings are specified irrespective of top and bottom. For example, 1, 2, 3, etc.
   • Basketball (Qtrs), Football (Qtrs): Both of these options will add four quarters and a half (1, 2, Half, 3, 4), as well as two overtime periods (OT 1, OT 2).
   • Basketball (Halves), Football (Halves), Soccer: These three options will add two halves (1, Half, 2) and two overtime periods (OT 1, OT 2).
   • Hockey: This option adds three periods (1, 2, 3) and two overtime periods (OT 1, OT 2). If you wish to designate shoot-out periods, you will need to add those yourself.

Of course, you can always edit the list once you create the league. This option simply speeds up your setup time so that you don’t need to enter as many by hand.

Entering game schedules

Schedules for all leagues fed via TickerWire will be fed each morning into NewsTicker. This usually occurs between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM Eastern time. These games will appear in the main Sports screen.

Tip: While you can enter team names into the alternate fields instead of selecting them from the dropdown boxes, you’ll reduce spelling mistakes and issues with long team names if you pre- configure them in Edit Teams.

‎Schedules for all non-fed games must be entered manually. While you can wait until the day of the game to enter these match-ups, a powerful feature of NewsTicker Sports is the ability to pre-load schedules. So, a summer intern could enter the match-ups for all high school football games to be played that fall. Then, on the day of the game, the schedule for that night will appear automatically.

From the main Sports screen,

1. Click Edit Schedules.
2. Select the league you wish to add games to.
3. Click Add Games.
4. The Add New Scheduled Game screen will appear.
5. Enter the date and time of the game and select the teams from the dropdown boxes. These are the teams you configured for the league. If you have not configured either of the teams you are entering, then enter the name into the Alternate Team Name field.
6. When done, click Save (or Save and Add Another).

To edit previously entered schedules:

1. Go to Edit Schedules > Edit Schedules.
2. Search for the game you wish to change.

Entering scores

On game day, all of the leagues fed by TickerWire will update automatically as the score changes. Scheduled games you entered manually will also appear allowing you to update the score.

To enter a score:

1. Click on the game you wish to update.
2. Enter the score.
3. Set a status.
4. Press Save.

Note: If you have configured the league with the Autofill status on game edit feature, then the status will already be defaulted to that selection.

Often, on a busy game night, there may be so many games in the list that it would be difficult to quickly find the game you wish to edit. In this case, you can use the “Go To” feature on the top of the main Sports page. In the text box, simply start typing the name of either the home or visiting team. As you type, a list will be presented of games being played that day. Arrow down to the game you wish to edit. Once it is highlighted, press Enter to edit the game.

Finally, if you want to enter a score for a game that doesn’t yet exist, click Add Game from the bottom of the main Sports menu. Or, if the league for which you are adding a game already has games, you can click New next to the league name on the main Sports menu. Note that this should not be used to enter scheduled games – only to create a new game and enter a score at the same time.

Entering game/team notes

You can add comments to any game by clicking the icon next to the game. A dialog will appear with three text boxes: Game Notes, Visiting Team Notes and Home Team Notes. How (and whether) these appear on air is based on your specific template and LOGIC files, so confirm your configuration with your NewsTicker Super User.

The notes editor allows you to separate your comments into general game notes versus team-specific notes – useful if your on-air look displays the team name next to the notes. Multiple notes in a category are delimited by pressing Enter, as shown below.

Like all of NewsTicker, any information you enter into the Sports module is refreshed automatically on air, allowing you to update a continuous display that may appear on a digital sub-channel, or be exported to your website.

Terrorism

(Standard 2-series module)

The Terrorism module is for reporting the National Terrorism Threat Level in your ticker or bug.

Tip: In your LOGIC file, you can configure the threat level to only appear if it is high or severe, or only for a period of time after it has changed from one level to another.

‎Configurations

The Homeland Security Advisory System consists of five levels: low, guarded, elevated, high and severe. In the Configure screen, you can assign a textual description to each level. If using the terrorism level in a crawl, the text could be used to provide context for the level.

The broadcast engine already knows the official color mapping for each condition:

• LowGreen
• GuardedBlue
• ElevatedYellow
• HighOrange
• SevereRed

While you can manually change the level, it is also fed automatically via Newsroom’s TickerWire service.

Globals

(Standard 2-series module)

Globals are special values that, as the name suggests, can be referred to easily in any LOGIC file. You can use them to create promo lines, set sponsor logos, or to simply choose which background to use. Based on your LOGIC files, you may never have a need for globals, however they are available as another tool to the LOGIC programmer.

Typically, you would set the Description of a global to an internal reference that tells you what the global is. The Value is what you would actually use in your LOGIC file.

You can set the number of globals and the length of the Value field from within the Configure screen.