--- title: Keep broadcast on schedule during a seasonal surge description: Seasonal surges break disconnected workflows. See how centralized media workflow software keeps traffic, production, and promotions on schedule. image: https://vcreativeinc.com/hubfs/blog-cards/broadcast-on-schedule-seasonal-surge.png --- [Skip to Content](https://vcreativeinc.com/insights/broadcast-workflow-seasonal-surge#body) [![vCreative](https://vcreativeinc.com/hubfs/Logos/vcreative-logo.svg "vCreative")](https://vcreativeinc.com/) Toggle Menu - vCreative Products Toggle children for vCreative Products - [vPPO](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vppo) - [vProMedia](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vpromedia) - [vPromotions](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vpromotions) - [vTrade](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vtrade) - [vEP](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vep) - [Endorsements](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/endorsements) - [vTickets](https://vcreativeinc.com/insights/vcreative-vtickets-powered-by-evvnt) - [View All](https://vcreativeinc.com/products) - PromoSuite Products Toggle children for PromoSuite Products - [PromoSuite Next](https://vcreativeinc.com/promosuite-next-vcreative) - [PromoSuite Mail](https://vcreativeinc.com/promosuite-mail-vcreative) - [Insights](https://vcreativeinc.com/insights) - Company Toggle children for Company - [Integrations](https://vcreativeinc.com/integrations) - [Team](https://vcreativeinc.com/company/team) - [Contact Us](https://vcreativeinc.com/contact-us) - [Log In](https://vcreative.net/) [Log In](https://vcreative.net/) - [Schedule a Demo](https://vcreativeinc.com/demo) # News and insights Updates and guidance from vCreative, built for radio, TV and digital operations teams. [Back to all](https://vcreativeinc.com/insights) # How to keep broadcast on schedule during a seasonal surge Seasonal pressure in broadcast arrives all at once. Tighter deadlines, last minute changes, and a flood of campaigns landing in the same two weeks. The teams that stay on schedule are rarely the ones who worked hardest. They are the ones who stopped running production through inboxes and spreadsheets before the rush started. ## Why a surge breaks a manual process At normal volume, the cracks get caught. Somebody notices the approval sitting unread. Somebody remembers the order nobody picked up. During a rush, nobody notices, because the person who would have noticed is buried. A spot approval waiting in an inbox, a production order that never got assigned, a revision that reached the wrong person. At normal volume those are annoyances. During a holiday or event push they turn into revenue you cannot bill. The root cause is that the work lives in too many places. Traffic in one system, production in another, promotions on a spreadsheet, and nobody with a single view of what is due, what is blocked and what is about to miss. ## What it looks like when one person absorbs a spike The most extreme version of this is worth reading, because most surges are a milder version of the same thing. Magic, production director at Radio One Atlanta, spent the start of the pandemic running the production department for a top ten market single handedly. Four brands and several syndication outlets, one person, working from home. His words: *"I was a 1-man band and I couldn't have done it sanely without my friend Vee."* Nothing about that situation was normal. But the mechanism is the same one that hits every station in December: volume goes up, the number of hands does not, and whether that ends in missed spots depends almost entirely on whether the work is visible in one place. ## Capacity is the number that matters Most workflow conversations focus on speed. During a surge, the number that actually decides whether you cope is capacity: how much more can this team absorb before something falls. vCreative has modelled that. Cyndi Bass, product manager for [vProMedia](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vpromedia), says a properly implemented station can expect production capacity up 10 to 20 percent on the same headcount, coordination effort down 25 to 40 percent, and turnaround 20 to 30 percent faster. Those are expectations rather than audited results, but the direction matters: the extra capacity comes from removing admin, not from working faster. Rob King at Opus Broadcasting describes the practical version. Their production turnaround is now same day, and revising or extending a spot is a couple of clicks. ## Orders do not wait for people to get back to a desk One quiet thing that changes during a rush: where orders come from. Rae Rae, who handles production and promotions at Zimmer Broadcasting, points out that their sales team lives on the road. Orders go in from a phone, and she can start work on them immediately rather than waiting for somebody to return to the office and type them up. During a busy week, that gap between the sale and the order existing is time you do not have. ## What to fix before the next one [vPPO](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vppo) covers production orders and approvals from request to air, with the status visible to everyone who needs it. [vPromotions](https://vcreativeinc.com/products/vpromotions) runs contests, prizes and events, including across multiple markets. vProMedia handles multi-platform and TV production. vEP coordinates campaigns across stations. Because they share a platform, a spike does not mean bolting on another tool. The team scales into the volume on the system it already uses every day. ## Do this before the rush, not during it The worst possible time to change how production works is the week it matters most. If you have a busy season coming, look at the bottlenecks now while there is room to fix them. Book a vCreative demo and bring your worst week from last year. We will walk it through the platform and show you where it would have held. ## Frequently asked questions **Why do seasonal surges cause missed spots?** Because the errors that get caught at normal volume stop getting caught. Approvals sit unread, orders go unassigned, and nobody has a single view of what is at risk. The failure is coordination capacity, not effort. **Does workflow software actually add capacity?** The gain comes from removing coordination and rework rather than from people working faster. vCreative's own modelling puts it at 10 to 20 percent more output on the same headcount for a properly implemented station. **What should we fix first before a busy season?** Visibility. If traffic, production and promotions cannot see the same live status, everything else you fix will still depend on somebody noticing. Start there, and start before the volume arrives. Want to share this article? 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