Breaks, and why times move

The most common confusion in this system, and it is not a fault.

A break time is a label, not a promise

Automation clocks are sequences, not timetables. A break happens whenever the songs before it finish, so its real air time drifts by minutes from hour to hour.

The minute shown against a break is how Cartwright and the automation agree on which break a spot belongs in. It names the break; it does not predict when it airs.

Measured across five weekday 6 a.m. hours, spots in a :20 stop set aired anywhere from :00.8 to :40.0. So a spot logged at 20 past that airs at 29 past has not gone wrong.

The morning show is different

Different hours can take different break windows. At one station, the morning show took :07-:14 and :20-:28, while every other hour took :18-:24 and :37-:44.

That matters because a spot written at :40 into a morning hour merges nowhere — silently, in the best daypart the station has. Cartwright knows the difference. It is written down here because it looks like a bug when somebody compares two hours by eye.

Your streaming provider's time is not yours

If your stream carries network ads, the provider owns part of every hour, and it is not yours to sell. Cartwright subtracts that time before scheduling. Set it in Settings.

Reserve what the provider is owed, not what it usually takes. It can use its full time whenever it wants.

At one station, Live365 was owed two 120-second stop sets an hour but filled only 30 to 90 seconds of each. Reserving the measured amount would have oversold every hour by half.

So the full amount is held back. Daily Log counts that time separately from the station's own items and hides those breaks by default, because they can outnumber sold spots ten to one. The totals still count them.

Break order

Inside a break, the order is fixed:

Local spot ← ours, from the traffic log Z-Buffer Network spot ← your streaming provider Rejoiner

Local spots always run before the buffer and the network ads.

Why an hour can run long

Nothing cuts a break short. It is as long as whatever lands in it.

Overfilling does not bounce. The hour runs long, the automation's top-of-hour marker arrives late, and real audio gets pushed off the end.

That is why unplaced spots exist instead of being squeezed in. Under-delivering is a makegood you can settle later. Overfilling takes something off the air.

Reconciliation

After a day airs, Cartwright reads the as-run and matches what played against what was scheduled, allowing for the drift described above.

The allowance comes from measurement, not a guess: in the measured hours, 95 in 100 spots aired within 9 minutes 37 seconds of their logged time.

A spot matched inside that window aired. One outside it is worth a look.