Running orders in Showhost
Running orders in Showhost makes it easy to get things done and plan your podcast or radio show.
You can build running orders from our range of available building blocks, including speech, songs, production, time markers, ads, news and weather.
📝 Creating a running order
To create a new running order, click the green 'New Running Order' button on the home screen or from the Running Orders page on the main menu.
Running orders can be created and assembled from scratch, or if you have recurring shows that follow a similar structure, you can create a template.
When creating a running order, you will be asked whether it is for a radio show or podcast.
This affects the timing of your show. Radio running orders will start from a planned transmission time, while podcast running orders start from 00:00:00 and build up as more items are added.
Both formats allow you to specify a duration you can use during recording sessions to determine whether you are over or underrunning.
Item types
Once you have created a blank running order or template, you can start populating it by inserting a number of items:
| Speech | Speech blocks can include a title, description, file attachments and planned duration. |
| Song | Song blocks contain space for the song title, artist, description, file attachments and song duration. |
| Production | Production blocks contain a title, description, file attachments and duration. |
| Time Marker | Time markers allow you to specify a point to hit during your show. For example, if you have to run adverts at a certain time into your show, you can input the hours, minutes and seconds in the 'Time' box, and Showhost will tell you if you are over or underrunning in the leadup to it. |
| Ads | Ad blocks contain a title, description, file attachments, and duration. You can use individual blocks for each ad, or if you know you have a 90-second break and don't need to worry about its content, you can create a single ad block with a note of the duration. |
| News | News blocks contain a title, description, attached files and duration. |
| Weather | Weather blocks contain a title, description, attached files and duration. |
| Travel | Travel blocks contain a title, description, attached files and duration. |
Notes can be imported into the description fields of all block types.
📃 Creating templates
Templates allow you to save time by pre-creating most of your running order and just changing the content.
Templates can be created before your individual running orders by going to the Running Order Templates page and pressing the green 'New Template' button.
Alternatively, if you have already created a running order and you want to use it as the basis for a new template, find it on the Running Orders page, click the three dots on the right and choose 'Create Template'. A copy will be created in your available templates.