Broadcast lives and dies by the clock: segments have lengths, breaks have hard starts, and the show ends when the schedule says — not when the conversation does. A broadcast timer makes that discipline visible to the people on air, so hitting the out is a glance rather than a producer counting fingers through the glass.
MaestroTimer covers this in the browser. Talent-facing countdowns, a running order of named segments, silent cues from the gallery, and a list of every screen that is actually receiving — on studio hardware you already have.
Segment timing as a running order
A show rundown maps directly onto a room: one timer per segment, each carrying a name, a speaker, and notes.
The structure:
- Fixed segments get countdowns — the interview is eight minutes, and the display says how much of it is left.
- Open segments count up — a phone-in or a developing story shows elapsed time instead of a deadline.
- Linked timers advance the rundown automatically: when the segment ends, the next clock starts.
- A scheduled timer starts at a set time of day — useful for counting down to air, or for a break that must begin exactly on the hour.
What the talent sees
The viewer is a clean fullscreen countdown for any talent-facing screen: the monitor under the camera, a tablet on the radio desk, a display in the voice booth. Open the link, go fullscreen, done.
Wrap-up thresholds do the warning work. As a segment runs down, the display changes its appearance in stages you define — the presenter sees thirty seconds coming without an earpiece call. When a cue needs words, the gallery sends a message and it appears next to the countdown: bold, colored, or flashing, sized to the urgency.
Control from the gallery
The controller view runs on any device in the gallery or control room. Start, pause, and time adjustments propagate to every open screen immediately — the studio, the booth, the producer's own phone.
When the running order changes mid-show, adjust the live timer or re-order what has not aired yet; every display follows. And because the timer runs in the room rather than on any one machine, a screen that reloads reconnects to the current state instead of losing the plot.
The radio case: script and hard breaks
Radio timing is the same discipline with fewer screens: a script segment gets a countdown matched to its read length, a music bed gets its own clock, and the top-of-hour break gets a scheduled timer that starts itself.
One viewer on the desk shows the presenter everything they need; the producer controls it from the next room. For a self-op studio, the presenter keeps the controller open in a second tab and taps between links.
Prove the screens are live before air
The pre-air check is built in: the room's live connections view lists every attached device. If the studio monitor, the booth display, and the gallery screen are on the list, they are receiving — verified from one seat, before the red light.
FAQ
How does talent see time remaining without an earpiece call?
A viewer link on any talent-facing screen shows the countdown, and wrap-up thresholds change its appearance as the segment runs down — the warning is visual and automatic.
Can a break start exactly on the hour?
Yes. Schedule a timer to start at a set time of day and it begins on its own; the displays follow without anyone pressing start.
Does this feed into vMix or OBS for an on-air graphic?
Yes — those tools accept a web page as an input, so the viewer link works as a browser source and the countdown can be part of the program output.
What happens if a studio screen reloads mid-show?
It reconnects and shows the current state. The timer runs in the room, not on the screen, so no single device owns the clock.
Put the clock where the talent looks
MaestroTimer runs in the browser: a running order of named segments, talent-facing countdowns, silent cues from the gallery, and a live list of every connected screen.