signage42
Book a demo

How it works

Set up once, it runs through the whole season.

Seven steps from the programme to the screen, and only the first and last are specific to a cultural venue. Once they are set up, nobody touches them again: the programme changes, the screens follow.

Step by step

From the programme to the screen in seven steps

A back-of-house service corridor with an open equipment cabinet, and the lit public foyer visible through a propped fire door at the far end.
  1. 01

    Programme

    Your programme source, polled on a schedule and on demand. A house system with its own export gets a matching adapter.

  2. 02

    Venue

    Each stage or hall arrives as a location, named the way the programme names it: “Main Hall”, “Studio Theatre”, “Studio”.

  3. 03

    Screen

    Screens are bound to the locations they serve. This binding is what makes a layout resolve to this stage. A screen bound to nothing stays empty on purpose.

  4. 04

    Layout

    Zones on a grid: performance detail, rolling week, sponsor strip, media, ticker, clock, live web view. Starter templates cover almost every real request.

  5. 05

    Playlist

    What plays, in what order, for how long. With cut, fade or crossfade, and playlists that contain other playlists.

  6. 06

    Schedule

    When and where: a screen or a whole group, always-on, one-shot, or recurring. Built in plain language.

  7. 07

    Glass

    The player pulls its own schedule, caches everything it needs and plays it, including through a network outage.

Auto-scheduling

Follows every performance. Disappears with every cancellation.

“From ninety minutes before every performance in the Main Hall until curtain, show the entrance panel.”

A performance rule is a template over the whole season. It generates ordinary schedules that can be inspected and previewed, and regenerates them whenever the programme changes. When a performance is cancelled, the schedule it generated is removed with it. The rule is approved, not every single entry.

Rule · Entrance panel, Main Hall

„from 90 minutes before curtain until curtain, for every performance on this stage“

  1. Wed 19:30generated
  2. Thu 19:30generated
  3. Fri 15:00generated
  4. Sun 19:30generatedcancelled → removed
  5. Tue 19:30generated

A performance day

From midnight to the final applause: not a single click

  1. 06:00

    The programme changed overnight

    A recast is entered in the house system. signage42 fetches the current state, and the cast at the stage door is right before anyone is in the office.

  2. 16:00

    A singer falls ill

    The scheduling office changes the cast in one place, in the house system. At the next sync every affected screen shows the new name. Editorial corrections are kept.

  3. 18:00

    The entrance panel switches on

    Ninety minutes before curtain the rule turns on the entrance panel at the Main Hall. At the Studio Theatre the week view keeps playing, because curtain there is at seven.

  4. 18:15

    The venue network drops

    The screens keep playing from their local store. Nothing visible happens in the foyer. Operators see in the overview which devices have stopped checking in.

  5. 20:15

    Interval

    Front-of-house raises the interval notice for the Main Hall in two clicks, or the cue system does it automatically. The notice expires by itself at 20:40.

  6. 00:00

    Midnight

    The performance day rolls over after the final applause, not in the middle of the bows. Then every screen turns to tomorrow on its own. Nobody republishes.

Approval

Four eyes before anything goes on air

Layouts, playlists, schedules and rules go through the same five states. Whether review is required is a per-workspace policy: marketing can move fast in one workspace while the house programme stays under four eyes in another. Every transition is logged with actor, time and comment.

  1. draft
  2. submitted
  3. approved
  4. published
  5. archived

Only “published” reaches a screen.

Your season already exists. Put it on your walls.

A demo takes half an hour and shows signage42 live, from the hall door to the interval notice. Bring the questions of your house.

Book a demoAll features
A foyer in the evening: chandeliers, open hall doors and a panel announcing tomorrow’s performance.