Creating a Hierarchy of Dayparts

 

It would be very unwieldy if planners had to navigate through a single, very long list of choosable dayparts and other buyable elements.  So, TView makes it possible to organize your daypart list into a manageable outline.  For example, all broadcast network dayparts might appear on a submenu by themselves, and perhaps separate breakouts for "prime" appear as a further submenu.

 

Suppose that we wish to create an outline that looks like this:

 

That is, we want the "main" dayparts menu to have two items, Broadcast and Syndication.  The "Broadcast" item will lead to a submenu with the items Early Morning, Daytime and Prime.  Daytime is further broken out.

 

To do this in our script, we use the "New Indented" button.  First we create a "Broadcast" entry.  Then, indented under that, we create "Early Morning".  With the "New" button we create "Daytime" at the same level as "Early Morning".  But we again use "New Indented" to create "Dramas" under "Daytime".

 

 

Expanding And Collapsing Dayparts

 

For clarity, you can collapse and expand the list of dayparts as you proceed:

 

 

To collapse or expand all of the entries at once, use these arrows near the bottom of the panel:

 

 

Which Items Will Be Choosable?

 

If you have a script like this,

 

Then "Broadcast", "Daytime", and "Prime" are headers, and "Soaps", "Quiz", and "My Shows" will become the choosable individual items.  "Prime" will not be a choosable item by itself.

 

What if you want to have "My Shows" as an item, but you'd also like to have just plain Prime (all shows) as an item?  You could do it this way:

 

In this example, the line "All Shows" would carry no additional definitions. That is, it would make available everything in prime.  The line "My Shows" would just be your selection of programs.

 

Or, you could accomplish the same goal this way:

 

"Prime - All Shows" would be defined just by day and time, while "Prime - My Shows" would be defined by day and time and with a list of desired programs.

 

 

 

Definitions Combine Across Levels

 

Here's a major reason for the "tree" pattern:  It makes things much simpler!

 

The complete definition for an element consists of the definition shown on the specific line, plus the definitions at all higher levels on the outline. Any definitions you give to the headers automatically also apply to all of its detail items.

 

This lets you have something like this:

 

 

That detail line for documentaries does NOT have to have a definition for the group (Cable) nor the network (Discovery).  The line already has those implicit definitions, inherited from the header lines.

 

It is a real time-saver, and it's much clearer, to attach a definition to a header only when it is to apply to a whole such set of detail lines.