Scheduling

1
Scheduling
TV Commercial

• Tian He
• Frank Zhi

2
TV Commercial SchedulingBackground

• Commercials traditionally scheduled by hand
• Human error
• Case study NBC network
• Automated scheduling heuristics
• Increased profit

3
SchedulingHeuristic considerations

• Number of commercials bought by a company
• First and last slots in a commercial break highly
  coveted
• Evenly spaced commercials of same type
• Juxtaposition of competitor commercials in same
  break

4
Heuristics

• General MIP Model
• Considers commercial types, number bought,
  commercial and break lengths, client goals
• Enormous runtime!
• ISCI model (integer program)
• Evenly spaced commercials of same type
• Intuitive but has problems
• Network Flow model
• Improves runtime greatly for smaller problems
• Less intuitive

5
General MIP- variables

Takes into account client goals
6
General MIP model

• Client goals
• Product conflict constraints
• Position percentage constraints

7
ISCI model - variables






8
ISCI model IP






The method is simple and intuitive, but for
larger problems becomes overwhelming.
9
ISCI model Colored Balls

• We coded the ISCI model.
• example uses I3, with i13, i22, i34
• IP solves schedule optimally as follows

• I eyeball schedule as follows

10
Conclusion of ISCI problem

• VERY small spacing problems can be done by hand
• Larger scale problems are infeasible by hand and
  require heuristics like the ISCI model

11
Network FlowFormulation - variables

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Network FlowFormulation

• Each commercial type has above network
• Nodes slot spaces
• Arcs f(c,j,k) indicates that a commercial of
  type c is consecutively scheduled in slots j
  and k

13
Conclusion

• Scheduling heuristics much more efficient than
  scheduling by hand on-the-fly
• Important to find heuristics that will solve
  large problems in an acceptable timeframe

14
References

• Bussieck, Michael R. Bollapragada, Srinivas.
  Mallik, Suman. "Scheduling Commercial Videotapes
  in Broadcast Television." Operations Research 52
  (2004) 679-89
• Garbiras, Marc. Bollapragada, Srinivas.
  "Scheduling commercials on Broadcast Television."
  Operations Research 52 (2004) 337-45.