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Timeslots for producer series are granted through a monthly lottery meeting. About 1/12th of all allocated timeslots expire each month. Also remember that the majority of the 24x7 programming day is available. There is some competition for "choice" timeslots during prime-time. At these meetings, all producers with completed playback applications select a lottery number that determines the order for selecting the available timeslots. Everyone in attendance has the same odds for picking a low lottery number. Often, different producers give different weight to determine which timeslots are best for their shows. Some want a weekday morning, others a weekend afternoon, some wish to compete with the 6 o'clock network news shows, while others prefer the wee hours of Sunday morning, when the Saturday evening partyers get home to unwind from a night at the clubs. The point is there are plenty of timeslots to satisfy a variety of desires.
The lottery system was implemented a few years ago to deal with an apparent problem where veteran producers were grandfathered into their previous timeslots. This keep a strangle-hold on prime timeslots and left little opportunity for new producers.
Your answer may depend on whether you are a veteran or a newby.
On one side of the argument, log-running shows have a good chance of retaining their audience even when changing timeslots. Many veteran producers have told me that although they were first angry to lose their original timeslot, they gained a new audience with their new timeslot as well as retaining most of their established audience. If Access SF got back to announcing timeslot changes, these changes could be pretty painless.
On the other side of the argument, there's a high drop-out rate for a series from a new producer. The producer may not realize how much work is actually involved, and before you know it, they've racked up enough repeats, late tapes, and no shows, to cancel their timeslot. Do that once, and you can get a new timeslot the next month, do that twice (in one 12-month period) and you're suspended from applying for a new timeslot for a year. Even though many producers fail the first time out, some are successful the first time out, and many others learn from their mistakes and are successful on subsequent attempts. There must be opportunity for new shows from new producers.
This isn't meant to be a closed list of ideas for compromise, but just something to open discussion.
Rather than a purely random (and fair) lottery system as we have today, which gives not preference to veteran producers, and rather the purely seniority-based system we once had that left little room for a new show to break onto the schedule, consider given preference to those producers who are most active at Access SF. I propose a weighed preference system (actual weights to be determined), where points are assigned based on active participation;
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