The screen an operator works on and the screen they glance at are different screens with different jobs. The working interface is dense by necessity. The glance screen should carry three or four pieces of information in type you can read standing up.
What it shows
The on-air display is a borderless, always-on-top window intended for a second monitor. It shows the current track, a large countdown to the end of it, a clock, and ID3 artwork where the file carries it.
The countdown is the important part. "Two minutes ten remaining" is the number a presenter needs to plan the next link. Everything else is context.
Remembering where you put it
Window position and size persist in settings — left, top, width and height. Set it up once on the second monitor and it returns there after every restart.
This sounds trivial until you have repositioned a window every morning for a month.
What's Next, separately
A different window answers a different question. The What's Next panel shows up to three upcoming rows with calculated start times, the next clock-wheel event, the next voice-track slot, and encoder status. It refreshes every second.
Notably it reads all of that from the main view model rather than recalculating timings itself. Two components computing start times independently is how they end up disagreeing — and a panel that disagrees with the playlist is worse than no panel.
On-air mode
A related setting worth pairing with these displays. On-Air Mode reduces VU meter updates from 20 Hz to 10 Hz, stretches health checks from two minutes to five, and suspends scrolling marquee animations. A status chip reads ON-AIR MODE.
The trade is deliberate: slightly less visual polish in exchange for headroom on a machine that is currently broadcasting. Marquee animations are exactly the sort of thing that is pleasant in an office and pointless in a studio at 06:00.