We shouldn’t confuse Master Control with Presentation Control/Playout.
In Australian parlance, Master Control is responsible for links in and out of the station - Is the output of Presentation control going to the transmitters, are the transmitters functioning correctly, is the overseas feed available to Presentation for transmission or recording, is the news vehicle link available and patched to the studio control for the news bulletin, are the incoming video and audio levels on such links set appropriately?
Until the advent of the multi-channel play-out centres, the program/commercial feed at each station was done from what was normally called Presentation Control. The job of the person in that control room was (and still is) usually called a Presentation Coordinator (until the early 80’s they were called Continuity Producers), who worked for the Presentation department (There’s currently a vacancy for a Presentation Coordinator at Seven BCM.) The Pres. department made sure all of the scheduled material was on hand, timed, dubbed/ingested and ready for transmission, and, together with the traffic department who look after the commercial placements, produced the final schedule for the Pres. Coordinators to work from, and translating that schedule into automation playlists.
With the advent of the Multi station, Multi Channel play-out centres some of the duties shifted around a bit, especially where Presentation was outsourced to a different location or company in the case of Mediahub, and there is perhaps more emphasis on getting the scheduling correct, as the Presentation Coordinators had less time to deal with some aspects and more concerned with checking that the multiplicity of playlists are all ticking over correctly, there are no forthcoming issues with missing material, and attending to rolling breaks in live programs, and making necessary timing adjustments.
The term ‘play-out’ derived originally from the salesmen of the Television presentation software. This was originally termed ‘station automation’, but became a little redundant because a) the software started being used to control more than one ‘station’ (channel), and b) Other software started being used to automate other functions of a broadcast facility, e.g. News control room systems such as Ignite. So distinguish that which was being used for the station’s transmission, “Playout” became the vogue. Networks have started using the term as a generic, as it’s less cumbersome than Presentation control-sssss.
Now having said that, Presentation Control/Playout is usually co-located with a facility’s Master control desk, either next door or in some cases a big open room, and the roles naturally interact quite a bit.
That’s generally how it’s done, but, as has been pointed out, there is a wide divergence of procedures between networks, especially since the advent of the multi-playout centres.
BUT, in North America, “Master Control Operator” is the job we would associate with Presentation Coordinator,
and presentation/playout equipment and software is often described, even marketed as “Master Control” mixer etc
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