Most automated lighting consoles provide programmers with the ability to assign a priority level to individual playbacks. Just as the name implies, a playback can be given a numeric value that gives it more control than those with a lower numeric value. This can be very useful. A common scenario is to set a high priority for a playback that assigns a group of fixtures to light a podium. When these lights are focused and illuminated on the podium, you generally do not want any other playbacks to override the podium lighting (because usually the person at the podium is the most important). If you suddenly need to trigger an audience ballyhoo, you want to ensure the podium lights stay put. By assigning the podium playback a higher priority than other playbacks, the console will ensure that their programing is never overridden by other playbacks with lower priority. So even if your ballyhoo playback includes the same fixtures that are in the podium playback, the fixtures in the podium playback will always overrule the ballyhoo playback.
—Brad Schiller, “Feeding the Machines,” PLSN, May, 2013
