AI Training — Marlon Davids

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Lesson 1

Copilot in Excel

Work with your broadcast schedule in plain English — finding, counting, analysing, and making decisions faster.

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Finding things

Pull specific information out of the file — the same lookups that currently require scrolling.

Watch — Steven shows

What’s in the Saturday 18H00 slot?

Prompt

List all titles scheduled in the Saturday 18H00 slot for August.

For each title show: air date, title, and distributor.

Use only the Saturday sheet.

Sort by air date.

What you’ll see

5 titles — the Fast & Furious franchise, every Saturday 1–29 August, all UNIVERSAL.

Copilot reads the entire sheet instantly — no scrolling, no scanning.

Notes

Do this together

Show me all titles from Open News

Type this into Copilot

List all titles in this schedule where the distributor is Open News.

Show: title, day of week, time slot, and air date.

Use all sheets.

Sort alphabetically by title.

What you’ll see

Over 35 titles — Open News is the backbone of daytime and secondary slots across the month.

Copilot reads across all 7 sheets simultaneously — that would take several minutes manually.

Notes

Your turn

List all titles rated 18 or above

Write your prompt

Based on what you’ve just seen, how would you ask Copilot to find all titles with a rating of 18 or above?

A good prompt

Which titles in this schedule have a rating of 18 or higher?

Show: title, rating, day, time slot, and air date.

Use all sheets.

Sort by air date.

What you’ll see

A short list — Born To Raise Hell, Crocodile 2, Accident Man, Badge of Honor.

Useful for compliance checks and scheduling decisions around restricted content.

Notes

Counting & summarising

Ask Copilot to count and group — turning raw data into summary numbers.

Watch — Steven shows

How many titles does each distributor have?

Prompt

Count the number of titles per distributor across the whole schedule.

Show a table: Distributor | Number of Titles.

Count across all sheets and all time slots.

Sort by number of titles, highest first.

What you’ll see

Open News leads by volume. UNIVERSAL has fewer titles but owns the prime Saturday slot.

Your monthly content mix in under 10 seconds.

Notes

Do this together

How many titles air in each time slot?

Type this into Copilot

Count the number of titles scheduled in each time slot across the whole month.

Group by: Daytime, 18H00, and 20H00.

Count across all days.

Show as a simple table.

What you’ll see

A quick picture of how the month is weighted across your three blocks.

Daytime has the highest count. 18H00 and 20H00 are fewer titles but higher audience.

Notes

Your turn

How many unique titles are in the schedule?

Write your prompt

Ask Copilot for a single number — the total count of unique titles across the whole month. Each title should only be counted once.

A good prompt

How many unique titles are scheduled across the entire August schedule?

Count each title once — do not count repeats.

Use all sheets.

Give me the total number only.

What you’ll see

A single number — your total unique content footprint for August.

If you want the full list, follow up: “Now show me all the titles.”

Notes

Analysis

Work that would normally take your team an hour to pull together.

Watch — Steven shows

Cost breakdown by distributor

Prompt

Summarise content cost by distributor for August.

Table format: Distributor | Number of Titles | Total 100% Cost | Average Cost Per Run.

Exclude rows where 100% Cost is zero or blank.

Use all sheets.

Sort by Total 100% Cost, highest first.

What you’ll see

UNIVERSAL tops the list — the F&F festival is ~R843,000 per title across 5 titles.

Open News has the most titles but very low or zero cost — library content.

The kind of table you’d want before a content budget conversation with the CFO.

Notes

Do this together

Which titles have aired most recently?

Type this into Copilot

For each title, show the most recent airdate from the Last TX Date column.

Table format: Title | Last TX Date | Channel.

Parse the channel name from the Last TX Date field — it appears after the time, e.g. “20:00 e.TV”.

Sort by Last TX Date, most recent first.

Use all sheets.

What you’ll see

A table showing which titles had the most recent exposure and on which channel.

Useful before scheduling a repeat — if it just aired on e.TV, you may want to hold it.

Notes

Your turn

Which titles are deepest into their rights cycle?

Write your prompt

The Amort. Pattern column tells you which run a title is on — e.g. “5th Run 20/20/20/20/20” means 5 runs total and this is the last one. Ask Copilot to find which titles have the fewest runs remaining.

A good prompt

For each title, identify which run number it is based on the Amort. Pattern column.

For example, “5th Run 20/20/20/20/20” means this is run 5 of 5 — the last run.

Show: Title | Run Number | Total Runs | Runs Remaining.

Sort by Runs Remaining, lowest first.

Use all sheets.

What you’ll see

Titles on their last run — the rights cycle ends after this airing.

Combined with Workflow 4, this gives the full picture of rights risk.

Notes

Decision support

Answers you probably don’t have visible right now — and that change a scheduling call.

Watch — Steven shows

Which licenses are about to expire?

Prompt

Which titles have License End Dates before 31 December 2026?

Table format: Title | Distributor | License End Date.

Flag any title expiring before 31 October 2026 as URGENT.

Use all sheets.

Sort by License End Date, earliest first.

What you’ll see

Two El Dorado titles (Open News) expire 23 August — while this month is still running.

Born To Raise Hell (Daro) expires 31 August.

The entire Fast & Furious Saturday festival — 5 UNIVERSAL titles — expires 30 September.

If those UNIVERSAL titles aren’t renewed, the Saturday 18H00 slot has nothing locked in from October.

Notes

Do this together

Are any titles airing close to their license end date?

Type this into Copilot

For each title, calculate the number of days between its air date and its License End Date.

Flag any title where the air date is within 30 days of the License End Date.

Show: Title | Air Date | License End Date | Days Until Expiry.

Use all sheets.

Sort by Days Until Expiry, lowest first.

What you’ll see

Titles airing right up against the edge of their rights window — no room for a repeat.

Useful before any scheduling meeting where repeat airings are being considered.

Notes

Your turn

Pull the Monday 20H00 slot for scheduling

Write your prompt

Ask Copilot to extract all Monday 20H00 titles as a clean table with the exact fields your scheduler needs for BTS entry — and flag anything airing close to its license end date.

A good prompt

From the Monday sheet, extract all titles in the 20H00 time slot.

Extract the Run Number from the Amort. Pattern field — e.g. “5th Run” from “5th Run 20/20/20/20/20”.

Format as a clean table.

Flag any title where the air date falls within 14 days of the License End Date.

What you’ll see

5 titles: An American Crime, 5th Passenger, Enemy Within, Gutshot Straight, Out For A Kill.

Each row has exactly the fields needed for BTS — extracted and pre-formatted.

This replaces the step where your scheduler reads across 14 columns and transcribes manually.

Notes

A few tips

If Copilot gives you something unexpected, add one more instruction and run it again — you don’t start over, just continue the conversation.

If a column isn’t reading correctly, name it explicitly — “the License End Date column” not “the date column”.

For any table, follow up with “now sort by X” or “add a column for Y” without rewriting the whole prompt.

If you’re not sure where to start, try: “Summarise this spreadsheet in 5 bullet points.”

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