Text over image

I've been running a digital signage solution for a non-profit for some time now. In basic terms it was just images on my own server that I'd just update the images as time went on to change dates and things. It worked well but changing those dates often meant going into Photoshop, changing the data, reexporting and then uploading back to the server...  It works, but I then I saw piSignage and I really like the web interface and many of the options for more features but what I'd really like to do is upload a template for some of our events that happen each month and just be able to change the date in a text overlay within piSignage and pull back on the Photoshop requirements.

Unfortunately, I seem to be missing something. Within the playlist I added some text but it never appears on the screen over my image. I changed to a white images to see if maybe it was blending in with a background, no luck there. It'd also be awesome if this could have some CSS styling with it. I'm assuming maybe I need to make a custom layout too but I'm not really sure where I've gone wrong with this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

It'd be awesome to get some of my time back by being able to deploy the dates just from the web app and not in photoshop, plus using piSignage we'd be able to expand our use of digital signage beyond our current use as it'd make more time for me to come up with new ways to use digital signage. Love the work you've with this as well!

Thanks.