Millisecond breaks between ads are not friendly, they're disturbing

Seems to me they copied it from the rapid-fire commercial spacing of TV.

And they wonder why everyone mutes the ads, if they don't already have a DVR to skip them completely. There is one advertiser in this market, Faricy Jeep Chrysler in Colorado Springs, who always puts a half second dissolve to black in their TV ads. You might still hear the last wee bit of the V?O track, but hey, it's a start.

Back to radio, it's just another excuse to flip channels or just turn the dam thing off.

I think this is largely a product of computer automation, rather than one format copying another.

Back when TV and radio commercials were played from tape transport machines and run by humans, things were somewhat less hectic (at least from the viewer's perspective). TV commercials tended to end with more silent video, giving the control operator more time to roll the next machine and switch over to it. Everyone tried to time things accurately, but it was nowhere near as tight as it is now with computers. In radio, when we were all live, some commercials might be longer than others, and they were switched by hand... probably making the overall sound more relaxed.

TV automation can easily dissolve or switch between spots by merely counting down the time allotted to each of them. If they're not done when the clock hits zero, they're playing to themselves.

In radio, production people have to time their audio files or place switching cues so that any number of them, put back to back, will not go over the total time allotted to the commercial break window. That's important with satellite-delivered programming, because the host on one side of the country doesn't know (or care) if you're on time at your place.

All of this stuff is based on very specific file lengths or switched very accurately by computers, so an advertiser can absolutely get in the very last word available to him.

It's still possible for a station to control flow, to a point. Years ago, you might hear as much as one second (or more) of silence between commercials (or songs) on a beautiful music station, while a top-40 station would do its best to overlap everything. Technology gives a station the ability to do pretty much anything it wants.... if it matters to it.

Like Grounded Grid said, one thing to keep in mind is that with satellite shows and with automation you want stuff to run on time, at the right time, and also at the right length, so you don't have overlap. You also don't want dead air, 'cause that is considered bad radio.

You also don't want spots to run on top of the opening bars of the program, or for a spots to run on top of the beginning of the next spot, etc.

This is because people are paying for them to play on the air, and they want them audible. And they don't feel good paying for a commercial that either cuts off or has something running over the top of the beginning or end of it. So everything is timed fairly precise to keep glitches from happening.

This brings to mind the hassle it sometimes was to make commercials air ready. Where I worked, we'd get the commercials for satellite shows via MP2 or MP3 from some production facility back east somewhere.

Sometimes we'd get one minute spots that clocked in at 64 seconds or so. And some would be as short as 55 seconds. A thirty second ad should be 30 seconds, right? Wrong. Sometimes they were 24 seconds, or 34 seconds.

So what you do is open it in your digital workstation program, and 'time stretch' or 'time scrunch' the spot, to make it the right length. If you were lucky, maybe the spot was just spoken word, with no music bed, and you could just space out a few of the phrases or cut bits of silence to make them fit, and it would sound better than time scrunching.

Still miss my splicing block, razor blades and grease pencils.

Well... I still have them, but there's not much use for that stuff anymore!

Where I grew up, space between things was called "dead air." So you want dead air? Listen to Sirius. They let the songs fade completely to black before they speak.

Grounded Grid said:

Still miss my splicing block, razor blades and grease pencils.

Well... I still have them, but there's not much use for that stuff anymore!

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Not only that, but the days when TV stations ran news, movies, and reruns off of 16mm film. Cueing commercials was usually accomplished by "slugging" the film print at the commercial breaks with a couple feet of blank leader. The engineers could see the cue coming, and when it hit, would change over from projector A with the program film to projector B with the commercials. The timing was rough, but workable.

One local station had a red-white-and-blue coding system. White leader at the beginning of the film meant it was in color and "heads up" (rewound and ready to roll.) Blue was for black and white film (turn off the color signal,) and red always meant the end of the film, "tails up" and needed rewinding.

Another station here ran a daily cartoon show without a host, and used old movie theatre cartoons (Warner and Paramount) which were random lengths, unlike made-for-TV cartoons that were uniformly 5 or 6 or whatever minutes. They cued up the cartoons and the commercials; rolled 'em, and when the station break came up, that last cartoon would be switched off in the middle, no matter what!

JeffM said:

Another station here ran a daily cartoon show without a host, and used old movie theatre cartoons (Warner and Paramount) which were random lengths, unlike made-for-TV cartoons that were uniformly 5 or 6 or whatever minutes.

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Sounds like the old "Fun-O-Rama" show that our Channel 12 ran when I was a kid.

You're probably hearing automation with laid-back voice tracking. But you're probably not going to hear a more 'laid back' style of commercial presentation. Just be glad the station's on the air -- the automation may be one reason it's till on the airwaves.

TheRover said:

Most of my radio listening is not in the car. Most of my radio listening is streamed over the internet. So one station's being on the airwaves means nothing to me. If the station goes in the dumpster, then I'll just select another radio station to stream, with the program I'm looking for. Cut-throat business, isn't it, for the listener, and for the broadcaster!

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Yeah, great idea, until you run out of stations to choose from. (PS: If you're over 12, lay off the Comic Sans...)

TheRover said:

I'm never glad that any station is on the air. It is certain programs, that air on certain stations, that I am glad for.
Most of my radio listening is not in the car. Most of my radio listening is streamed over the internet. So one station's being on the airwaves means nothing to me. If the station goes in the dumpster, then I'll just select another radio station to stream, with the program I'm looking for. Cut-throat business, isn't it, for the listener, and for the broadcaster!

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Perhaps you should just listen to MP3's. Problem immediately solved.

Unless you are trying to meet a network time, it is quite easy to set most automation systems for whatever length of pause or overlap you's like. Maybe it's just sloppy production.....