commercial breaks

Why have they gotten so long?
There are airchecks of WBBM from 1983-85, and the commercial breaks appear to be about 2 minutes. Now, there are only a few markets (Bend, Klamath Falls, and Elmira-Corning) that have breaks of that length. Everyone else has extended to like 6 minutes, and some stations even longer. For example WPOI in Tampa. Sure they run 101 minutes commercial-free, but they follow that up with 10 minutes of nonstop commercials. So, why are the breaks so long today?

Probably your WBBM aircheck from 1985 has 4 or 5 breaks in an hour, and possibly even a newscast. It turns out that listeners like less clutter. Which means no more newscasts on music stations, and almost no one plays more than two breaks per hour.

I do not feel qualified to offer a substantial answer to this but I believe it is because of many factors:

1) Radio stations have proven they can deliver customers, more so than in the prior decades;
2) Radio stations have done a better job selling the medium;
3) The competitive thinking back in the 2 minute break time period was that it was best to run 4 to 6 short breaks an hour;
4) Stations realized it was best to run fewer breaks with more spots when it came to retaining listeners. Most run two breaks an hour now.
5) Radio values have increased over the years. Buyers were willing to pay higher multiples, so not only did number of units increase but so did rates;
6) Most stations run about the same number of minutes they did then. Today its 6 minutes twice an hour instead of say, 6 breaks at two minutes;
7) The advertisers still get the results they need.
8) Radio has always had its seasonal ups and downs, so getting while the getting good is usually the attitude when stations don't use a grid system raise and lower rates based on ratings and/or demand. Radio has been forced to be more creative in selling, so while you might hear no spots late at night in the past, now a few extra bucks can get you on with more impressions in less desired times. Every little bit helps.

Today's competitive media choices dictate the value and quantity more than they ever did. Likewise radio listening has changed dramatically. Today there are many listening choices for just over the air radio, not to mention non-on-air sources. People listen differently than in the early 1980s, so what once worked now doesn't. Incredible amounts of research have and continue to show what works and that advice is usually followed.

I recall one major market station that ran about 15 minutes of commercials and promos at :45. Inside the break you heard a ticking clock between every couple of spots saying another 45 minutes of wall to wall music was coming up, or list a popular song coming up or an opportunity to win. The went to #1 although they were never ouside the top 5 anyway. I tought it would backfire. I was really wrong on that one.

A somewhat related question...do you think that these formats somewhat align all of the breaks in terms of their timing?

Friends have commented to me that every station in town seems to go to commercial break at the same time.
Generally they discover this when the station they are listening to goes to commercial, so they tune to another
station and find....another commercial. And then another.

If they were under joint ownership I could see that being done deliberately. For example iHeart sending all of their
music stations to break at the same time would make sense to capture that listener into commercials. But my
friends claim they find ads running on the stations they don't own as well.

I am guessing that is just a general formatting thing (research showing they should happen at :10 and :40 or somesuch)

It's really not a new thing. FM music stations started doing segues of songs in the 70s. The number of three breaks an hour became widespread in the early 90s. The number of commercials an hour has actually gone down in recent years. There was a time when stations were running 18 minutes of commercials an hour. Now the average is 12. But there's a perception that this is something new, and it's not. A few years ago, some major market stations went from three breaks to two because of PPM. Fewer breaks for fewer interruptions. But they still have to run all the spots. No way around that.

David is right about this and the prior poster has noticed what has happened for many, many years, not just with radio but TV as well. Positioning of commercial breaks is purely dictated on keeping the most listeners.

In recent years in PPM markets breaks have moved to the :15 and :45 area. In the paper diary days, breaks always went in the middle 5 minutes of the quarter hour and those quarter hours were rated by listening habits. There's always more listening in the first and 3rd quarter hours 00 to :15; :30 to :45). Next is :15 to :30 past. Dead last in number of listeners is :45 to :00. So, as for commercials, you filled the :50 break first, the :20 break next, then :35 and if you absolutely had to, the :05.

Now the trend everywhere the ratings count, is a two breaks per hour format: say :12 to :18 and :42 to :48 if you run 12 minutes an hour or :20 and :50 in paper diary markets.

Why is it done? Simply to maximize ratings. Losing one surveyed person to another station can cost you because of the weight each surveyed listener carries against the ratio of number surveyed and market population. The difference can affect the commercial rate and overall income of a station.

This is interesting. I'm not sure where to find airchecks from the 80s where all the commercials are left in so I can count and compare, but there are some interesting answers here. With the research being clear with PPM, is Portland just a weird market? It wouldn't surprise me all that much. KGON, KNRK, KYCH, KFIS likely, and KWJJ are 15 and 45, and KXJM and KKCW end at 19 and 49. Everyone else is top and bottom pretty much, except for KLTH, which runs a longer music set at top of hour.

Another question and some observations:
I was listening to All Things Radio today and they played an aircheck from KITS during its Hot Hits days in 1983. Did this format in general, or this station specificly have a low spot load? The spots in this aircheck were left in, which is a little unusual. It appeared there were two breaks an hour at either 15 and 45 or 20 and 50 (couldn't really tell but one really appeared at 45). In any event, two spots then back to music. Was this low for 1983? I revisited the WBBM airchecks today as I was thinking about this and it appears they ran 3 2-minute breaks per hour, no newscast. That's only 6 minutes of commercials, 9 at the most, couldn't tell whether they were 2 or 3 minutes specificly. Also, I've noticed that my local CHR KPWK, really screws up their clock during the week. Is there any research that says people don't like commercials at certain times?

Hot Hits debuted on KITS in 1983, so they may not have had many advertisers yet. The idea of launching a format commercial free or with fewer spots isn't new.

You might be right about KITS, especially since they'd run the forecast four times an hour, likely out of where breaks were supposed to be. That would still be 8 minutes though, instead of the 12 typically heard today. If my analysis of the clock on WBBM is right, they would usually run 6, though two of their breaks could have been 3 minutes, I don't have an aircheck with spots in it to determine that for sure.

5) Radio values have decreased in recent years.
6) As pointed out elsewhere, number of commercial minutes per hour have gone DOWN
7) Advertisers don't want to be number 5 in a stopset

It also seems odd, at least to me, that separation isn't observed to the extent it once was. I'm not sure how thrilled I'd be to buy a spot for my business, only to have a competitor's spot play in the same set, if not just before or after mine. It seems to happen a lot these days.

Grounded Grid said:

It also seems odd, at least to me, that separation isn't observed to the extent it once was. I'm not sure how thrilled I'd be to buy a spot for my business, only to have a competitor's spot play in the same set, if not just before or after mine. It seems to happen a lot these days.

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Typically, that doesn't happen to local advertisers. The exception might be car dealers in December. What sometimes happens is a station runs some syndicated national spots, and they may not take as much care in scheduling those. But if the in-house salesman sold the spot, he will protect his client. A lot of this is handled in the contract. I also offered clients the opportunity to be the first in a cluster.

I've heard quite a few direct competitors within the same stop set. I will clarify: I don't think Taco Bell and Outback Steakhouse are direct competitors. In fact, I've heard as many as 3 car dealers in a stop set with two back to back. I have heard up to 3 fast food restaurants in a 5 spot stop set.

While I haven't jocked a daily shift in almost 20 years, we always had a no competitors in a stop set policy. If you messed up, you could bet the hotline would ring before the stop set ended. I always thought separation of competitors was a big advantage for radio. In fact I had a Chevy dealer that bought lots of radio because he felt a big newspaper ad was ineffective because no matter what, a competitor shared the page, either the same page or the page next to it.

As I recall, we had a limit of 2 units per hour for a business. The one exception at one station was a fast food restaurant that bought 4 units an hour Midnight to 3 am in a college town to cater to late night studying and the bars closing down. One thing I will say about that college town station, they ran at least 8 units an hour overnights.

One issue we have is when an advertiser buys four spots in an hour that has 3 breaks, thus requiring us to run the spot twice within a cluster. Not much we can do about that except let them know.

That 'twice in a stop set' isn't too bad. I've heard that many times and especially for the casual listener, it sure does make the mind think it had just played as you listen attentively to see if it was the same spot.

I recall one major market station did that frequently. Then again, they were running one stop set an hour with fairly frequent inserts of a ticking clock with an announcement saying you're 'X' minutes away from a 50 minute music sweep.

I always hated 4 breaks an hour and if just felt really awkward to go recorded station promo (usually our biggest promotion or contest), spot, jingle/liner back in to music at about :07 or :08 past the hour. You have to jump back to pre-PPM days for that memory and back when you were hitting buttons on cart machines.

b-turner said:

...I always hated 4 breaks an hour...

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Then you'd have been horrified to work at some of the smaller markets I grew through. The most memorable one had a Christmas season log that frequently ran 21-minute commercial loads. Add national sports and news feeds, local news and weather and the bare minimum of friendly DJ banter, and you had time for about 4 songs an hour. It was terrible radio, but I don't recall many complaints. Everyone else was as busy as we were.

I don't notice it on radio as much as TV, but the same spot playing twice in a break is kind of annoying.