ballpark: who has the most commercials locally?

[indieradioguy]

Uber driver yesterday had 94.5 on the radio and I was amazed at how many commercials were on at quarter to 5:00pm - nearly 4-5 minutes worth (no exaggeration.) Really? This is why Pandora and Spotify are household names. For a station as well-run as 94.5, nobody wants to sit through 5 minutes of commercials to hear "Hey Mickey" again. People would rather be waterboarded.

Or am I mistaken? Does 94.5 not have 4-5 minutes worth of spots?

We're crazy about -- er, Sadie's never wrong about -- er, remind me again what spot 94.5 has that is conceiveably entertaining to someone out there?

 

[TheBigA]

Pandora & Spotify run commercials too if you use the free versions. If you want no commercials, it'll cost you.

Radio stations group their commercials so there are fewer interruptions. Most do two breaks an hour, so they're long.

 

[gr8oldies]

Spotify's promos seem to be for the purpose of annoying the listener to sign up for premium.

 

[TheBigA]

Ever count the commercials on TV? If you use it in real time, you get a lot of commercials.

 

[DJ_Perry]

Hands down 94.5. I wanna say they had what seemed like 7 minutes of commercials, came back with 2 songs, right back into commercials

 

[EricStein]

Now, can anyone tell me the reason why The Mountain is telling their listeners to tune into KEZ? I listen to The Mountain to get away from the dreck they play on KEZ.

 

[johndavis]

Now, can anyone tell me the reason why The Mountain is telling their listeners to tune into KEZ? I listen to The Mountain to get away from the dreck they play on KEZ.

Same reason why the classic rock station I jock for runs a promo at the beginning of a stopset saying to tune to our country station. We know we share a chunk of audience, we know we're going to make you punch out the moment the car dealer commercial starts, so we might as well encourage you to punch over to a station we own that isn't in spots right now. Then we have a promo on the country station when their spots begin a few minutes later that prompts you to punch back right as they begin their stopset.

 

[johndavis]

Or am I mistaken? Does 94.5 not have 4-5 minutes worth of spots?

A 4 to 5 minute stopset has been the norm for years. If anything, stations have been cutting commercial loads lately to get back to 4 to 5 minutes of spots per break.

What makes these stopsets seem so damn long is we stopped counting units and started counting minutes. When I was first getting into the biz, it was drilled into my head that people wouldn't sit through more than 4 commercials and we could never play more than 4 units, and we sold :60 spots. Now we stop for 4 minutes, but we're playing :05, :15, :30 spots with the occasional :60 and to me, the break seems longer.

 

[EricStein]

Same reason why the classic rock station I jock for runs a promo at the beginning of a stopset saying to tune to our country station. We know we share a chunk of audience, we know we're going to make you punch out the moment the car dealer commercial starts, so we might as well encourage you to punch over to a station we own that isn't in spots right now. Then we have a promo on the country station when their spots begin a few minutes later that prompts you to punch back right as they begin their stopset.

I would assume The Mountain's audience is 55/45 male skew with all the rock music and KEZ is 75/25 female with all the current pop. But it's not like iHeart has a classic rock station to plug, so why not tell the listeners to "tune to KNIX?"

 

[TheBigA]

Now we stop for 4 minutes, but we're playing :05, :15, :30 spots with the occasional :60 and to me, the break seems longer.

Tests say :60s are viewed as too long. It's all about the short attention span. So yes, there are now more short spots, often repeated within a cluster, to gain impact. Perhaps broken up with a show promo or station imaging.