The economics of radio and TV are vastly different. To oversimplify it - in most cases, if a Boston radio station blew an entire overnight's worth of commercials the cost would be minimal since most spots can be rescheduled and those that can't are probably worth between 0 and $20. On TV there are often infomercials scheduled, and those are harder to reschedule since they would likely be displacing another infomercial and revenue would be lost. Even a couple of TV infomercials will generally more than pay the cost of the overnight operator, particularly if they are running multiple stations from a single location.
There are surely other factors involved, but for simplicity's sake, that's a good explanation.
And yes, even with people on duty and watching TV manages to have plenty of screw-ups too, such as the ones some folks have cited here.
There are surely other factors involved, but for simplicity's sake, that's a good explanation.
And yes, even with people on duty and watching TV manages to have plenty of screw-ups too, such as the ones some folks have cited here.
