And Now for Something Completely Different

[SirRoxalot]

I tuned in Q107 in Toronto for the first time in a month, and heard them promoting that no stopset is more than 2 minutes long. I also noticed that they run a LOT of stopsets.

So, how is this new approach with shorter, but more frequent stopsets going to fare with the listeners? Will we see this approach emulated at other stations in Canada & the US in the near future?

I'm sure some of our local programmers will be keeping an eye on the ratings results.

 

[SpareChange]

But Sirius-ly, Folks

I tuned in Q107 in Toronto for the first time in a month, and heard them promoting that no stopset is more than 2 minutes long. I also noticed that they run a LOT of stopsets.

So, how is this new approach with shorter, but more frequent stopsets going to fare with the listeners? Will we see this approach emulated at other stations in Canada & the US in the near future?

I'm sure some of our local programmers will be keeping an eye on the ratings results.

This may not portend good things for music based formats. Stop, start, stop, start, stop. While some of us in the business will applaud the fact that seven, eight, nine minute breaks are being done away with by Q-107's novel approach, it's debatable as to what affect this might have on Time Spent Listening.

If, for example, the station runs 16 minutes of commercials, including promos, etc. per hour, that's at least eight stopsets (or breaks.)

Given the length of songs in the Classic Rock format, the average song length (for the sake of this discussion) being four and a half minutes per song, we're talking about ten songs per hour, maximum.

This would mean two song sets, and in some cases, single song sets or less song sets per hour. Already, I'm seeing (hearing) a problem for TSL.

Granted, the big variable is how many minutes of commercials per hour the station plans to run. I've offered up 16 per hour only as an example. In Canada it could be far less, perhaps 12 minutes, which re-shapes the time alotted to music, yet not so significantly, as it allows for only an additional six minutes of music per hour, mean one more cut. Phew! Hope they're not planning to run edited versions of In A Gadda Da Vida on Psychedelic Sunday.

Is this all part of the Canadian version of "Less Is More?" Because if it is, listeners may reject it, prefering (big voice production guy) "thirty minute blocks of non-stop Classic Rock" and the six, seven, eight minute commercial clusters that accompany them.

Half of what we do in radio is illusion and hype, selling the sizzle rather than the steak, positioning, imaging and all that rot, yet shorter, stopsets per hour might just be something that motivates some listeners to check into XM or Sirius.

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Re: But Sirius-ly, Folks

Half of what we do in radio is illusion and hype, selling the sizzle rather than the steak, positioning, imaging and all that rot,

Correct. The best example, from a few years back had to be Toronto's Mix 999 when they used to say "Two half hour music mixes every hour".

 

[Yeziknoradio]

Just found:

http://imgsrv.ilikehank.com/image/DbGraphic/200605/282438.jpg
"Never more than two minutes of commercials"

It's a station broadcasting in Eastern North Carolina. Who had the idea first?
And how are the ratings for that station? (If they've been doing things this way long enough for a book, that is.)

 

[Bob1370]

Frequent short stop-sets (as opposed to the endless ones you hear on many stations now) are a good idea for three formats in particular; CHR (where most of the music cuts are also short, 4 minutes or less), talk, or all-news. Stations with other music formats like classic rock, new rock and AAA (where a lot of the cuts are longer and multi-song sets are expected) are a lot more difficult to execute with limited-length stop sets unless you're just not selling more than 8 or 10 units an hour.

A CHR with limited-length stop-sets will sound like the classic Top 40 stations of the 70s--go to musicradio77.com and listen to vintage WABC airchecks and you'll get the idea. With the right pacing and personalities (like WABC or WKBW had back in the day) it works wonderfully. If the execution's bad, the station will sound like a mess.

 

[Radknowski]

A CHR with limited-length stop-sets will sound like the classic Top 40 stations of the 70s--go to musicradio77.com and listen to vintage WABC airchecks and you'll get the idea. With the right pacing and personalities (like WABC or WKBW had back in the day) it works wonderfully. If the execution's bad, the station will sound like a mess.

Ordinarily, I would agree with you, professor, but not on this count. CHR today is so much different than what happened back in the days of Cousin' Brucie and Jack Armstrong, as talented and highly rated as they and their respective stations were at the time.

Theoretically, CHR might have an easier go of 2 song stopsets + 2 minute stopsets because of song length, but considering who listens and HOW they listen, it's doubtful today's CHR listeners would accept two song sets + two minute stopsets; iPod, CD's, mp3's and all that accounting for alternate sources of entertainment, to say nothing of video games, which are an equally large peril to TSL these days.

Last time I had a book in my hands (which admittedly was a while ago) Kiss' TSL, Person's 18-34, was around 5 hours and holding around 10th place in the Buffalo market. WYRK's TSL in the same demo was around 8 hours and in the top three. In Buffalo, according to people who know better, WYRK often ranks higher than WKSE in share, Persons 18-34, although WKSE out-cumes WYRK. This being the case, I'm not so sure any CHR PD would want to risk changing to "two song sweeps + two minutes stopsets." It would be dangerous.

Even in CHR, it's safer and wiser to play "ten in a row."[/Mike]

 

[MarcB]

For 10 minutes worth a commercials I'd rather hear 5 2 minute breaks than 1 10 minute break. Here in Hartford CBS's hip-hop station (HOT 93.7) plays 18 songs in a row without commercial inturruption (you'll hear short promos for the station), but then once an hour they'll do a 10 minute commerical break. In 10 minutes I can check out every other radio station both FM/AM. I can go to the bathroon, make and eat several sandwiches, and I can walk from my house to the supermarket.

 

[Kent]

For 10 minutes worth a commercials I'd rather hear 5 2 minute breaks than 1 10 minute break. Here in Hartford CBS's hip-hop station (HOT 93.7) plays 18 songs in a row without commercial inturruption (you'll hear short promos for the station), but then once an hour they'll do a 10 minute commerical break. In 10 minutes I can check out every other radio station both FM/AM. I can go to the bathroon, make and eat several sandwiches, and I can walk from my house to the supermarket.

Reminds me of the late 80's when Dallas had Y-95 and Oklahoma City had Z-99, both of which did 25-in-a-row. Their billboards were marked "10-in-a-row" with the "10" X'ed out and "Now 25" handwritten in. Us teenagers would listen to the 25-in-a-row and start flipping the second the songs were over because we knew a string of commercials would follow! Neither station benefitted much from that strategy. In both markets, the competitors did "4-in-a-row, no talk" and only followed by 2 to 2 1/2 minutes of spots. So, "less-is-more" is nowhere near a new strategy! In fact, Z-99's competitor was owned by Clear Channel even then! I suspect the result in Buffalo is about the same.

 

[Cary Pall]

In the mid-70s under Paul Drew, most of the RKO General stations (WRKO, 99X, KFRC, KHJ, etc) ran 10 60 second stopsets per hour. Jocks did really quick sells going in, jingle or quick PSA/weather out, with the song intro used for quick personality bits or phoners. The stopsets went by so fast, it really kept forward momentum going. The Fairbanks stations (WVBF, WNAP) took the same stopset structure but went so far as to roll commercials cold out of song fades with no jock talk or production before the spots. Jim Hilliard's reasoning was that, by the time someone realized a spot was on, it would be over and you'd be back into music. For uptempo formats where sizzle and personality means more to the listener, I would do the RKO or Fairbanks clock again in a heartbeat...provided you could keep to a 10 minute load.

 

[anoldguy]

The Fairbanks stations (WVBF, WNAP) took the same stopset structure but went so far as to roll commercials cold out of song fades with no jock talk or production before the spots.

GEE, WLGZ Legends 990 does that now. But somehow I don't think it is because someone had some great programing idea!

 

[hellno]

A chain of Austrailian CHR stations called Nova have been doing a "never more than 2 ads in a row" for 3 years
or more. They do 5 stopsets an hour. Their ratings have been stellar and TSL is good because if you keep the promise, the audience learns the the breaks are short and stay through.

Granted, Aussie radio may not be littered with signals like some U.S. markets are, but Nova had a concept that they promoted and executed well.