ANY RESEARCH ON RADIO TUNE-OUT

[sdwulfdawg]

Having worked the radio biz from selling ads to having my own marketing communcations agency I have a bit of experience.

Over the weekend I was driving around and listening to the radio and caught myself changing stations when there was one too many commercials being run back-to-back in a block. Is there any research that has been done on what point do listeners start punching around and looking for another station when their "home" station runs too many commercials? Honestly I got bombarded with so many commercials that I don't recall ONE of them.

(I remember selling radio when a commercial load was 12 per hour max and one of the arguments I used in selling radio ads was that when someone reads a newspaper they are bombarded with different ads, radio offered an "exclusivity" on the listener's attention.)

 

[KOOL Listener Lauren]

I'm fascinated at the depth and detail that radio research can find. It's amazing! From my understanding, that research definitely does include the possibility of finding at what point the commercial load is too much for listeners, etc.

--> http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/SpotLoad_Study_2005.pdf

I found this 22-paged Arbitron/Edison Media Research "Spot Load Study" from 2005, that you might find interesting. Though it's three years old, it can't be too entirely different. It goes into detail as to the spot load, programming, the way they're presented, and a whole lot more. Again, this stuff fascinates me, and I hope the PDF file helps you with your question.

 

[tcsnrayp]

I'm fascinated at the depth and detail that radio research can find. It's amazing! From my understanding, that research definitely does include the possibility of finding at what point the commercial load is too much for listeners, etc.

--> http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/SpotLoad_Study_2005.pdf

I found this 22-paged Arbitron/Edison Media Research "Spot Load Study" from 2005, that you might find interesting. Though it's three years old, it can't be too entirely different. It goes into detail as to the spot load, programming, the way they're presented, and a whole lot more. Again, this stuff fascinates me, and I hope the PDF file helps you with your question.

That study didn't catch fire as it might have for some reason. Reading that the Sales Department would have a license to sell more units. But from the first release the study was flagged as "be careful what you wish for". Some might skim it and think there is no such thing as long stop sets causing tune out. That obviously is not the case.

 

[gr8oldies]

What about the fact that in our consolodated world, often all the stations in town are running their sets at the same time? Used to be stations would try to stop before everyone else, but now if you tune out the commercials you get more commericials.

 

[radiorob2.0]

About ten years ago I worked for a low life company that eventually self destructed with greed. The number 2 (appropriate title for many reasons) guy in the company would boast that if he heard music then we weren't sold out.

Around that time Al Ries and Jack Trout did separate interviews for Radio Ink. Each had the same advice, lower the units per hour and raise the rates. The goal was to put value on the product and emphasis the scarce unit availability. Of course the opposite happened and now we have stopsets almost as long as Hey Jude.