I remember in the early days of FM MPX in the Bay Area (when the FM's played the same material as the AM's) several songs sounded so different on the FM vs AM I wasn't really sure they were, in fact, the same song. It was too long ago now to remember the specific songs but there were more than a few of them. It was like the AM version had complete stanza's missing.....or, it was recorded in the wrong key.
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Broadcasters Face Tough Choice
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
I remember in the early days of FM MPX in the Bay Area (when the FM's played the same material as the AM's) several songs sounded so different on the FM vs AM I wasn't really sure they were, in fact, the same song. It was too long ago now to remember the specific songs but there were more than a few of them. It was like the AM version had complete stanza's missing.....or, it was recorded in the wrong key.
The obvious example was The Doors' "Light My Fire." The record company removed the organ and guitar solos for a 2:52 length, and it became a multi-week #1 on AM Top 40 radio. The FM stations played the album version, which clocked in at over 7 minutes.
There has been little analysis of multiple hour spans, full dayparts, the entire day and the whole week.
All the attention to the PPM has been an exercise in macro programming... minute by minute, get credit for the minutes in the prior or following quarter hour, enhance the TSL via sweeps, and much more.
Nothing about whether those long stopsets, perhaps giving a nice 2 quarter hour credit for the preceding sweep, drive listeners away, keep them from coming back and, most importantly, drive them to new media.
Years of perceptual testing... mostly based on one-on-one (I hate focus groups) interviews... showed a very considerable change in the identification of radio negatives once those long twice an hour stopsets began.
Because that's not how commercial radio is sold.
It gets back to what I said about replacing the :30 spot as the single revenue source for radio. Once you remove that, the entire discussion changes. I've worked in both commercial and non-commercial radio, and there is a lot more discussion about programming for longer TSL in non-com radio.
From the content side, compare the amount of repetition in stories at WTOP vs. WAMU. WAMU works to hold listeners for the day.
Commercial radio is sold based on the listeners to each spot, not the listeners who might hear it if they listened all day, every day.
Back in the 70's Westinghouse was instrumental in taking Arbitron's 7-day cume data (Pulse and Hooper did not do cume at all in the earlier days and when Pulse did, it was a mathematically derived number, not a measured one). They developed the NuMath calculator to optimize reach and frequency scheduling for each station.
The PPM sort of ruined r&f calculations. Yet another major damage to the industry where "we did it because the agencies wanted it".
But programming is not ad sales. That aspect got lost in the PPM world. There is little discussion or research on how much damage to a station and the industry those commercial islands cause. I never quantified the impact, but got lots of one-on-one evidence that the PPM-induced changes in stopsets changed the major objections from ones like "they play too many songs I don't like" and "the announcers talk too much" to "there are too many commercials".
Yet the fact is that total commercial loads did not change. Stations just did fewer and longer stopsets.
Don't you think that non-com is focused on building station loyalty, while commercial radio is focused on the average quarter hour? That is, of course, revenue based in each case.
Yes that's what I said.
You would hope that both wanted to build station loyalty. But once again, that's why I keep bringing up the need for looking beyond the :30 spot. Radio programming will not change as long as that remains the sole revenue source.
Yeah, I would never want to listen to the long version. I've mentioned CCR's "Heard It Through the Grapevine" elsewhere on this site.
On the other hand, if there is one, I'm willing to listen to a long version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". I also prefer "Spooky" by ARS instead of Classics IV and I prefer the long version of "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring.
I don't want to take this thread off the rails but lately I've noticed TV seems to be following radio with more commercial time (either spots or air time).
Specifically, the more numerous 2 minute "interviews" for legal work and home improvements (windows and bath re-do's seem to prevail).
Specifically, the more numerous 2 minute "interviews" for legal work and home improvements (windows and bath re-do's seem to prevail).
Short infomercials?
They seem to max out at about 2 minutes but use the infomercial format.
Rule #1: When the regular advertisers disappear, you replace them with whoever is willing to pay.
I think it was discussed in another thread that there were other similar ads running in the 5 minute range. Even those aren't as bad as the 30 minute ones.
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