K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
The math doesn't matter when the avail needs to be filled and there's nothing else to fill it.
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The math doesn't matter when the avail needs to be filled and there's nothing else to fill it.
The key word of that sentence is you MAY hang around. If you're driving in your car, and we tease you with some news you want to hear, after these commercials. And you arrive at your destination. You will not hang around, no matter how good the tease was. No matter how short the break was. That's just the real world. People don't base their lives around what the radio station does.
What you do during a break is your business. You can change the station, turn the radio off, or throw your radio away. I won't know about it. And I can't force you to listen. I have no contract with you. The FCC didn't tell me I have to entertain you. You can go away and sign up with Sirius and never listen to local radio again. But don't be surprised if one day you hear your old station changed formats to something else. Maybe to a format where the listeners don't complain about the spot breaks.
There’s an auto accident injury lawyer named Roderick White with an ad running on KPRS that’s a rap song that’s pretty good. It’s like this video but a rap song:
Hyrum, you simply are not understanding things: radio as we know it is an audio service. As it stands you can hear that audio online, on the phone and on the radio. We go where listeners go. It's not that radio is failing. It is not. Radio is the same audio you hear on other platforms other than a physical radio.
And get off your duff and get to work Hyrum. There's constant pleas to support cancer research. The research has been going on for decades. Why isn't cancer cured yet. You say you are doing research. Let's talk about that and why so little seems to be happening.
And get off your duff and get to work Hyrum. There's constant pleas to support cancer research. The research has been going on for decades. Why isn't cancer cured yet. You say you are doing research. Let's talk about that and why so little seems to be happening.
Commercials, don''t like a zillion in a row. But it's been going on forever. When I worked overnights at a station early/mid 80s, I had to pull all the commercial carts [and PSAs, etc.] for the morning show and the first hour of midday and put them in play order. There was literally a stack 2 feet high by three feet long by the time I was done. Oh, and some of those carts had 3 spots that were "variations on a theme" for same advertisers, just might be worded differently or promote another product instead of the first one played.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And then the morning guy stumbled in and knocked the stack over, right? 🤪
Yes, the station was WAKS (Kiss 96.5) with a couple of dozen spots in a single break. Although almost every station seems to have 10 minute spot breaks these days, but WAKS seems to have the longest. It may have to do with the station's low ratings (1.9 total audience with 175,000 cume) which may indicate a pretty low individual spot rate. Yes, people generally dial away when a spot break starts, but I have dialed away from Kiss, heard a song on Q104, went back to Kiss and they were still playing spots. Then, went to WNCX for one song. Went back to Kiss. Kiss was STILL in spots! Look, I understand how radio revenue works, believe me. But something is wrong here. I eventually gave up and went to my music files which so many young people are doing these days. I can't blame them.
There's no correlation between the length of spot breaks and the ratings. There's also no indication that what you heard was a common occurrence.
There is no factual or statistical basis for that statement. All anecdotal. If that was the case, the advertisers would see it.
"There's no correlation between the length of spot breaks and the ratings."
There certainly is. The higher the ratings, the more you can charge per spot. If you have lower ratings, you have to make up for the lower spot rate by running more spots to make your revenue target.
That's not what you said. You attributed the Kiss 6+ share with the length of commercial breaks. No evidence of that.
Also radio stations don't make up for lower spot rate by running more commercials. That assumes the advertisers don't care about falling ratings.
Radio stations make up for lower spot rate by cutting operating costs.
Spot rate isn't based on 6+ share. It can be based on a lot of things, including access to a hard to reach demographic.
You also haven't addressed when you heard this long break. Does it happen every hour? Every day? When someone said this about a CHR station in Columbus, it only happened once.
There is also supply and demand at work. In the days of yore, when Cleveland was a top market and there were maybe 10 major radio stations, with possible ratings of 15, 20, even 30 shares, only 3 TV stations and a couple of newspapers, the supply of commercial availabilities was much smaller, hence radio could charge a high price for spots, often playing fewer spots at higher cost because they could. Now, with dozens of radio stations, hundreds of TV channels, and an almost infinite choice over the internet plus a market that's half what it was, the supply of advertising choices is far greater while the advertising dollars percentage wise are still much the same. That means proportionally lower spot rates and more spots needed to pay the light bill and other costs which have also risen greatly.
It's still a free market and ultimately the free market will shape the industry.
It's still a free market and ultimately the free market will shape the industry.
If it was that easy, they wouldn't be laying off staff or looking to non-broadcast things for revenue.
The exception is for political ads - stations make up for political ads getting the lowest spot rate by running a lot of them.
Political Rates are by law to the be lowest rate charged for any advertiser purchasing a similar or identical schedule. Most of us in radio hate political times because it takes up inventory when most slots are already filled. And political ads are generally not well liked by listeners.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And it may surprise a lot of people to know that under those regulations, a station can simply opt not to accept political advertising.
Of course. But if the cume is any indication of the overall popularity of a station, KISS is way underperforming what the sole, straight CHR station in a market this size should be doing. It does not help that the young demo which they are trying to reach has pretty much abandoned radio.
Heard at least three times on Kiss. Midday and afternoon drive. Also, more than one break had the same spot repeated over again in the same spot break. It seems to me that there is no consideration for avoiding annoying the listener in their quest to make their financials.
You keep changing the subject. I wouldn't use cume as indicative of anything. Advertisers don't.
Comparatively speaking, cume for Kiss in Cleveland is pretty similar to what it is for Kiss in Cincinnati.
When you say midday, do you mean Seacrest? Because he has hard commercial breaks laid out in the show format. It's likely afternoon drive (which is local) is doing make-goods of spots for all of the national shows they run.
Is it a national spot or a local spot? If its national, they have no control over repeats.
CHR is a format based on repetition. They play their heavies at least once every 2 hours. So the listeners are used to repetition.
And if, as you said, everyone tunes out at the breaks, what difference does it make? If they aren't listening, they're not annoyed.
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Again, if the complaint is about commercials and the quantity of them, anybody saying people are not listening is simply telling a lie. If people were not listening as claimed by some posters, the advertisers would not get results required to continue to buy commercials. And said station would be commercial free because nobody listens and advertisers get no results from their commercials. At that point: bankruptcy, go silent or an abrupt format change if they have the money to do so.
That is not how it works. Stations with lower ratings do not have higher commercial loads than better rated stations. In fact, those with considerably lower ratings tend to have less commercials.
Lower rated stations just control expenses. Usually, they are part of a cluster and all the station in the group "average out". The lower rated stations will have different revenue goals than the higher rated ones.
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