For local direct, I've seen some jocks and sales staff push back on the clients and suggest they shouldn't make a spot sounds a certain way for a certain reason. My experience was most were receptive and would make recommended changes. Most local clients didn't have the means to run their own research and were usually grateful for the advice, but some were not. In the end, the client wants what he wants, and, especially in smaller markets, no one is going to walk away from a buy.
That has been tried multiple times, and it doesn't work. When you have shorter music sweeps with shorter commercial breaks, the usual response from the listener is something to the effect of, "You do nothing but play commercials." Around 2006 or '07, Clear Channel embarked on a program called "Less Is More." It cut the maximum length of a spot from one minute to 30 seconds as well as offered 10 and 15 second buys and exclusive hours. The total number of units per hour was never higher than it was under the previous schedule, and the total time spent on commercials per hour was never more than what it previously was. Listeners had the exact opposite perception. The average listener thought the spot load had gone way up and hated it. Advertisers hated it, too. I don't think it even lasted a year.
I'm not sure what the average is, but that number is based on the number of people listening in an average quarter hour. I've worked for stations that sold one minute spots for $200 a pop and others that sold them for $35 each. While we always had some spots on trade/barter, we generally didn't give bonus spots away during local programming. If we had to fill time during syndication or satellite programming, we had little choice but to give away the airtime we couldn't sell. It might or might not be typical, but my experience was that the stations with $200 spots were less likely to trade out services, like coffee and filtered water, than the stations with $35 spots. The stations with syndicated programming, like Delilah, had no choice but to offer a few barter spots during prime listening hours. Imaging and leases on station vehicles were often traded out, too, and at least some of those spots had to air from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, though you could sometimes negotiate a wider schedule for the barter.
Radio has always been the cheap medium. With rates at newspapers and TV stations going down, radio has not kept up with its rates compared to 20 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Simply put, it can't. I don't know if that answers your question, but I don't see many stations underpricing their airtime. They're charging the most they can get for those spots. It's just not what it used to be.
