Do Stations Care About Spot Conflicts?

[RoddyFreeman]

I was listening to The Bull this morning. Going into a traffic report, they announced that it was coming from "the John Foy Personal Injury Attorney Traffic Center." Immediately after Art's last word of the report, they said, "This report was sponsored by Morgan & Morgan."

I realize that injury attorneys make important contributions to station revenue these days. But somehow, I doubt this would have happened back in the day.

 

[michael hagerty]

I was listening to The Bull this morning. Going into a traffic report, they announced that it was coming from "the John Foy Personal Injury Attorney Traffic Center." Immediately after Art's last word of the report, they said, "This report was sponsored by Morgan & Morgan."

I realize that injury attorneys make important contributions to station revenue these days. But somehow, I doubt this would have happened back in the day.

It wouldn't have.

But "back in the day" is like 25-30 years ago. It's been common for a long time. The answer to the thread title question is clearly no.

 

[HGR1290]

"Back in the day", some stations also had strict limits on how many spots were in a break, and how many spots in an hour. I do not recall the number of spots per break.....but I am reasonably sure it was less than 10-15!

Yes, we had spot isolation in each break. One car dealer per break etc.

 

[TheBigA]

I thought that kind of thing is dealt with in the sales contracts. For example, I just got this from Progressive Insurance:

Please maintain max separation between commercial
airings and between competitive advertisers or
products. Please do not air spots after 8PM.

The contract might not include billboards, just spots.

 

[atthestars]

I was listening to The Bull this morning. Going into a traffic report, they announced that it was coming from "the John Foy Personal Injury Attorney Traffic Center." Immediately after Art's last word of the report, they said, "This report was sponsored by Morgan & Morgan."

I realize that injury attorneys make important contributions to station revenue these days. But somehow, I doubt this would have happened back in the day.

The Morgan & Morgan sponsorship was probably through their traffic provider, while the John Foy would have been station-specific. The station may have known who the traffic sponsor was, but oftentimes they either do not, or aren't paying attention until afterwards when clearing affidavits.

 

[TheBigA]

The Morgan & Morgan sponsorship was probably through their traffic provider, while the John Foy would have been station-specific.

That reminds me that back in the day, there weren't so many people & providers involved. It was all internal. And even then, mistakes happened.

 

[bturner1]

Beautiful Music stations typically were 7 spots an hour: 2 at :15, :30 and :45 plus 1 and headline news at :58. Top 40 was typically 12 per hour: 3 at a time, 4 times an hour.

Pre-Drake format on Top 40, it was 18 minutes an hour: typically 1 song on a row followed by a 60 and a 30. Same went for MOR stations and even country. When more music became a deal, most stations dropped to 12 to 18 commercials an hour, typically 3 at a time 4 to 6 times an hour.

By the 1980s we were running 4 break of 4 spots/promos (if needed).

By the 1980s, it was becoming more common to hear advertising competitors in the same commercial break. It seemed everybody scrapped separating competing advertisers by the early 1990s.

People complain about long commercial breaks but I recall hearing a Houston station promote they only stopped the music for commercials once an hour. They did. It was at 48 minutes past the hour. About every 3 or 4 spots you heard a ticking clock and "back to music in X minutes". They played 12 minutes non-stop. Then 48 minutes of music. Us radio people debated if it was a smart idea. I didn't think it was. Next book the station was way up and began a period of being pretty untouchable in their format. 12 minutes of non-stop commercials (about 18 on average) worked in really big ways for the station.

 

[michael hagerty]

Pre-Drake format on Top 40, it was 18 minutes an hour:

Bill Drake's commerical limit for KHJ was 14 minutes an hour, with no break having more than three elements or lasting more than 70 seconds.

So, you could have a :60 and a :10, two :30s and a :10, or three :10s, but not two :60s, three :30s or seven :10s.

It was easy for Drake to implement that at KHJ in 1965, because the station wasn't doing well in the ratings as an MOR and when he flipped it to Top 40, a lot of sponsors left.

Drake's genius was including in his contract that commercial limits were an element of programming and that he, not the GM or Sales Manager, would have control. When the ratings went up, increasing demand, the commercial limit remained the same and it was the spot rates that increased.

Drake had that clause in his deal for all the RKO stations that followed (KFRC, WRKO, CKLW, WHBQ).

The hourly commercial limit held firm for Drake's tenure at RKO, which ended in May of 1973. The only change was the length of the spot breaks, which went two two minutes and no more than three elements in late 1971. Drake said the change was to accommodate increasing song length by reducing the number of breaks per hour to seven from a potential 12 previously.

 

[RoddyFreeman]

"Back in the day", some stations also had strict limits on how many spots were in a break, and how many spots in an hour. I do not recall the number of spots per break.....but I am reasonably sure it was less than 10-15!

Yes, we had spot isolation in each break. One car dealer per break etc.

There are definitely far more spots per stop set these days, but I'm not sure there's a big difference in the number of spots per hour.

This is ratings driven. Stations found that since listeners switch stations during stop sets, fewer opportunities to switch stations results in higher overall ratings.

This is probably accentuated with the PPM. When PPM was first introduced, I attended an Arbitron seminar. A snippet of a music station was played. As one song faded out and another began, the jock talked about an event over the ramp of the song, and you could see the audience decreasing as he spoke.

I believe the PPM has a lot to do with the overall sound of music stations these days, with very limited jock talk.

 

[RoddyFreeman]

The Morgan & Morgan sponsorship was probably through their traffic provider, while the John Foy would have been station-specific. The station may have known who the traffic sponsor was, but oftentimes they either do not, or aren't paying attention until afterwards when clearing affidavits.

You could be right, but at least here in Atlanta, I used to buy traffic report spots through my regular local iHeart sales rep. Last year, he told me that he's no longer allowed to sell traffic reports, and that I would have to work directly with Total Traffic.

 

[secondchoice]

"Back in the day", some stations also had strict limits on how many spots were in a break, and how many spots in an hour. I do not recall the number of spots per break.....but I am reasonably sure it was less than 10-15!

Yes, we had spot isolation in each break. One car dealer per break etc.

David please correct me if I am wrong but, I sorta remember an FCC limit of 18 minutes an hour back when I started in 1969. You had to sign a "program log" and a transmitter log too that I believe the station had to keep for a few years.

 

[michael hagerty]

David please correct me if I am wrong but, I sorta remember an FCC limit of 18 minutes an hour back when I started in 1969. You had to sign a "program log" and a transmitter log too that I believe the station had to keep for a few years.

That (spot load limit) was an NAB thing, not FCC.
Program and transmitter logs were FCC requirements.

 

[DavidEduardo]

That (spot load limit) was an NAB thing, not FCC.
Program and transmitter logs were FCC requirements.

But... at license renewal time if any hours in any days of the "composite week" exceed 18 minutes, the FCC might open an inquiry or at least send a letter asking "why and how often".

Stations with heavy hours in one of the days would usually explain that the particular day was a peak period for local stores and they had to get everyone one.

"Composite Week". A random selection of a week's worth of days pulled from different months in the three year license renewal term. Required at renewal to show that station was in compliance with promises of news, PSA's and Public Affairs / Other.

 

[bturner1]

The FCC gave a bit of grace on commercial loads depending on the market. We got away with way over 18 minutes as a border town since stations from Mexico were selling spots for tiny amounts (one was 5 cents; one was 15 cents; most in the 50-75 cents). We got a dollar and were happy to get it. Yep, 6 spots between songs and we had to say something after spot 3 to break it up. For us, we demonstrated the rates from across the river and how we could not charge what a typical market could because of it. We noted our commercial load was no more excessive than the stations across the river. They let us slide but we easily hit 30 minutes an hour. I say that because we had network news for 5 minutes at :55 and managed to get in 7 or 8 songs an hour.

Had a friend who was in a Colorado mountain town. Many weeks there was almost no advertising but when summer came around they were easily 30-40 minutes an hour of spots. They explained they were a resort town and almost every dollar was made in a few months.

But you, it was a NAB thing, not FCC rule. Still you had to declare an amount of commercial time in an hour by percentage of the hour. You had to do a minimum of 6% non-entertainment programming on FM and 8% on AM. Nobody dared to do the minimum because a license could be challenged. Most were in the 10-20% range. All that stopped, as I recall, April 1, 1980.

Talk about commercial load. several years back I am coming back from vacation and it's about midnight. I get the last room at the Holiday Inn in Pecos, Texas. With the oil industry it is a 24 hour town. I was behind a oil truck about 40 miles without an option to pass there were so many trucks on that 2 lane highway. Midnight at McDonald's is like the noon lunch run. I get up the next morning to head back and tune in the only station in Pecos. The 8:55am Texas State Network news is just ending. You hear a legal ID and commercials start to play. About a third were for job availabilities. The remainder were for every sort of service a person working in the oil industry would need. The commercial break just doesn't end. It started at 9am and ended about 9:37 or 9:38 when their swap shop began. I had never heard so many commercials back to back. Even listening to 92.1 in Adel, Georgia when all they did was advertise the shops and other services at exit 5, they broke it up with liners, trivia, the weather forecast and such. This was spot after spot without an ID or break for 37 or 38 minutes straight. At one point, Pecos was the fastest growing town in Texas which is saying something given how many people are moving to Texas.

 

[RoddyFreeman]

When I was a kid, our family sometimes went to Atlantic City for vacation. The top station there, WMID/1340, was listenable as you walked across the beach, sometimes interrupted by a radio tuned to WABC.

During the summer, WMID was back-to-back-to-back commercials. They might have played 4 or 5 records an hour and also did a newscast. Yet, people listened.

I was in Atlantic City one time during off-season, however, and WMID played almost no commercials. I wonder how that station handled providing the FCC with a composite week. Maybe their 3-year renewal term ended/started in the winter.

 

[AMRocks]

I worked for WOBM-FM Toms River back in the 80s. I remember being on the air on a Saturday during the day during the summer season and I ran 31 minutes worth of spots. Yes, MINUTES. Most were 30s and 60s back then. 95% local. The carts were color coded for type of business, (brown was furniture stores, red was restaurants, orange was fast food, etc,) had red, yellow and green dots on each for tempo, (never start with a red,) and had the jocks initials on each so no two spots would run back to back with the same voice. It was a struggle to juggle the spots. Computers didn't do that back then. If you were forced to run two car dealers, they were always the first spot in the stopset and last. You could run a restaurant and fast food commercial in the same set, but not next to each other. You were literally doing a break in the middle of the commercial sets. "Coming up, Phil Collins and Madonna. After these messages." Insane. Between the local newscast at the top of the hour (6min, with sponsors, of course) and the heavy spot load, you were lucky to get 4 songs in. And never back to back. Still, the station was top rated (IMHO because of the great local news department) and made gobs of money. Never going happen like that again (and rightly so.)