I had WBLS on my car radio last night. I turned the radio on at 7:51pm and they were in the middle of a commercial break. At 8:01pm they finally ended the commercial break and played a song. That means they played more than 10 straight minutes of commercials. WBLS seems to have a lot of these extensive commerical breaks. On another occasion I heard them play 9 straight minutes of commericals. I would think this would make people tune out. It doesn't seem to be quite as bad on other stations.
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Extensive Commercial Breaks
- Thread starter ansky212
- Start date
WBLS is still in bankruptcy, with the new owner closing possibly months away, and reported to have "cash" problems, so they are probably taking in every penny they can.
If they run nine or ten minutes of spots at a time, how many breaks are they taking an hour, and how many minutes out of that hour are spots? There was a time when some competitive music stations limited their commercial load to eight units an hour, and that was whether they were 30s or 60s. The programmers had data showing a spot registered as a "spot" in the listeners minds which unconsciously counted each spot between music and reached for the radio dial if some internal limit was exceeded.
Also, when a station is about to change hands, it may have trade deal obligations and other long-term advertising contract obligations to burn off before closing. In bankruptcy they could just say "tough" but WBLS appears to want to make good on as many of its short term debt, supplier and utility bills as it can, and it is probably making an effort to make good on any trade deal or long term spot contracts it has. It is probably less concerned, at the moment, about offending some listeners with a heavy spot load.
Hello, elephant in the room. Heavy spot loads are a big problem, especially in America where :60s are the norm. And it's not just the quantity but the quality and content. Radio seems willing to run anything for a buck no matter how blatantly fraudulent the product may be, so the breaks end up being a barrage of audio spam in your ears.
Sham products peddled for 10-15 minutes at a time to the lowest common denominator with zero creativity or entertainment value. Do you wonder why younger people say radio sucks?
Sham products peddled for 10-15 minutes at a time to the lowest common denominator with zero creativity or entertainment value. Do you wonder why younger people say radio sucks?
Theater of My Mind said:
Let's look at the "where 60's are the norm" statement. In much of the world, 30's and even 10's and 15's are the norm. So in Mexico, we see the very competitive Mexico City stations running 12 to 14 minutes an hour, made up of about 36 units on the average. Or Argentina, where spots are sold by the second, so a 5-minute stopset could have, easily, 25 units in it.
As to what spots run, keep in mind that stations that accept one kind of pill... let's say an aspirin brand... would be in legal and discrimination trouble if they arbitrarily refused another OTC pill. If you want to refuse alcoholic beverage ads... let's say with a station owned by a religious or faith-based entity... you have to refuse all kinds of such products. In the broadest of terms, if it is legal to sell something, and there is no restriction such as those on cigarette ads, radio can run spots. This comes under the "caveat emptor" aspect of trade.
If you read Consumer Reports regularly, you'd wonder why some legal but massively bad products are allowed to advertise. ;D
+1 Theater...the whippersnappers tell me that radio
is like listening to someone else's MP3/smartphone/etc.
with commercials.
is like listening to someone else's MP3/smartphone/etc.
with commercials.
Here's a surprise from the current front page news on this website.
It is a quote from a recent speech by Clear Channel's CEO Bob Pittman concerning the number of listeners who continue to hang around after a stop set.
Way back in the 60s and after, when radio programmers like Bill Drake in the Top-40 format world, and Jim Schulke in the Beautiful Music formats were trying to hold spot loads to eight-minutes an hour, two-minutes at a time, there was lots of ratings evidence that they were correct in building and keeping an audience by not chasing it with too much spot clutter.
The more clutter you ad, the more people turn you off. You have to wonder if Pittman's 93% retention rate is true with 10-minute spot breaks, or what the retention rate is for Latin American spots sold by the second, and stacked on top of each other in a pile of confusion. As an advertiser, I would be concerned how much about my product any bombarded listener could remember once the all the confusion played out. Big US agencies long ago did too much psychological research to want to invest in any advertising that routinely gets lost in overwhelming crowds and clutter. If you're paying for something, you want to make sure it actually works.
It is a quote from a recent speech by Clear Channel's CEO Bob Pittman concerning the number of listeners who continue to hang around after a stop set.
Way back in the 60s and after, when radio programmers like Bill Drake in the Top-40 format world, and Jim Schulke in the Beautiful Music formats were trying to hold spot loads to eight-minutes an hour, two-minutes at a time, there was lots of ratings evidence that they were correct in building and keeping an audience by not chasing it with too much spot clutter.
The more clutter you ad, the more people turn you off. You have to wonder if Pittman's 93% retention rate is true with 10-minute spot breaks, or what the retention rate is for Latin American spots sold by the second, and stacked on top of each other in a pile of confusion. As an advertiser, I would be concerned how much about my product any bombarded listener could remember once the all the confusion played out. Big US agencies long ago did too much psychological research to want to invest in any advertising that routinely gets lost in overwhelming crowds and clutter. If you're paying for something, you want to make sure it actually works.
It's the typical Golden Goose scenario. If 8-min/hr of commercials is good, certainly 30/hr would be better and, of course, the listeners are stupid and won't notice!
The Golden Goose is still alive on the Internet with a single spot at the beginning of most videos but that's sure to change. If it's a 10-second spot I'll stick around for the video -- more than that and I'll usually click it away unless it's something I really, really want to see.
The Golden Goose is still alive on the Internet with a single spot at the beginning of most videos but that's sure to change. If it's a 10-second spot I'll stick around for the video -- more than that and I'll usually click it away unless it's something I really, really want to see.
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