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How many spots should be in a cluster?
- Thread starter Radio Bob
- Start date
This subject keeps getting brought up over and over again, in different places and in different ways. Here's a link to one:
The radio industry has asked the question, and the answer usually is none. People want music for free. They don't want to sit through commercials. When YouTube gives the option of clicking out of a preroll ad, the majority of people click out. That's just one commercial. So it's not a question you ask, because the answer is obvious. No one wants to listen to commercials. Period.
There are some who think if there are more frequent short breaks, it's better than two longer breaks. The research has been done, and the results are about the same. If a person is going to switch out of commercials, they'll do it at the first one, regardless of the length of the break. When PPM started 15 years ago, the research showed clearly that a music station is better doing two long breaks than frequent shorter breaks. That's why it's done.
News and talk is completely different from music. There, they do frequent long breaks. They typically will run more spots in news/talk than music. By a factor of about 40%. That's why news/talk makes so much money. I was listening to WFAN last night and one break had 20 spots.
The number of spots a station runs is based on the costs a station has and the price they get per spot. Take the costs, divide by the amount each spot sells for, and you get the number of spots. What makes it more complicated now is advertisers don't want to buy anything besides morning and afternoon drive. So the money you make then has to cover your costs for the entire day. The other problem is costs keep going up, while spot price remains pretty constant (thanks to competition). Spot price is set by the marketplace. When you have a gap between revenue and expenses, that's what leads to staff cuts.
Historically, the number of spots a music station runs per hour has been pretty consistent: About 12-14 minutes. I have program logs from over 30 years ago that look about the same as they are now. At one point in the early 2000s it got up to 16, but the reaction was negative, so they cut back. I'm sure a lot of posters will give examples of stations that did less. Some did, for various reasons. Some still do. Some do more, but typically it's only for one hour, and they're make-good spots that were missed. There will always be exceptions.
The radio industry has asked the question, and the answer usually is none. People want music for free. They don't want to sit through commercials. When YouTube gives the option of clicking out of a preroll ad, the majority of people click out. That's just one commercial. So it's not a question you ask, because the answer is obvious. No one wants to listen to commercials. Period.
There are some who think if there are more frequent short breaks, it's better than two longer breaks. The research has been done, and the results are about the same. If a person is going to switch out of commercials, they'll do it at the first one, regardless of the length of the break. When PPM started 15 years ago, the research showed clearly that a music station is better doing two long breaks than frequent shorter breaks. That's why it's done.
News and talk is completely different from music. There, they do frequent long breaks. They typically will run more spots in news/talk than music. By a factor of about 40%. That's why news/talk makes so much money. I was listening to WFAN last night and one break had 20 spots.
The number of spots a station runs is based on the costs a station has and the price they get per spot. Take the costs, divide by the amount each spot sells for, and you get the number of spots. What makes it more complicated now is advertisers don't want to buy anything besides morning and afternoon drive. So the money you make then has to cover your costs for the entire day. The other problem is costs keep going up, while spot price remains pretty constant (thanks to competition). Spot price is set by the marketplace. When you have a gap between revenue and expenses, that's what leads to staff cuts.
Historically, the number of spots a music station runs per hour has been pretty consistent: About 12-14 minutes. I have program logs from over 30 years ago that look about the same as they are now. At one point in the early 2000s it got up to 16, but the reaction was negative, so they cut back. I'm sure a lot of posters will give examples of stations that did less. Some did, for various reasons. Some still do. Some do more, but typically it's only for one hour, and they're make-good spots that were missed. There will always be exceptions.
Last edited:
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I don't know if this helps answer the question, but I can give you hard data from my client station KRKE in Albuquerque (running my Classic Hits format The Eighties Channel™:
Yesterday (Friday 8/9):
6-10am - average 10.5 spots per hour
10am-3pm - average 10 spots per hour
3-7pm - average 7.5 spots per hour
Today (Saturday 8/10):
6am-7pm - average 9.5 spots per hour
Tomorrow (Sunday 8/11):
Noon-7pm - average 10 spots per hour
Contrary to popular wisdom, we run three stops per hour with one half-hour sweep starting just before the TOH. There is a hard limit of four spots per break or three minutes per break, and our audience seems to "get" that the music is coming back a lot sooner than on our main competitor.
Yesterday (Friday 8/9):
6-10am - average 10.5 spots per hour
10am-3pm - average 10 spots per hour
3-7pm - average 7.5 spots per hour
Today (Saturday 8/10):
6am-7pm - average 9.5 spots per hour
Tomorrow (Sunday 8/11):
Noon-7pm - average 10 spots per hour
Contrary to popular wisdom, we run three stops per hour with one half-hour sweep starting just before the TOH. There is a hard limit of four spots per break or three minutes per break, and our audience seems to "get" that the music is coming back a lot sooner than on our main competitor.
In my experience in the 60's, 70's and 80's, I always ran 8 to 10 minutes an hour, usually in 4 stops with no more than three units in each. In one case, did just 2 minutes an hour, one 20" every 10 minutes. And that covered DC, Miami, Birmingham, San Juan and Ecuador.
In the early stages of successful FMs.. such as the Shulke and Bonneville Beautiful Music ones, the Abrams Superstars ones, the Bartell Top 40's and the like, it was 8 minutes, with two minutes every 15. That was one of the principal reasons FM "took over"... it wasn't stereo, it was better signals and fewer ads.
Different formats and different audiences have different expectations. As I said, you can cram more spots on a talk station because the audience will let you.
Once that happened, and FM had replaced AM in the 80s, they increased the spotload so it was about the same as AM. John Kluge wanted his Metromedia FMs to pull their weight. And they did.
When the AMs were losing audience to FM, I don't remember any AM stations cutting spotload in order to retain their audience.
But once again, if you ask the listeners "How many spots?" the answer will be none. And today, there are places they can go to get what they want.
Albuquerque is a diary market. The two breaks plan is mainly in PPM markets. Diary markets do 3 or 4 breaks, depending on format.
What is worth explaining is how quarter hours are credited:
PPM: five individual minutes in any quarter hour. They don't have to be consecutive. And if there are three semi-consecutive detections every other minute with no other detection in the interval minutes, your station gets credit for the quarter hour.
Diary: Five consecutive minutes or more in any quarter hour.
So in the diary, we try to have the first and last 5 minutes clean, and the sweep to the next quarter hour clean. In the PPM, we want to avoid any interruptions, so we tend to reduce the number of stopsets as we know from detailed data that most tune-out occurs in the first 90 seconds or less... not after three or four spots.
Of course the simple solution to the problem of spots and clusters is easily solved by listening to non-commercial radio. No spots, no clusters, no concerns about holding listeners through quarter hours, no playing of the Nielsen game.
The Sirius music channels are non-commercial, and it's interesting to hear how that fact affects their programming, their music choice, and how they schedule it. The pacing of a show is different when you're not building to a break.
As I always say, radio would be very different if we didn't have to appease advertisers. Everything we do, from the number of commercials in a stopset to the number of commercials in an hour to the number of breaks in an hour, and where those breaks are placed are all done to please the advertisers. They know what they're buying, and if it was up to them, all you'd hear would be advertising.
The Sirius music channels are non-commercial, and it's interesting to hear how that fact affects their programming, their music choice, and how they schedule it. The pacing of a show is different when you're not building to a break.
As I always say, radio would be very different if we didn't have to appease advertisers. Everything we do, from the number of commercials in a stopset to the number of commercials in an hour to the number of breaks in an hour, and where those breaks are placed are all done to please the advertisers. They know what they're buying, and if it was up to them, all you'd hear would be advertising.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That is a factor, but my esteemed competition in the market doesn't understand the difference.
I just pulled up their daily log in Mediabase from yesterday. Starting at 6:00am, two stopsets per hour, around :15/:45 (so much for getting five minutes in the next quarter hour!). Lots of six- and seven-minute stops, one nine-minute stop in the 9:00am hour, only one as short as five minutes. Starting at 6:45pm, they finally go to four- and five-minute sets ... no surprise there as the night daypart typically has a lower spot load. Then at 9:00pm and continuing until 6:00am, one stop per hour and back to six- and seven-minutes per.
Which is why I have KRKE on stops at :20/:35/:50. No :20 stop at night.
radiodeviation7
Banned
Most radio stations here have a commercial break twice an hour with 3-10 spots in each. I think that's ideal.
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