Really????

[spinthis]

These days the powers that be seem to think that in the ppm universe, every time there is a human voice on the air (requests, contests, interviews, etc) that people hit the seek button on their radio dial. Although I've been out of the game for a while, it seems that this has never been the case. People on their lunch break, people on their smoke break, they call in a request, they call in to say hey, they call in to get on the air. People would tune in to hear something not generally on the playlist that was being played every half hour.
Have we really reached a point where people honestly want to hear repetitious crap? Over, and over and over and over....With no human interaction whatsoever?
Really?

 

[tomservo]

iPod sales say "YES".

Growing up after radio consolidation was an established way of life in Birmingham, I learned to hit the seek button whenever the mic was cracked. Why? A commercial break was coming. It never failed. The whole "chat a moment, interact, take a request" was shoehorned into a lead-in to a break.

I always thought selected Memphis stations were a refreshing change from that setup, but the habit is firmly established in my mind. Maybe PPM recognizes that?

Of course, I do enjoy a minor bit of interaction of personality between songs on most formats, but apparently that's old fashioned.

 

[Molly2011]

whats wrong with commecials? Why would you punch out of the most instresting 60 second vignetts about local businesses. Commercials help you find the best car deals, where the good times are located, where to eat and how to enhance your manhood with one small pill. Aren't these really what radio is all about?

 

[tomservo]

whats wrong with commecials? Why would you punch out of the most instresting 60 second vignetts about local businesses. Commercials help you find the best car deals, where the good times are located, where to eat and how to enhance your manhood with one small pill. Aren't these really what radio is all about?

Yes, radio is about ads with music in between to fill the time.

If I need to find out about a local business I don't mind listening to LOCAL ads for LOCAL businesses. In most small towns these days, there's one or two local ads followed by five minutes of national ads for brands I am already aware of. Worse yet, the ads are so repetitive I've already heard them a thousand times over.

I didn't actually live in Memphis, but in a podunk Mississippi town about 100 miles south. So Memphis was a "special treat" to visit, believe it or not. But even only visiting once or twice a month, I still came to know and loathe certain local commercials. After a while, the thrill is gone and the urge to button-press is strong once the jock starts chattering.

Anyway, even back then I was using Google and Yelp and Urbanspoon and other social type sites to seek out businesses, so radio advertising's limited scope fell out of favor. Now that I have a smartphone, I have more information than a 6 minute stop set of irritating commercials could ever hope to provide.

BTW, doesn't anyone else find it odd that cars and local dealerships are such strong advertisers on TV and radio, yet those are products most people only buy once every 2-10 years? Shouting at me how great Kias are is not going to sway me into one, especially when it's the same shouty presentation for months on end.

 

[diamondcards]

You can't escape commercials! I have Sirius and they play commercials on a number of their stations and so does Pandora now. Unless you program your own music listening device i.e an IPOD you have to expect some amount of commercials. I actually still like listening to radio for local content, weather, traffic and to see how everyone stacks up against each other.