Stations who go the commercial-free route...

[musicfan101]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

 

[Michael Rivers Kramer]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

It really depends if they have a lot of open inventory.

 

[Robnoxious]

Is it really a "feature" or just a way to guise the fact they don't have enough spot breaks to fill?

 

[RBB05]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

Mondays are generally the lowest advertising load day of any weekday. Then you get to take what commercial time has been purchased and compress it to a Tue-Fri buy and claim you have a tight inventory situation in an effort to move rates up.

 

[robnokshus06]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

Mondays are generally the lowest advertising load day of any weekday. Then you get to take what commercial time has been purchased and compress it to a Tue-Fri buy and claim you have a tight inventory situation in an effort to move rates up.

Yes, on the one hand it is a means for tightening inventory by removing a day's worth of spots. On the other hand, you spend an entire day telling your audience that commercials are bad, ensuring that on the other 6-days that you are running commercials, your listener will punch out during spot breaks.

A much better approach would be to return to the pre-consolidation mode of inventory control. Namely, 8-units per hour (regardless of length). By establishing a finite amount of units per hour, the law of supply and demand creates upward pressure on rates. Meanwhile the reduced spotload results in increased ratings which also has the effect of creating upward pressure on rates. This is how succesful radio stations used to operate and why they were so attractive to investors in the first place.

 

[ocer]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

Their competition over at KYSR is running 98 minute sets of commercial free music several times a day on weekdays... might want to think more along those lines than AMP.

Down the hall at CC, KBIG runs commercial free sets too. Not sure what the pattern is there but sometimes I hear them boasting a half hour, one hour and occasionally two hours commercial free.

 

[RBB05]

Most stations are doing it now, should more stations follow suit? Is this the true path to success? Should KROQ do something like what AMP is doing with Commercial Free Mondays?

Mondays are generally the lowest advertising load day of any weekday. Then you get to take what commercial time has been purchased and compress it to a Tue-Fri buy and claim you have a tight inventory situation in an effort to move rates up.

Yes, on the one hand it is a means for tightening inventory by removing a day's worth of spots. On the other hand, you spend an entire day telling your audience that commercials are bad, ensuring that on the other 6-days that you are running commercials, your listener will punch out during spot breaks.

A much better approach would be to return to the pre-consolidation mode of inventory control. Namely, 8-units per hour (regardless of length). By establishing a finite amount of units per hour, the law of supply and demand creates upward pressure on rates. Meanwhile the reduced spotload results in increased ratings which also has the effect of creating upward pressure on rates. This is how succesful radio stations used to operate and why they were so attractive to investors in the first place.

I agree that inventory management is a better approach, but we're not going back to 8 units per hour any time soon anywhere...the horse is out of the batn and as soon as demand allows for it, everyone will be back up to 15x+ to make up for revenue lost ove4r the last 2-3 years. Compressing the commercial load into 4 days versus 5 is not really driving audience away anymore than a regular spot load because if there was enough commercial demand , the Monday stunt would not be tried. Even on a 4 day load right now there is not as many commercials as there used to be. People tune out during commercials regardless. Adding 1x more per hour on Tues-Fri to make up for Monday is not that big a deal right now in low demand periods.