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Too Many Commercials!

landtuna

landtuna

Couldn't sleep last night so I plugged in my earbuds and flipped on the radio - something I almost never do outside my car. It was just after 5AM so I figured the all-night guy would be on and playing uninterrupted music. Was I ever wrong!

KOOL's morning crew was on and during the ten or so minutes I listened to them I heard one (1) song. The rest of the time was taken up by two long commercial blocks (complete with repetitive ads) and a minute's worth of traffic banter.

Hit the button to KSLX - certainly the Classic Rock station won't have all those irritating commercial blocks this early, right? Wrong! Not even one song here. Morning guy does his promo followed by half-a-dozen commercials (including the identical one that was repeated two times on KOOL).

And people wonder why radio is losing its audience.....
 
TheBigA said:
landtuna said:
And people wonder why radio is losing its audience.....
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Sorry, but it's the popular stations that usually air the most commercials.
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A two minute commercial break is reasonable. Even a 2-minute break, then a 60-90 second traffic report, followed by another 2-minute break is acceptable. But anything longer will make me change the station. I've timed KOOL's commercial breaks, and some of them are 5-6 minutes long. That's ridiculous.
 
KeithE4 said:
I've timed KOOL's commercial breaks, and some of them are 5-6 minutes long. That's ridiculous.
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Listeners prefer two or three long breaks rather than ten short breaks. It adds up the same, so the stations don't care either way. But multiple surveys in multiple cities show that 2-3 long breaks is better than 8-10 short ones.
 
I know what I do after about the third commercial. I feel some sympathy for the advertiser who bought spot number 6 or 7.

Junky research is all over the place.
 
KOOL Listener Lauren said:
Why not just turn on the 14-songs-in-a-row Goldmine? 8)
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I would have except:

1. I can't get the Goldmine where I live (S. Tempe) and
2. My little radio is FM/MP3 only.
 
TheBigA said:
It's not junky. It's been documented over and over. Most people sit through commercials on the radio.
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I can't address the "junky" research but I can say I won't listen to certain stations who air giant strings of commercials. I hadn't listened to KOOL for quite some time and this experience doesn't encourage me to begin listening again.

Another good reason to tune to The Coyote!
 
That's why I listen to it lt, and why the format change hasn't bothered me. The type music KYOT plays isn't as important to me as the fact that they play fewer commercials than other stations and their announcers are not loud and obnoxious.
 
pattiwacki said:
That's why I listen to it lt, ...
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You and I are obviously the classiest of Valley listeners. ;D

I have to admit I really like "Old School Steve" on KOOL though.
 
landtuna said:
I have to admit I really like "Old School Steve" on KOOL though.
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I second that emotion on the Stevemeister, but I wish he'd stop with the
"go to our website" nonsense...just tell us on the air!

If we're drivin' in our car (and turning on the radio)--even with a web-enabled
phone--we don't want such a distraction. ::)
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
I second that emotion on the Stevemeister, but I wish he'd stop with the
"go to our website" nonsense...just tell us on the air!
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This is what it has come to...the radio station is nothing more than a vehicle to drive traffic to the radio station's crappy website. Talents who have spent their lives learning how to tell a story on the air have been relegated to pushing that story off to some blog where we can read it, but not hear it.
 
I wonder how many of the people who sit through multitudes of commercials are paying any attention to them.
 
landtuna said:
KOOL Listener Lauren said:
Why not just turn on the 14-songs-in-a-row Goldmine? 8)
Click to expand...

I would have except:

1. I can't get the Goldmine where I live (S. Tempe)
Click to expand...

Our beloved Goldmine comes in great down in South Tempe! That 14-in-a-row Goldmine runs at a whooping daytime power of 5000 watts, which, as a side note, was good enough for me to hear yesterday in the City of Angels (aka L.A.) around 3:45 P.M. local time as it fought through the static of KFNY and KUHL. I was impressed hearing the Supremes and the Goldminers over at the Scottsdale Lumberyard win the skywave battle with the California locals. Long live KAZG! 8)

Now I can totally understand if you have some problems hearing the Goldmine at night down in South Tempe. Their non-existent night-time signal doesn't work too well anywhere in the valley! ;D
 
caveman-97 said:
I wonder how many of the people who sit through multitudes of commercials are paying any attention to them.
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It depends on what type of commercials the people are hearing and how much effort was put into it to make it more interesting and catchy. I always payed attention to the Chronic Car Audio commercials when they were out. There are also those commercials that aren't really interesting, but they sound so genuine and professional that they "stick in your mind" and come to mind when it's appropriate. An example of that would be The Shane Co. or certain car insurance companies. Then, there are those other commercials that are so mind numbingly boring that you completely forget about or don't even notice them. I would give examples of them, but I can't since I forgot about them or didn't notice them to know that they even exist.

Some don't even have to be catchy. They just have to remind you of an already well known product or place. Example? NyQuil. Wells Fargo. Nissan. Dominoes Pizza. ..etc.
 
asugeorge1 said:
Now I can totally understand if you have some problems hearing the Goldmine at night down in South Tempe. Their non-existent night-time signal doesn't work too well anywhere in the valley! ;D
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I should have been more specific. I would have been trying to listen at 5AM - presumably before they got both mice running in the generator room. ;D
 
I don't know about others but I've been ignoring commercials so long that if I want to actually hear and understand what one is talking about it takes multiple times hearing it before I catch on. The only exceptions to that are those during the Super Bowl and even then I've gotten to the point of reading the reviews then watching only select commercials online. I pay no attention to radio commercials at all.
 
When's the last time you heard a radio ad for a product or service and the ad motivated you to go out and make a purchase? The vast majority of radio ads are little more than shouting matches with digital noise and are good only for name recognition. Hardly ever do radio ads give listeners useful information for making an intelligent purchase. I think that most people tune them out either physically or mentally.
 
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