WGST PSA Load

[jabba17]

I was listening to WGST (it was my turn) and noticed that they have been playing a LOT of PSAs--sometimes 2 or more per commercial break. Has WGST become that hard of a sell? Or is their rate card just too high for their market and share? I don't recall any station with that much share (such as it is) playing so many PSAs, even during Rush and Beck. Usually that kind of PSA load is only heard on stations that don't even show in Arbitron, or are in much smaller markets.

Does WGST need to cut back on their spot inventory and charge more for the remaining spots (not sure that would work for news/talk the way it would for music), or just reduce their rates until they clear most of their inventory?

You can insert your joke about "Less Is More" here.

 

[secondchoice]

I wish I could pick up WGST better with out all the static up here. But then I don’t listen to satellite feed stuff. If a tree falls and no one hears it, does it still scare the squirrels?
Seriously have they messed with their sales staff or is the staff going just for the low hanging fruit (the FM’s?). When you are that bad in the ratings, ads sometimes have to be sold to local decision makers not ad agencies that look at ratings. They don’t usually sell themselves.
Another thought, has the satellite services increased the spot break lengths for Christmas and no one in operations has told sales?

 

[bnaivar]

The over-the-counter ED medication people must have finished their contract.

 

[fussbudget]

Were you listening on the internet? Often, during the spot breaks, stations will fill their internet stream with PSA's. If you were listening over the air, then a boatload of PSA's can't be a good thing.

 

[jabba17]

Were you listening on the internet? Often, during the spot breaks, stations will fill their internet stream with PSA's. If you were listening over the air, then a boatload of PSA's can't be a good thing.

This was over the air. It was almost as bad as listening to overnight replays of Rush on 105.7 back in the day, when they would play all of the goofy stuff that Rush stuck in for the commercial breaks (Weird Al's "Spatula City", etc.), because they hadn't sold any of the spots at 1 or 2 in the AM on a Saturday night.

 

[DToTheJ]

These days, doesn't that non-commercial filler consist primarily of Paul Shanklin/Johnny Donovan comedy bits/parodies? Every once in awhile, I'll notice an affiliate that doesn't cut to a local break in time after the national commercial stopset, and I'll hear the first few seconds of a Rush bit before the local station breaks in with a local spot. I actually heard such an exchange on WABC/New York, of all stations.

 

[nightmanager]

CC's leased talk channels on XM are filled with this stuff. Every break is basically nothing but endless PSA spots and rarely a paid spot during the day only. It's not unusual to hear the same PSA more than once in a break.

The rest of the load is nothing but XM/Sirius internal promos and CC's own promos, which are awful.

It's been that way for years on those XM channels. CC clearly is OK with this low rent image on XM and perhaps they are becoming OK with that on broadcast as well. They just don't care. And nobody's left who is paid to care.

Anyway, I was once told by a radio sales weasel that it's better to run PSAs for free than discount the airtime to attract an actual paying client. Better to give it away than put a deflated price on it and make that the de facto rate.