Y94 long commercial break

[levi99]

I was listening to Y94 on the bus on December 20th 2024 and they went to commercial break. For some reason the break was long. It started with a promo than some commercials. It then went to a localized AccuWeather report but then more commercials. Then there was a promo for 570 WSYR but then even more commercials. It finally stopped when a bumper played which led out of commercials.

I'm done venting.
Thank You!😊

 

[K.M. Richards]

Wait ... you mean the break started on December 24 and didn't end until today?

 

[levi99]

No. I didn't mean that.

 

[K.M. Richards]

No. I didn't mean that.

Guess my use of wasn't obvious, then.

 

[cc333]

I was trying to listen to a radio station back east via a stream (I forget which one it was), but I gave up on it because when I tried to listen, all I got were commercials. I tried waiting them out, but I gave up after 20 minutes or so.

That many commercials seemed quite excessive!

c

 

[b-turner]

Sounds like to me cc333 that the station lost their feed and the default was to play commercials until everything is rejoined or reset.

 

[vw86]

Any time I hear about someone hearing more spots than a standard stopset (and yes, I realize those can be obscenely long), I always ask if they were streaming or listening OTA. 99 times out of 100 they mention they are streaming. When that's the case, it is more than likely that the cue to rejoin content after the stopset ended didn't fire and the fill content, which can be local ads, station and cluster promos, PSAs, etc., will continue to play.

 

[Ma “Contrarian” Gee]

Sounds like to me cc333 that the station lost their feed and the default was to play commercials until everything is rejoined or reset.

Reminds me of a station I oh-so-very-briefly worked for in the mid 1990s. New GM comes to town. He’s done small market radio his entire career. Finally he makes it to a top 50 market. Hires me for afternoons, along with production and imaging. We license a library from Firstcom. Outside of AM and PM drive, we’re using satellite.

But…

He and I clash almost immediately. I say thank you, God Bless and cross the street to another station. A few weeks later, the satellite programming hits the air. Complete with the typical few seconds of occasional dead air between the end of spots and the network return. Solution is a simple one. Make sure a 60 is :60 and a 30 is :30.

That’s too easy for our GM. He decides to play fill product to get back to the network. But what to use? Answer. The synth sweeps, whooshes, laser hits, etc. from the Firstcom library. Basically it meant a spot ended, you’d hear a laser hit or two to fill a two or three second gap, and then the network return liner back into music.

But then there was that one fateful late night I was listening. Yes, the return was somehow missed. It goes to the GM’s choice of fill material.

For twelve minutes, listeners enjoyed whoosh after whoosh, zap after zap, sweep after sweep. Ping….boom…whoosh…zap…hit… For a whole twelve minutes. It sounded like the soundtrack to a low budget Japanese produced knock off of Star Wars.