The other day I was listening to Kufo, the song ended and the commercials started. I could not believe how long their commercials sets are. I sware those commercials sets lasted 9 minutes. I have never had so many commercials thrown at me all at once. Finally I just turned on the Ipod because after 6 commercials in a row I couldn't take it.

I can't imagine any listener is going to put up with or sit through 9 minutes of commercials. That has got to be the biggest listener tune out ever. I realize stations need to make money, but wouldn't it be wiser to have commercial brakes more often, with shorter sets???
As a listener, 9 minute commercial brake sets are Ridiculous!!

I also think that radio has got to be one of the most ineffective way to advertise. What listener is going to sit through 9 minutes of commercials???
What happends if your commercial is commercial number 7, do you think anyone will be listening? Heck no! Thats why we have presets on are radios.

And its not just KUFO, I've heard painfully long commercials sets on other stations also.

A lot of stations like to brag about how they have 50 minute music sets, or we play more music. But then that leaves what?? 10 minute blocks of commercials???
I feel sorry for the poor sap who turns on the radio right when the 10 minute commercial set is starting.

No wonder radio is dying!

Agreed. Some of us remember the old AM top40 days when stations might run just a couple of :30's, or maybe a :60 and a :30, then right back to the music after a shotgun jingle. Of course, there could be six or seven sets an hour!

Today, the biggest problems can come when you have a remote, a recorded station promo, and then the usual six minutes of spots, some jock talk, and all of a sudden you are at 9-10 minutes.
Arggh!!!

The old KISN airchecks that I have (courtesy of Ernie Hopseker) avoid stopsets altogether. The song ends, the DJ is on briefly, a commercial plays or is read by the DJ, and then the DJ introduces the next song. According to Terry Danner, the reason that music radio formats evolved from this approach to one with sets of music and sets of commercials was that not having to stop the music as often gave listeners the impression that the station was playing fewer commercials. In KUFO's case, they may have pushed the approach a bit too far! The only people who are going to hear those last commercials are those who have the radio on as background music while they work and thus can't easily go to change the station.

"but wouldn't it be wiser to have commercial brakes more often"
Absolutely. I would love to have more commercial brakes applied. Put a halt to the long buggers. Then we would have shorter commercial breaks.

I can't imagine a client being all that pleased to have his/her spot 4 minutes into a 7 minute set. How do you sales types answer that concern?

The whole reason for the longer breaks is for longer music sweeps...guess someone's done the research for greater TSL...ah..for the music.
Some stations have reduced their breaks in the hour to just one vs. 2 or 3 or in the days gone by up to 5 per hour...yikes...talk radio still has that...guess you can interrupt talk better than music...???

Keep in mind that Justin didn't hear nine minutes of commercials.... he's just guessing there might have been nine minutes of commercials because he sat through six commercials in a row (were they 30's? 60's?) and tuned out. We don't actually know how many units or minutes in a KUFO stopset.

During drive times, most stations run shorter sets because you are closer to the button. During middays and evenings/weekends when the button may be halfway across the room, more units/minutes per break.

Research done a few years ago showed that there were basically two behaviors when commercials came on..tune out within the first couple units or tough it out through the whole commercial set. People meters seem to be bearing this out. Since the tune outs are gone whether the set has 2, 4, or 8 units, the rationale was to have longer stop sets with fewer occasions to send listeners button pushing.

And many radio programmers go to a lot of trouble trying to time their sets so that they are first in/first out of a stopset. The "KUFO" listener tunes away at the start of the stopset, and then tunes back as soon as the other station enters its stopset, by which time "KUFO" is back to 50 minutes of music.

Radio has the advantage because it's generally much harder to "Tivo" past commercials on radio, except by switching stations, and as Dick Orkin (if memory serves me) so brilliantly noted, the radio doesn't go black for a second before the commercials begin.

One of the reasons that newscasts, traffic reports, etc. sell at a premium is that the advertiser isn't mashed in a pack. And for the most part, radio has resisted selling placement within a stopset because it would devalue most of the avails within the set.

Broadway - you're right. You can interupt talk better than music. Most talk stations run much higher unit loads than music radio. The listeners are so predisposed to the spoken word that they tend not to notice or mind the shift from spoken rant to spoken ad.

Talk giants like KGO and WINS used to drive the competition nuts because with an average of 16 units per hour, they could afford to price lower and still garner the same dollars-per-hour. They drove down the rates for the entire market that way.

"And many radio programmers go to a lot of trouble trying to time their sets so that they are first in/first out of a stopset. The "KUFO" listener tunes away at the start of the stopset, and then tunes back as soon as the other station enters its stopset, by which time "KUFO" is back to 50 minutes of music."

Do the above consistently plus time-warp into every stop set and you can win. We did it and beat KSND. Unfortunately the next book KSND did the very same thing because by that time we were monitoring each other live. It got really crazy.

I doubt this level of competition exist anymore in a smaller market like Eugene due to VT and the fact that corporate doesn't really seem to care...

If you really want to get aggressive...and it's risky, you can actually get double credit for a quarter hour. The goal is to get a diary to show 5 minutes at the start of the quarter hour, then 5 minutes not listening to your station, then 5 minutes listening again. Thats 2 separate 5 minute periods in the same quarter hour.

As a listener I appreciate the long commercial sets during the day. Perfect time to get up, stretch the legs, and visit the facilities.

I’m not in the "business", so this will probably sound naïve. Having admitted to that…Long commercial sets seem counter-productive and disadvantageous for advertisers. If a listener knows that every time a commercial set starts, it’s going to be X time (usually several minutes) until the music returns, they will find another station. I don’t understand how it’s financially viable for a radio station if the listener only tunes in when they aren’t playing commercials. Often-times, a jock’s only talk break immediately precedes commercials, and I believe listeners catch on to that and know to switch the station before the commercials even begin. “Back in the day,” when the commercial sets were much shorter (or at least varied in length) and at least seemed to be randomly placed, listeners didn’t know when to expect them or how long they would be. Switching the station meant they might miss the next song.

Zach,

EXACTLY. Advertizer message lost in a long block o spots, resulting in.....

ineffective return on ad dollars. resulting in....

Declining revenue.

Better to weave them thru the hour. If listener knows that the break is one or two spots they might actually hear the message. Six minutes and they are gone or tuned out. Of course, not many places buy that theory. And, it works BETTER if you have a live talented air person who can do a live spot and weave it into the context of the show rather than making it sound like (INSERT COMMERCIAL HERE)
Most of the old guard could do that. Most of the new ones never learned how. SECRET IS TO NOT MAKE A BREAK SOUND LIKE A BREAK.......

FLOW FLOW FLOW!!!!!

"SECRET IS TO NOT MAKE A BREAK SOUND LIKE A BREAK......."

"Tiger" Tom Murphy comes out of a song and soon asks "Hey, guys..." He then implores his listeners to check their slacks to make sure that they are the new T.K. Racers.

The art of the live spot. This is what helped announcers become personalities. You hear so few of them today. For me, there was nothing better than hearing a great jock, like Larry Lujack, read and interpret a live spot, adding his own flavor, sometimes cracking himself up. One of the things that is missing from radio today, for sure.

I've also noticed that KNRK, when coming out of a commercial set, has been experimenting with going directly from the end of a commercial right into a song. No promo. No " 94 / 7 Alternative Portland." Just right into a song. And while that may not be all that uncommon, it's something new with KNRK I have noticed.

I think it actually works to eliminate that bridge. Of course, it kind of depends on the song they are opening the set with. But the approach seems like it sweeps you into the programming more quickly. I'll stop short of calling it " They trick me into listening." But when you are SO used to having an ID buffer, the lack of it caught my ear.

I think it's at least worth a shot.

One important thing--that I couldn't appreciate years ago while doing college radio--about the live read announcements is that they loosely imply that the radio personality endorses the thing that (s)he is announcing.

I've heard the different programming mentalities for commercial programming (in no particular order):
1. Long blocks of programming, with one or two longer stopsets in between, with the idea that the listener will think sitting through the commercials is worth it.
2. Run commercial breaks at the same time every hour, with the idea the listener knows when the commercials run and will understand this.
3. Run less commercials and raise rates.
4. Run the same amount of commercials as competing stations, but try to 'beat them out of the break' by going back into music before they do.
All these are great and wonderful, however... almost everyone out there these days has an MP3 player, and probably didn't buy the model they did because of the built-in FM tuner. Even without MP3s or another instant music source (CD, tape, etc.), if listeners start punching around and all they hear is commercials, then they turn off the radio... and everyone loses, because that's one less person listening to any radio station.
And a final comment about non-coms... to average listeners, PSAs, especially if pre-produced or come from a central PSA bank, still sound like commercials. Click or flip to another station they go.

SECRET IS TO NOT MAKE A BREAK SOUND LIKE A BREAK.......
Agreed! Or make it really, really, really worth it!

The main problem I have is that the 7 minute commercial sets are ineffective and too long. If I was advertising on a station, and my ad came on after 6 commercials, I would be pissed, because nobody is still listening to commercials after sitting through 6 of them. Thats insane. Money not well spent. If I'm spending good money on radio advertising I would want my ad on a shorter commercial set, NOT mixed in with a set of 7 other commercials!!!

But the biggest joke of all is when I hear two car dealer commercials back to back. Talk about COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE! I hear it all the time, and I can't help but laugh.

If I was advertising on a station, and my ad came on after 6 commercials, I would be pissed...

Another thought... over-sale of "run-of-schedule" spots (good placement sorta like winning the lottery jackpot)?

Can you pay more to have YOUR ad be the first one heard out of a commercial set?

I think that would be the most effective. After the first and maybe second commercial, the listener is GONE.

I know that for a while, KNRK would schedule Shane Co. spots to be last in the break. It could not have been coincidence. ( Well, I guess it could have been. But statistically, it seems not likely ). Pretty soon, when you heard a Shane Co. spot, you knew music would start up after that. Very Pavlovian, I admit. But it at least kept me around to see if I liked the next song that I knew was going to air after the spot ended.

I always wondered if that was specifically paid for. Or if it was just offered as a " premium service " to that company by the reps or what the story was.

Placement of the Shane Co spot may have been for the opposite reason -- placing the most interesting spot first, then the next most interesting spot, then all the other garbage.

The Pavlovian dog thing has customarily been in the ID leading back to the music, which according to a poster above, has been eliminated at times from 'NRK.

>>the biggest joke of all is when I hear two car dealer commercials back to back. Talk about COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE!

On the other paw, maybe two car ads can be complementary, just as car dealers often co-locate in clusters or in auto malls.

In the Yugo, its nothing but IPOD time. I've given up on radio.

Too many commercials, and Crappy liner card radio! AWFUL!

I've not heard of stations charging extra for being first in the set, but it isn't a bad idea.

Alfredo, yes, there is a connection sometimes when the audience hears the jock reading a live ad, and thinking it is a testimonial. This has always been somewhat of a grey area. The wording usually is subtle, but a testimonial will usually have the jock say his or her name, and use a couple of "I" statements if he is testifying. Of course, whenever this occurs, the jock is usually getting paid extra or getting a service from the client.

The old radio school way of loading a set was to put your most produced, uptempo, musical spots first. Bury the worst spots in the middle, and try to end with something upbeat. Not sure if it really matters in the long run.

I hear my favorite broadcast station ,,here ,running a lot of , as Roger indicated , flow type spot sets during their automated midday/nights/weekends. These are, say, 2 30s or a 60 and a 30 then to get out and back to music a short pleasant female voiced liner with something like " My music, my radio station, 97.5 KOOL FM" ...Very nice IMO. Vting short on stop downs and longer bit sets only in drive times automated or live.

During mostlly live shows, mornings and afternoon drive, spot sets, BUT , they are reading live spots, 20s and 30s and lately they are sponsoring their STUDIOS...ie: " Lon and John live from the Gilbert Auto Studios in Pasco, Wa...and that kind of thing. So somebody over there is thinking right IMHO...They are doing everything they can to stay afloat in a highly competitive and diverse marketplace.