As the commercials churn on, the Program Director can hear the clicking of radio dials away from his or her station. What’s a PD to do? The station needs the revenue and will squeeze every possible dime out of that 60 minutes. The PD believes the way to more revenue is higher ratings from stronger content and long commercial breaks does not increase the ratings.
It’s radio’s biggest criticism; playing too many commercials every hour and turning away listeners. With the Country Radio Seminar just a few weeks away, we took the question of how many is too many to several Country Radio PD’s. Here’s what they had to say…
Nikki Thomas is the PD and Morning Show Host at Bristol Broadcasting’s WXBQ in Bristol, Virginia. “I’m a fan of unit based stopsets. Twelve. Twelve “minutes” can be brutal and excruciating if they’re full of :10’s…:15.s…:30’s…60’s and there’s no specific rule as to how they’re put together. 12 minutes of :15’s and :30’s…is like a stopset in dog years.
Senior Vice President of Programming at iHeartMedia Atlanta Meg Stevens says, “Limited inventory is great and beneficial for the product. Firm believer that you can have a great radio station with compelling content no matter what the spot load is.”
Mark Razz at WXTU in Philadelphia says, “10 feels right.”
Charlie Cook, the VP of Country for Cumulus and PD at WSM-FM and WKDF-FM says six. “Two three minute spot sets and I would promote that. I would also be in another line of work in about 6 months.”
Carletta Blake from iHeartMedia’s WGAR in Cleveland. “Are you trying to get me fired? Seriously though, it’s not always about how many minutes you play, it’s about where they play, and what content you have around them. Commercial minutes are one of the catch-22s of a programmer, but commercials can play to your benefit even if the spot block is longer than you would like if you can place it strategically and control the content around it.
Marci Braun at WUSN in Chicago: “I would be more concerned with Units per hour than minutes per hour, honestly. Keep that to 10 Units per hour, and I’d be a happy girl – and hopefully sales would be too.”
If you old enough, you remember stations that ran 18 minutes of commercials an hour…..6 spot sets at 3 minutes each…….songs had to be edited to make way for the spot time. The bulk of the ads were 30s and 60s……with shorter ads now….i think the number of units could be a problem maker.
I wish there was a perfect answer to the more music/ less spots equals more money….spot rates can only go so high in any given market….Lets keep radio strong….
cost to value. programming wants as few commercials as possible. sales wants as many commercials as possible. but think of it as your computer. let’s say you have a computer running 16 gigs of ram and it running like a Maserati. The you start adding peripherals, programs, etc., and all of a sudden your zippy computer is running like a Yugo. That’s because for every new program/feature you add, you’re consuming resources. Same thing. Commercials drive the revenue, but for every unit you add, you’re consuming resources. the more commercials you run, the more revenue you may generate SHORT TERM, but you’re potentially driving listeners away. listeners=ratings=revenue. a+b=c. If more broadcasters recognized this calculus, the more revenue they could see…but it’s a long game and I suppose many don’t have the patience for it.
BF, you make all the sense in the world. But remember, the top priorities at IHeart, Audacy, Beasley, and Cumulus is debt servicing. Then Executive Compensation. Their stations’ commercial revenue is critical to these priorities… so no way are they going to cut back on commercials/revenue. Even if it costs them listeners and shortens the long term relevance of their station (s).
That’s not what I Heart and Pitchman say.
Of course Pitchman never sold a dollar in radio advertising in his life …
The problem, in any music format, is the length of the commercial breaks, themselves. Total number of minutes is irrelevant, though you don’t want to have half of your hour be commercials (which some stations practically do, and that’s insane). No more than 90 seconds per break, and if that means more, shorter breaks, so be it. That’s the way we USED to do it, and it worked just fine because listeners knew that part of the agreement was that there would be more music after a *brief* commercial break (“brief” being the key word). It will still work today, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.