"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

"Roadie" wrote in message
ps.com...
Radio stations are supposed to operate in the public interest. If
people like Dwardo had their way all radio would cease transmitting at
7 PM because the advertising drops below the breakeven level. All 50
kW stations would cut their power by 3 dB to save money on electric
bills and all would run syndicated talk radio because those ASCAP fees
cut into the bottom line and it's much cheaper to pay a hatemonger.-
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Operating in the public interest is fine, but targeting an audience
hundreds of miles away that an advertiser would have little hope of
selling his product to makes no business sense at all. And radio
stations are businesses that attempt to be profitable.


This is where you sell national products. People buy Coke, Pepsi, STP,
Quaker State (and Quaker Oats) everywhere. Most nighttime radio has long
been such spots (as has network radio always been).

That is just not how radio is sold. Local radio is sold for the local metro,
and you get no greater rate because you have more extensive coverage.

The accounts you mention don't buy night radio, anyway. Most of them do not
buy the ages that AM radio attracts. One of them does not buy radio at all.

Networks are a device to collect in one buy stations in many markets, and
the audience estimates are compiled from the ratings of the individual
stations. Networks are used in radio to provide content a station wants for
"free" to the station; the station gives part of the time, which the network
resells in a package, usually at a rate lower than the sum of the rates of
each station. That way the network gets revenue, and the station does not
have hard cash costs... this is similar to the model for network TV, too.

Only one network show I know of, Rush, requires in some markets an amount of
cash as well as inventory (but there may be a few others). The syndication
model, similar to network, was invented by the folks who created American
Top 40... principally Tom Rounds... around 1970. The show was generally free
to the station, or had a small payment for hard costs, and the station ran
the program's spots, which provided Watermark with its profits. One show,
the famous or infamous one created by Art Bell, required most of the barter
spots to be run in the daytime, except for a few that had an appeal to
overnight listeners specifically, such as the "consumer DX radios" they
often peddle.