In article , Larry W4CSC wrote:
I listen to a 4 minute snippet of some talking head on news/talk, then
when the 8 minutes of spots comes on I turn it back off and go back to

That is a good question for the radio programmers on this newsgroup.

Why is the spotload so heavy? Breaks on talk stations like WABC used
to be three or four commercials. Now it's more.

All news WCBS used to tout that it only played one commercial at a
time between news capsules. Now they sometimes play two.

WINS sometimes plays three in a row when they used to do one or two
spots about 8 years ago (pre all this consolidation).

Infinity some years back made all their stations up the spot loads.

Ditto, why cluster all the spots in 10 minute sweeps twice an hour
instead of breaking them up into frequent two or three minute breaks
so it SEEMS like less commercials are being played?

--
Sven Weil
New York City, U.S.A.

Sven Franklyn Weil wrote:
Ditto, why cluster all the spots in 10 minute sweeps twice an hour
instead of breaking them up into frequent two or three minute breaks
so it SEEMS like less commercials are being played?

That's the part that confuses me. We've got music stations that
announce "coming up next -- 9 in a row". They mean 9 songs, but if you
listen often enough you quickly learn that also means 9 minutes of
advertising [0] - i.e., that announcement is your cue to change stations...

I suppose since the ratings don't show whether someone was listening
during the ads - only that they were listening - that if clumping the
spot load increases the numbers the rest of the hour it makes short-term
economic sense. One just has to wonder what will happen when the
advertisers start finding they get a smaller increase in sales per
thousand "ears" bought?

(indeed I note the station in the bad example above has begun to promote
"fewer commercials, more music" and indeed appears to have broken up
their spot load across the hour)
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com
[0] not 100% certain I'm exaggerating!

Doug Smith W9WI wrote in
:

Sven Franklyn Weil wrote:
Ditto, why cluster all the spots in 10 minute sweeps twice an hour
instead of breaking them up into frequent two or three minute breaks
so it SEEMS like less commercials are being played?

Isn't the point to increase "Time Spent Listening" to be full 15 minute
blocks so the station gets credit for that? If you run two 10 minute
breaks, you can have 20 minutes of programming between them gaining 40
minutes Time Spent Listening over the course of the hour assuming one
comes back after the commercials.

If you had only 5-10 minute blocks of programming with commericlas in
between, you would never get the 15 minute blocks of Time Spent
Listening that radio stations seem to want.

Am I correct on this or way off?

Mike

"M. Hale" wrote in message

Isn't the point to increase "Time Spent Listening" to be full 15 minute
blocks so the station gets credit for that? If you run two 10 minute
breaks, you can have 20 minutes of programming between them gaining 40
minutes Time Spent Listening over the course of the hour assuming one
comes back after the commercials.

If a person listens form 5:55 to 6:20, the station gets 45 minutes of
credit.

Credit is given for 15 minutes as long as the listener has 5 minutes or more
of recorded listening in any quarter hour.

There is no way to get "40 minutes" of credit as the system is based on
quarter hours.

If you had only 5-10 minute blocks of programming with commericlas in
between, you would never get the 15 minute blocks of Time Spent
Listening that radio stations seem to want.

You only need 5 minutes to get credit for a quarter hour. However, few
listeners are so precise, most writing down hour and half hour blocks.

On 22 Dec 2003 17:53:52 GMT, "M. Hale"
wrote:

Isn't the point to increase "Time Spent Listening" to be full 15 minute
blocks so the station gets credit for that? If you run two 10 minute
breaks, you can have 20 minutes of programming between them gaining 40
minutes Time Spent Listening over the course of the hour assuming one
comes back after the commercials.

Part of it is to get 2 quarter hours before listeners tune away. In
the case of the limited number of breaks, "research has shown" that
listeners are more aware of the number of elements than they are of
their length. A :60 is perceived the same as a :30. Each is an
element.

The hope is that listeners will perceive fewer elements in a limited
number of breaks than they would with more breaks with fewer spots.

When the breaks were 5 minutes it was tolerable. Now that the spots
seem to outnumber the songs, listeners are wearing out their radio's
presets. Especially young listeners. I have a couple of my young
nieces and nephews visiting. Not only do they change stations when a
single song they don't like plays, they immediately change stations
when a break begins. I thank MTV for creating generations with 3
second attention spans.

I asked why. They said "it'll be a long time before the music starts
again."

That's not something a programmer wants to hear.

Both radio and TV are so riddled with clutter that it amazes me anyone
stays tuned. Listen to your favorite station for an hour. Write down
every time a new element begins. Music, news, spots, promos, jingles
and jock chatter each constitutes an element.

TV has taken clutter to awesome heights, both aural and visual.
Vitually every channel has a "bug" supered over all but commercials.
Annoying as hell. During shows there's a crawl or a super about an
upcoming show. Crawls used to be used only for emergency information.
I can only imagine the anger of a movie director when he sees his
masterpiece splattered with material that destroys the mood he tried
to create. Often one super overlaps another.

Rich

Rich Wood wrote:

TV has taken clutter to awesome heights, both aural and visual.

There is (was) one channel out there (Bloomberg News?) that looked
more like a web page than a TV channel, with all the crawls, windows,
etc. on the screen ....

Vitually every channel has a "bug" supered over all but commercials.
Annoying as hell. During shows there's a crawl or a super about an
upcoming show. Crawls used to be used only for emergency information.
I can only imagine the anger of a movie director when he sees his
masterpiece splattered with material that destroys the mood he tried
to create. Often one super overlaps another.

Rich

In article , Charles Hobbs wrote:
There is (was) one channel out there (Bloomberg News?) that looked
more like a web page than a TV channel, with all the crawls, windows,
etc. on the screen ....

There is a reason for that. They're not trying to SELL you stuff,
they're trying to give you stock ticker, news capsules, time and
weather so that they can devote the "talking head" portion of the
screen to news and interviews that would otherwise would be
impossible to do if you had to break for all of the stuff that's
running on the crawls and tabs.

It's an efficient screen space use for an all-news channel. However,
it is annoying when the soap-opera, comedy or movie you're watching
gets blasted by this flash and then a crawl for an ad or promo starts
appearing at the bottom or top of the screen.

It was fine when they started doing ad crawls for the World Cup soccer
games so you didn't have to interrupt the fast moving games years ago,
but now it's gotten out of hand.

Maybe I wouldn't mind as much if the TV stations and cable channels
would just run ad crawls at the bottom and ditched the "spot" method
of advertising.

--
Sven Weil
New York City, U.S.A.

Guess your nephews and nieces are giving new meaning to the phrase "baby
changing station." They're showing good sense, and radio will have to adjust to
the choices that technology offers them.

I'd argue though that as MTV shortens the attention span of young people, it
creates acceptance of audiovisual clutter rather than resistance to it. And
inevitably a bit of impatience with audio alone.

Jerome


"Rich Wood" wrote in message
...
On 22 Dec 2003 17:53:52 GMT, "M. Hale"
wrote:

Isn't the point to increase "Time Spent Listening" to be full 15 minute
blocks so the station gets credit for that? If you run two 10 minute
breaks, you can have 20 minutes of programming between them gaining 40
minutes Time Spent Listening over the course of the hour assuming one
comes back after the commercials.

Part of it is to get 2 quarter hours before listeners tune away. In
the case of the limited number of breaks, "research has shown" that
listeners are more aware of the number of elements than they are of
their length. A :60 is perceived the same as a :30. Each is an
element.

The hope is that listeners will perceive fewer elements in a limited
number of breaks than they would with more breaks with fewer spots.

When the breaks were 5 minutes it was tolerable. Now that the spots
seem to outnumber the songs, listeners are wearing out their radio's
presets. Especially young listeners. I have a couple of my young
nieces and nephews visiting. Not only do they change stations when a
single song they don't like plays, they immediately change stations
when a break begins. I thank MTV for creating generations with 3
second attention spans.

I asked why. They said "it'll be a long time before the music starts
again."

That's not something a programmer wants to hear.

Both radio and TV are so riddled with clutter that it amazes me anyone
stays tuned. Listen to your favorite station for an hour. Write down
every time a new element begins. Music, news, spots, promos, jingles
and jock chatter each constitutes an element.

TV has taken clutter to awesome heights, both aural and visual.
Vitually every channel has a "bug" supered over all but commercials.
Annoying as hell. During shows there's a crawl or a super about an
upcoming show. Crawls used to be used only for emergency information.
I can only imagine the anger of a movie director when he sees his
masterpiece splattered with material that destroys the mood he tried
to create. Often one super overlaps another.

Rich

On 23 Dec 2003 22:43:28 GMT, "Cooperstown.Net"
wrote:

I'd argue though that as MTV shortens the attention span of young people, it
creates acceptance of audiovisual clutter rather than resistance to it. And
inevitably a bit of impatience with audio alone.

I think we may be saying the same thing. I believe MTV's (and now
everyone else's) technique of fast-paced editing has reduced their
tolerance for long (in time) shots over a few seconds. I don't believe
they have greater tolerance for clutter.

By and large, radio advertising is boring stuff. it's usually some
screaming jock or business owner hawking something that has no
relevance to the audience. Agencies are so devoted to TV that radio is
a second thought. I can't remember the last radio spot I heard. I can
remember spots made years ago by people like Stan Freberg who believed
in theatre of the mind.

Rich

Hmmmm.....Radio TIVO....."local processing"....(c;

Once you teach the computer where the spots are in time, it could be
automated.....


Larry W4CSC

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