One of the things that industry writer Shawn Ross talks about a lot when he writes about how to keep radio relevant today is radio’s spot load and how it needs to be fixed. I was talking with my friend about something else that Shawn Ross talks about a lot, and that is the streaming experience, and she hypothesized that fixing that is going to be the last thing that gets fixed if radio fixes its spot load issues.
Right about the time I started this site, I got in contact with someone else whose collection of airchecks is far larger than mine. One of the airchecks I got from him, the KLSY aircheck from 1996, is already up here, and many more will come in the coming weeks and months. I didn’t start recording until 2012, but he has airchecks that go back as far as the 1960s. As I was not born until late 1993, I have very little use for airchecks that old, but I did get a couple from him from the mid 2000s, when I would have been between 8 and 11. In listening to those longer airchecks, here’s what I notice about the spots.
First, there were very few repeated clients. In an aircheck of KBKS from September of 2005, there was only one client repeat, and that was ABC. In the first commercial break of the hour, a long ABC spot appears, advertising two shows, Lost and Invasion. A shorter spot appears at the end of the second break, basically a cut version of the first spot only promoting Invasion. The only other repeat in the aircheck is what I’d call a double spot for McDonald’s. I call these double spots because they seem to be able to function as independent spots, but either may be one spot or are run back to back. In an aircheck of KBKS from August 2015, there were two or three repeated clients, and in the aircheck of KQMV I just posted on Friday, there were five. Upon further analysis, this is the #1 thing that needs to be fixed.
Next, I wish stations would stop messing with their clocks! First off, this would make my life easier as someone who records. When I do an aircheck, I usually try to record a station running its normal clock. I also would prefer to record in afternoon drive, but I’m having an increasingly hard time finding a station running its normal clock in afternoon drive. Many now have a long block of commercial free music at 4 or 5. This also means that the breaks outside of that block are quite a bit longer. If I were running a station, I’d run 2 6 minute breaks an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or at least that’s how the system would be scheduled. Whether or not those are filled, particularly in overnights, is a question I can’t answer at this time, since I have no experience actually scheduling spots. It would appear that commercial breaks haven’t actually gotten longer on many stations, just more condensed. All the airchecks I’ve referenced in this post with the exception of the KBKS August 2015 one have had breaks of this length. KBKS was running a number of commercial free hours throughout the day at that time, so it may have still averaged out to six minutes a break if they were actually running the normal clock.
Lastly, while not an issue of spot load, I figured this would be the best place to put this rant. Why is it that direct format competitors seem to align their breaks? If I’m running say a classic hits station and my direct competitor takes its breaks at 15 and 45, I’m going to take my breaks at top and bottom of the hour, so that when my direct competitor is in a break, I’m always in music.
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