So there’s this medium-sized market unmeasured by Arbitron/Nielsen.
And what does a broadcaster do when the ratings company doesn’t provide the disciplining force of audience feedback? Well, here they lard up the station with an unconscionable volume of commercials, that’s what!
One Hot AC in this market even features the extraordinary listener benefit (I assume that’s what they call it) of 28 minutes of spots in the hour – in middays!
No, I am absolutely not kidding.
So what does this mean?
Many of us may not like ratings, but we have ratings to thank for saving listeners from a cruel and unusual degree of advertising torture. This just in: Listeners don’t like ads.
This particular market will never again be rated because the broadcasters will not be able to tolerate both paying for ratings and cutting back inventory in order to compete for those ratings.
Bulletin to these broadcasters: It’s called “rate integrity.” Start charging clients what your advertising medium is worth – or else it isn’t.
Congratulations! You just motivated and armed a generation of listeners with new, attractive, free, music-filled choices and handed them a one-way ticket out of Radio-ville. Maybe Pandora will send you a fruit basket for the holidays.
I guess packing half the hour full of commercials on a music station works for advertisers. Or the advertisers are too stupid to know that this strategy doesn’t work for them – in which case at least they, too, are chumps.
Any broadcaster that commits an act of such wanton neglect of its audience deserves to lose that audience and does not deserve to be a custodian of the public airwaves. I’m just saying.
Is there any way we can get the ads sponsored? What about the naming right for the midday host’s first-born? Just thinkin’ out of the box here.
You know who you are, Mr. Offending Station. And you’re not alone – others in your market see you as the rule rather than the sickening exception.
Ads are the tax listeners pay for the experience they desire. Not vice versa.
Hell hath no fury like a listener scorned. Just wait and see.