When I was managing radio stations in Iowa back in 1999, my two sons came to visit. So, don’t completely count commercially supported radio out yet. In fact, I remember when Sirius and XM were still two separate subscription satellite radio entities, the most listened to commercial free music channels on both of them were HITS 1 and Top 20 on 20 both of which had the highest music repetition.ĭave Van Dyke, the President & CEO at Bridge Ratings Media Research, said that globally there are 3.6 music streamers for every paid subscriber. It’s the music repetition of our favorite songs that actually attracts us. They reach a larger audience by targeting and focusing on a more narrowly defined audience.īy subscribing to Pandora and Radio Tunes we didn’t eliminate music repetition, we eliminated the programming elements that interrupted the music. They achieve the more variety music position by playing fewer songs. Yet, successful radio stations often employ strategies that can seem counter-intuitive. I often hear people say they get tired of hearing the same songs over and over. Plus she still can listen to any of Pandora’s wonderfully curated channels and skip any songs she doesn’t like. This is their top service, it’s commercial-free and offers listeners the ability to ask for any song and immediately hear it. My wife Sue loves Pandora and for Valentine’s Day 2022, I bought her Pandora Premium. Recently a reader of this blog, told me that he listened to commercial free Radio Tunes on his Amazon smart speakers and I’m a subscriber once again. I was hooked and remained a subscriber, only leaving the service when I got my first Amazon Echo and Radio Tunes (formerly known as Sky.FM) wasn’t available on the service. But that wasn’t all, that fee also increased the audio quality of the stream. Those were the only two announcements and they lasted about 30-seconds in length, but over time, it was like Chinese water torture so, I went online to find out how much it would cost to become a premium subscriber, learning it would cost me only $49/year. They only stopped the music twice an hour, once to tell me that I could hear this music without interruption by becoming a premium subscriber and the other announcement was about how they were looking to hire more IT personnel. They offered more than one flavor of Smooth Jazz music programming and it quickly filled my appetite for this musical genre. Not finding any radio station in the greater New York City area that programmed the Smooth Jazz format, I would search online and discover Sky.FM. It was in 2008, when New York’s CD 101.9 WQCD dropped its Smooth Jazz format to switch to playing rock music with the new call letters WRXP. To the radio listener, the amount of clutter increased and in essence, made their favorite radio stations less listenable. That means the number of ads that air in a single commercial break, as well as the total number ads broadcast each hour.Ĭlear Channel recognized this listener issue, but by introducing shorter length ads, the “Less Is More” initiative added more elements to each stop-set. If there’s one thing radio listeners tend to always agree on, when it comes to improving the radio listening experience, it’s reducing the number of commercials. Listeners don’t consider the length of a commercial break, but the number of different elements that air in a break. For example, the time it would take to run four minute length commercials, with Less Is More stations could now run six half-minute commercials or twelve 15-second commercials etc. This meant more ads could be run in a spot break. Each of my radio stations now aired ads that were as short as 5-seconds down to 1-second in length. When I was a market manager for Clear Channel, the company president introduced a new concept for reducing our commercial load, he called it “Less Is More.” It sounded good on the surface, however instead of reducing on-air clutter it introduced shorter length commercials.
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