If I Had Six Breaks an Hour

It was a major, brand-name FM music station. It was a station that was typically a format leader. It was a station that was usually top-three in the market, although I remember when it was always No. 1 or 2. About six weeks ago, I listened for the first time in years. I started at the top of the 10 a.m. hour. For the first 45 minutes I didn’t hear a jock at all. Around :45, I finally heard a “fake break” — a plug for the morning show that had the timbre of a jock break, but was designed for multiple reuse.

On Tuesday, I was listening to a different radio station. I tuned in around 1:30 p.m. Around :50, I was about to write it off as entirely jockless when the middayer came on to say her goodbyes. I heard the PD/afternoon host’s first break about 20 minutes later. In a world programmed for eight-minute listening occasions, I could have been in and out several times before knowing there was any hosting.

I put the question to Twitter followers — how many jock breaks will I hear in your 11 a.m. hour tomorrow? The choices were 1-4, five, six or more, or none. One-to-four was the prevalent answer (44%) and if it seems like that range is too broad, please remember that four breaks an hour used to be the number for a station that considered itself ultra-music-intensive. Another third of respondents (32%) did five breaks an hour. Only 15% did six or more. Only about 10% professed to be jockless. That doesn’t jibe with what I hear on the radio, but I’m guessing that most of those PDs didn’t bother to answer.

In the early ’80s, the extremes of production were WRQX (Q107) Washington, D.C., and KFRC San Francisco. KFRC, in the middle of a high-profile-personality golden age that included Dave Sholin, Harry Nelson, Bill Lee, and many more, talked over every intro during a sweep, except for a two-second sweeper at :30 with an almost desultory reading of the call letters. The only production was jingles and contest promos out of the stopsets. I once played a great KFRC aircheck with a timecheck at 4:18 for friends. People always assumed it was afternoon drive. But KFRC was a station with great overnighters, too.

Q107 was considered one of Top 40’s most-produced radio stations. Q107 talked only every other song. Over the other intros, it used a rollover sweeper with the laser-blast that had opened the Steve Miller Band’s “Jungle Love” a few years earlier. But that still meant jocks at least six times an hour, as well as going into stopsets in a time when a jock break, not a station promo, was typically found there. 

I recently had a new Operations Manager express surprise that the station he inherited was talking six times an hour. “Is that normal?” he asked. But if you believe that personality is radio’s last point of differentiation, it’s not outrageous. It’s survival. At the National Assn. of Broadcasters New York show, where there’s a lot of talk about -personality as radio’s biggest strength in 2022, I ran into Shawn “Puffy” Novatt, director of student station/Marconi nominee WHPC Long Island, N.Y. His staff is being taught to talk over every other song. 

Similarly, WAEZ (Electric 94.9) Johnson City, Tenn., PD Jason Reed has put back that break at the end of the sweep that would usually go to a promo or a “more music, next” sweeper. Reed has given personalities the option of using the break only if they have something worth using it for. 

So if my station was doing six breaks an hour, what would I tell them to talk about?

Two would be promotions/station business. One would the setup for any contest that was not a nationwide text-to-win. One would be the payoff, in which you heard tangible proof that there had been an actual winner.

Two would be about the music. One would introduce a new song in a way that is not “here’s the latest from” and actually advocates for the song. (Triple-A is best at this.) One would be selling a power in a way that makes listeners think again about the song that they’ve been hearing for four months.

At least one break would be local flavor. Somehow, it is the break that I hear least in all my radio listening, even sometimes in small markets. I would demand one track per hour from a voice-tracker that could not possibly be used in or rewritten from any other market.

The final break would be to thank the listeners — preferably with a shout-out to a few of them.

I’d let a produced promo or sweeper take care of the “listen to us on your devices” plug. KRTY San Jose’s testimonials with actual listeners hearing the station in exotic locales are still the best example. 

I’d let a station’s produced hook promos take care of letting listeners know what you play, rather than having the jock reel off three names and say nothing of substance about the song playing now.

I don’t care if I never hear another break about what an artist did on Instagram yesterday. I don’t care about what doctors in the Netherlands have found (except in the Netherlands, where they probably read day-old items about doctors in America). If you tied them to something local, I might care. (Or maybe if you bring the right amount of urgency, so I can’t tell your break was cut yesterday.)

I do care that the break not sound perfunctory and that it doesn’t sound like the personality is rushing to finish it. The sound of contemporary radio in 2022 is hearing a personality audibly rushing to shovel in that “doctors in the Netherlands” story over the intro of “As It Was.” Since the intro of “As It Was” is :14 — if you don’t play the cold intro — I’m not sure why this is such a problem for people.

Then again, if your station is doing the “join the conversation” format, and you’ve got a good topic going, maybe all six of your breaks will be about the same topic. In general, anything that can’t be covered by a produced sweeper is a better use of 14 seconds than what I’m hearing now.

Recently, I went back and listened to early-’80s KFRC again, this time with an ear on what the jocks were doing over all those intros. There were a lot of creative frontsells. WCBS-FM New York p.m. driver Bill Lee is the KFRC jock who built a career out of them, but almost every KFRC jock would use song titles to tell a story, and no two sounded the same doing it. Sometimes it was just regular station business creatively executed. It was always in the moment — again, something I’m not hearing much now.