I came away from the 2013 Radio Show in Orlando encouraged. On the dais, NRG’s Mary Quass spoke candidly about radio’s spotload issue, an unusual admission at the time. Cumulus had just announced the acquisition of streaming music service Rdio, prompting their Lew Dickey to declare “it’s all audio”—a major about face from the previous “us and them” mindset. Finally, I sensed broadcasters were ready to discuss their issues across a broad canvas.
For the next 18 month, I spoke to broadcasters’ groups, from the National Assn. of Broadcasters to Commercial Radio Australia, about a comprehensive plan for Radio in an Audio World. The tenets included expanding beyond the over-the-air signal, organizing those choices in a more user-friendly way, and understanding what set radio apart when our competition was Apple and not merely each other.
I also encouraged broadcasters not to cede the battle for “continuous music.” To not address spotload, I felt, was pushing listeners away before they left on their own. Part of the charge to create more “radio” beyond the AM/FM dial was to compete with Pandora and a nascent Spotify on their own music-intensive turf.
I knew it was an ambitious agenda. The presentation found an enthusiastic audience from group heads to small-market GMs, but I knew that the response for some would be “don’t tell me, tell my bosses.” I was also looking for a level of unity that has often eluded broadcasters. Some viewers probably thought “don’t tell me, tell my competition.”
Three years later, on the eve of Radio Show 2016 in Nashville, I wrote an article called “As Industry Gathers, Radio is Still Negotiating the Audio World.” It was about the issues that still haunted broadcasters—spotload, spot quality, streaming issues. It was also about my early encounters with cab drivers and civilian friends who did not know how to use broadcast radio, then still a relatively remarkable occurrence, at least among adults.
I wrote the 2016 article on the eve of podcasting’s explosion and the implosion of industry initiatives like NextRadio (and Rdio). I wrote it when there was more industry infrastructure—from BDS to All Access. I wrote it before industry gatherings became diminished and before the three years when we could barely talk face-to-face at all, much less make elaborate plans.
A decade after my original article, assessing radio’s progress in an audio world might just seem cruel. The surprise was that radio’s better-financed rivals hadn’t successfully transitioned “radio” to a new platform. Instead, they still wait for their George Lucas—somebody who grew up with Flash Gordon, but with the vision to reinvent it for a new generation, instead of literally suggesting a new episode every Saturday, 1940s style. (Perhaps the rise of podcasting as audio’s shiniest new toy was because they had their own Serial.)
There are people to whom a radio pep talked seemed willful in 2013. There are certainly broadcasters who were still optimistic then to whom “Staying Optimistic in Radio, Even Now” just seems delusional. But I want to share “What Got Better About Radio” (at least for me) with the rest of the world, because I think radio’s many choices are still a marketable commodity, at least until somebody else offers something better. But that window will close, and it will probably not take another ten years.
Writing about the promise of Orlando when radio’s fall gathering is not a separate show but two programming tracks at NAB Show New York may seem naïve, too. But I came away from last year encouraged by both the quality of the people I encountered and the new emphasis on the intelligent use of personality, a discussion that is expected to give way next week to the use of AI as personality. But there will be broadcasters in New York with the power to make a difference. In 2013, I wanted to deal with radio’s issues holistically. In an overwhelmed industry, I feel the need to narrow my focus.
The weird thing about the last 10 years is that while broadcasters refused to defend the continuous music franchise, they never really got away from it. WLTW (Lite FM) New York is a 7-8 share radio station. Chicago’s Lite FM, WLIT, is a 6-7 share player. KOIT San Francisco has been in the 7-9 share range, even with another AC in the market. As with Pandora a decade ago, Spotify and Apple Music have the mystique of “music discovery,” but they are continuous music providers as well. Radio’s least sexy aspects are where rivals have made the most inroads, and yet they still seem to be our biggest draw.
And that is why my first priority is this:
Fix spotload. Now.
Don’t play games with it (“the 14-minutes of spots are over and we’re kicking off a commercial free-hour”). Don’t merely reconfigure it (3×4 or 2×6?). Don’t shrug it off. Take meaningful action.
We still need streaming apps that better organize radio choice. But until we fix spotload, all our on-air device promos will just be gateway drugs for other services.
We still need to fix our streaming stopset experience. But at current levels, spotload is an issue even if we do not play the same PSAs or three fill songs repeatedly.
We need to market radio again. If we did so aggressively, usage would probably go up even for what’s over-the-air today. But I’d rather our first dealing with a younger or lapsed listener be the best it can be.
We need better commercials and to control the quality of our sponsors. But I knew by 2016 that “just make the ads better” wasn’t working (or happening in the first place). And we can control seven minutes of spots an hour better than we can 12-14.
We need to continue to embrace personality, particularly as the AI discussion rages. We need to decide how we want to use AI, and create a code of ethics. We need to embrace the show-biz and localism that are also part of radio’s toolkit. We need “real radio” to be a rallying cry, rather than quaintly nostalgic. Being overwhelmed and overleveraged makes these things harder. And, again, there is a lot of listening still going to those stations where full-service personality is not the focus.
We have decided as an industry that we must solve our problems on our own air and among those still listening. I agree with that. For now. Radio needs to address its listening levels. Radio also needs to admit that the current 8-9-minute listening occasions are a bug, not a feature. If we are looking to increase listening, without an ambitious multi-pronged agenda, the best thing I can think of now is not to push listeners away as frequently for as long as we do currently.
I asked Facebook friends for the one thing they would most prioritize. Their answers ranged from paying talent better to an industry-wide marketing campaign; from specifically targeting the next generation of listeners and talent to “thinning the herd.” (I also believe in a smaller number of broadcast services done better.) You’ll see their responses next week, but spotload is at the heart of many of them.
Encouraging broadcasters to fix the one thing that has been regarded as non-negotiable throughout this discussion may seem as naïve as 2013’s exhortations to engage at every level. At a time when a lot of our on-air clutter is in-house, I still hear places where tightening is possible. And just as radio’s crisis began with the addition of one unit an hour, the elimination of even one minute an hour has the ability to repatriate 18 minutes of listening in rated hours, or as we call that now, two listening occasions.
We both know spots are what keep the station on the air, but you are absolutely correct spotload being an issue. I live in DC area and so many stations will play”continuous music” but you know that as soon as the DJ starts to talk, we’re also going to have traffic, 5 minutes of spots, weather, and then 5 more minutes.
Talent development is also huge. Every daypart doesn’t have to be a crazy morning team, but it does have to be at least interesting.
I program CHR. There’s a lot of talk about CHR’s ratings and music issues.
I’ve often wondered…how much of the ratings issue with CHR is a by-product of so many big market CHR’s (largely owned by one company) playing 10 minutes of spots in a row, twice an hour?
As an aside…it’s interesting to look at some of the smaller Eastlan markets. Different methodolgy of the ratings service, different programming philopsophy of the CHR’s…and you’ll often see CHR’s at the top. Food for thought.
You’re exactly right. The 15 minute spot loads have created an unlistenable, undesirable product.
You’re spot on, especially about spot loads. I hate to bring up the old days, but in my youth, the air personalities could break up what seemed to be a lot of commercials in a row with a bit of chatter in between – always focusing on local events. Of course, the stations were running 12-minutes/hour except in morning drive. One concern I have is we have to run 14-minute stop sets because we sell our spots too cheaply. We need to show results so rates can be higher. If you’re local – and act like it – you have a built-in advantage to the stations where the “personality” does three other shifts a day and has no time nor incentive to learn about the markets they do. They talk about meaningless junk; I mean, yes, Taylor Swift is a big deal but does she have to be mentioned in every jock break? Thanks for letting me get that all off my chest.
When I worked for a successful businessman, outside of radio at the beginning of my career, he taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten:
“Don’t chase money. Chase success.” His thought was that if all you did was chase money, you’d never have time to be successful. But if you were successful, you’d never have to worry about money.
This is a concept everyone from station GM’s to corporate CEO’s need to heed. THAT would be my “co-first thing,” along with stopsets. Strive to be successful, always.
My other pet-peeve is marketing. In 10 years of travels all around, I’ve seen perhaps 10 radio billboards and much less TV and print ads. Here in Philly, during the Jerry Lee years of WDVR, then-Eazy 101, then-B101, then-MoreFM, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing the station’s marketing. Billboards, bus cards and wraps, TV ads (with big name stars!), etc, the station was everywhere, with the ratings and profits to match. Today, nearly zip, with the lack of ratings and profits to match.
I agree with everything set above. Perhaps a perfect analogy for the industry these days is the Wizard of Oz, even down to the nostalgia factor. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The more the industry insists on insulting the listeners intelligence, believing that their time is yours instead of theirs, And tries cute parlor tricks, the more it looks completely irrelevant. As a 34 year old, I grew up with Radio, even now I have to admit, it’s so cheesy, dated, and sad sounding at this point.
A mistake is the phrase “ everyone can play the same songs” You can use research to better focus on the library and use better flow to the music sets with good song characteristics coding It requires a programmer to monitor the music scheduling.
I have railed against excessive spot loads for years. Quality of commercials is another issue. Companies were shortsighted when they count production and copywriting jobs. It removed a level of client service that directly dealt with the advertiser as much as the salesperson. Much like spotload it sacrificed quality for quantity.
The world has changed but radio didn’t. We’re still so hyper focused on gaming the ratings system that we lost sight of the much larger picture of how people consume audio. If you include podcasts (and I believe you must), listeners’ choices for what to listen to exploded a hundredfold. Commercials have become massive roadblocks to audio consumption. Podcasts are essentially a throwback to old time radio. Maybe it’s time to throwback to shorter, more frequent breaks. And maybe we’ll be better able to compete against entertainment of all forms.
Michael-you’re working on one of radio’s two biggest issues. Spotloads are crazy long….but more importantly the content is AWFUL!! I spend a lot of time with Los Angeles Radio and the commercial content is dreadful. Great radio happened “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”. The KHJ airchecks in the movie illustrate how companies went to the extra mile to provide totally entertaining commercial content that enhanced the music. Today, I hear better production made in Buffalo than I do in Los Angeles. The guy sounding like Col. Tom Parker trying to fix my time share? Really? The business model of selling “airtime” on radio is kinda antiquated. Radio would be smart to research the proper length of a stopset and charge accordingly. If my commercial is 8th in a set, I should be charged MUCH LESS than the guy up front . Oh, and then there’s the ratings system. In 2023 we’ve advanced technologically to the point where radio ratings should not be an ESTIMATE. The big companies haven’t found a legal way to “snoop” and see what I’m hearing? Then they’re not investing in the right areas. Radio isn’t competing against other entertainment forms. It’s surrendering to them.
KHJ hit the air with 7 minutes an hour. Six 70 second breaks. Another era. Z100 ran 8 minutes; 10 in morning drive. And another era. Then……..1996!
Your analysis is spot on (no pun intended). After a year away from the business (everyone should try it) the ultimate solution is one that would/could never happen: ownership limits, per market. Let’s go back to 6-6-6 or 7-7-7. It would create competition, enhance rate integrity, and encourage thinking out of the box. I wrote a college independent study paper on “proposed deregulation of the radio industry” in the Fall of ’80. I was in favor. I’d like to go back and smack myself. And with most of the major markets dominated by companies deeply in debt (or worse) nothing is going to change in that regard. Despite that, radio is STILL a viable, living, breathing, amazing thing. Let’s stop choking it.
Jay, I totally respect your opinions. Would love to hear your thoughts on why radio was in a good position to consolidate.. Maybe it made sense in 1980 but now that we’ve seen what’s happened, we’re re-thinking that. In 1980 the bulk of print advertising went to local newspapers. Most cities had one or two dailies. They were raking in a fortune. Broadcasters wanted to raise their share-and the way to do it was to acquire additional signals. Consolidation (as it was explained to me) was a way for radio to achieve better advertising revenue shares. I’m sure that the share that Audacy and iHeart get in impressive, but to see their stocks in the dumper doesn’t say much for their financial outlook in 2023 does it now? Not looking good for the print business either. Internet, Pandemic, more choices. Radio is still viable, still free and still easier to latch onto than many of the competing digital services. Radio has to realize that it’s competition is much larger than it ever was and treat it accordingly. The Golden Arches haven’t maintained their superiority in the fast food world by minimizing the product and eliminating marketing efforts. Don’t really know what radio’s plan for the future is. Don’t know if they do either.
Dave – all great points. My premise behind favoring deregulation was exactly what you said – market share of ad revenue. TV, print, and maybe outdoor were the only competitors. Now? Phew.
An investor that purchased radio stock 12 months ago by investing in Audacy, Beasley, Cumulus, Saga, Salem, Townsquare, Spanish Broadcasting System, Urban One and iHeart. That investor would see their return down 33 percent in one year.
Perhaps smaller groups and individual owners may be able to reduce spot load. However, the major groups aren’t likely to do so. Commercials are the main income, and things such as podcasting don’t bring in large enough revenue. With Audacy, Beasley, Salem and SBS all trading for under $1 a share, they won’t be cutting their spots loads anytime soon.
KHJ did have a low spot load and the raised per unit rates in their heyday. But try that now, and one of the major radio groups in the market will undercut the rates of the smaller broadcasters.
Edward, “perhaps” is way too gentle a word.
Radio can build a following, create a community, shape a trend. Radio is the original social media, and it is time to remember that and act upon it. Because as radio has become more corporate, and programmers and management are focused on brands and ratings, they have forgotten the most important ability of radio; A good radio station builds a community of listeners. Not a community or town that listens, but people who bond because of the “listenability” of the station to the people.
A listener who bonds to a station, will listen to the music or talk and, will sit through several “spots” and not tune out, because it is “their “station and they are engaged with the content and afraid they will miss something if they mess with skipping to another station.
Try loading commercials that don’t break the continuity of the station, people will be less likely to press the button for another station if the spot sounds like the rest of the content on the station.
But a new survey is good news, most people in cars, even streaming equipped cars, listen to AM/FM radio for most of the listening experience::
https://9to5mac.com/2023/10/20/carplay-am-fm-radio-data/
Sean, you are brilliant. There’s a big elephant running around and it’s radio’s issues. A lot of appetites want to eat that elephant one bite at a time, and yet the people with the knives an forks have them locked up in Wall Street. Until someone wakes up and realizes that radio is NOT a Wall Street darling, the medium will continue to suffer. You can say that a company’s problems can’t be fixed by throwing money at it, but many are learning today that you cause more problems by choking the expense line. When 25-35% of a station’s hour is filled with stuff that’s not relevant to the listener it’s gonna lose. Hire the best talent? Explain that their job is to keep people listening and reward those that do. Don’t handcuff them with ridiculous spots. Don’t handcuff them with 10 breaks an hour voiced by someone else. Jeez. We KNOW what radio’s problems are, Sean. In the words of a mid-level corporate genius…. “tell that to my boss”.
If spot load really is the white whale of radio, then why aren’t public radio stations #1 by a wide margin in every market? Most underwriting breaks total less than 4 minutes per hour. Often it’s less. Or the breaks are more than just spots.
There aren’t a lot of apples-to-apples case studies of public radio stations doing a mass-appeal music format, but I wouldn’t rule out spotload when we see KUTX Austin or KEXP Seattle go on a roll for a while (or even that they’re in the conversation to begin with).
Music is a red herring, though. By the definitions presented in this discussion, the spot load issue is just as bad in commercial news/talk stations as it is in many (if not the vast majority) of commercial music stations. In some ways it’s probably worse because so many news/talk stations have their newscasters/hosts do live reads that are paid promotions but the scripts & presentations are very explicitly done to sound like actual newscasts.
And in quite a few markets, especially the larger markets, the local public radio news/talk station(s) are indeed doing VERY well in the ratings. But rarely are they walloping the local commercial news/talk station. In the 6+ numbers for the latest book, KUOW is #4 with a 5.9 share and 263,600 cume in Seattle…which is excellent. But KIRO is #3 with a 6.0 share and 428,700 cume.; slightly better. If it’s all about spot load, why isn’t KIRO tanking and KUOW firmly on top? You see a roughly similar dynamic between WBZ-AM and WBUR/WGBH in Boston, WINS and WNYC in New York, KFI and KCRW/KPCC in LA, etc etc etc. Usually the commercial news/talker is on top, and the pubradio outlets (even if you add them together…which you can’t really do) are competitive but not superior.
Getting back to music, KEXP, KCSN/KSBR, WFUV, KUTX, KKXT, WXPN, etc all run Triple-A formats that are pretty mass-appeal. We’re not talking craptastic “variety” stations or basement college radio here. They all draw in a decent-sized audience but none of them are terribly competitive in their markets….usually floating around the #15 to #20 station in the market. Some of them might have hefty spot loads but I seriously doubt any of them are pushing 15-20 minutes an hour like so many commercial outlets do. First off, it’s illegal to have an underwriting spot longer than 30 seconds on a non-commercial licensee; 10 or 15 seconds is far more common. Second, the “big three” underwriting restrictions (no calls to action, no price info, no inducements to buy/sell/lease) also tone the spots WAY down compared to commercials on a commercial radio station.
I’m not saying spot load isn’t a problem: it IS a problem. But if it were merely a question of running fewer spots per hour then we’d be seeing far, far more evidence that non-commercial radio is trouncing their commercial counterparts. And if anything, we’re seeing the reverse. At a minimum, there MUST be other factors that are at least as important…if not more important…than just spot load.
Remember Beautiful Music radio back in the day. 6 units an hour and hard and fast restrictions on how they sounded….widely successful. All the while, the sales department clamoring for more inventory and loosening those pesky restrictions. Guess who won. The format ultimately died for a variety of reasons, but its early success can clearly be attributed greatly to both limited spot load and controls.
There’s a lot of “remember when” here and yes, radio was great in its day. I was blessed to be a part of some great major market stations. Radio not only failed to change and innovate but it actually went backwards. It is the ONLY media that is now the same or worse regarding stopsets, talent and music programming. Every other media has changed…movies, TV, music and the many streamers. A huge disadvantage is the lack of nurturing young demos. Generally radio is irrelevant to them and they are gone for good, they have moved on! The older demos are all thats left. Thats why old or classic stations lead in ratings. Its not spots, its demos.
I really appreciate the dialogue that has sprung up in the comments section of this column in recent weeks. After our first exchange, I wanted to give Aaron Read’s comments (above) the time and attention they deserve.
Aaron is correct that low spotload, by itself, is not a magic bullet for individual stations. Scott Shannon’s Pirate Radio debuted with one spot an hour, but it’s rival KIIS that still stands 25 years later. In 2007, KZPS (Lonestar 92.5) Dallas tried both a Classic Rock/Americana hybrid and a sponsorship-only model, both of which gave way to a more traditionally structured Classic Rock. Often spotload stunts are on behalf of a niche station and, as Aaron points out, that doesn’t override a mass-appeal station.
I do see examples where lower spotloads are successfully used tactically. KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco, one of our most successful CHRs, has some hours with 10-minutes of spots, but those loss leaders are equivalent (or shorter) than other stations’ typical hours. Oher hours have four minutes or six. I also think spotload figures into how Christian AC has become much more than a niche in some markets in some months. And in those countries where commercial broadcasters compete with a non-comm like the CBC or BBC, they complain bitterly about unfair advantage.
So Aaron and I are agreed that the lowest spotload is not always on the biggest station.
He is also careful to point out that spotload is a problem. We’re agreed on that one, too.
So what next?
Maybe the discussion of share is the distraction. Share is hardly irrelevant. I certainly want the stations I work with to grow share and have a larger one than their rivals. But perhaps we have to recognize it as “the battle for what’s left” of less available listening. Radio needs to do more at this moment than merely fight over what’s left.
There *are* stations that successfully use a typical 2023 spotload to win the battle for existing shares with commercial-free hours or three-hour workday kickoffs camouflaging 16-units in other hours. On a landscape of diminished listening, that is a pyrrhic victory.
I’m viewing the notion of cutting spotload across the board as an overall strategy for all of radio. We are currently employing a lot of PPM trickery to retain listeners in the moment with the appearance of fewer commercials. Wouldn’t actually playing fewer ads retain them for many more moments?
When the discussion of localism vs. syndication and voice-tracking ignited in the early ’00s, it was easy to cite Howard Stern or Steve Harvey as proof that “live and local” didn’t win every time. But localism’s detractors didn’t find a Stern or Harvey for every moment of radio. They led us to our low-engagement road of not-so-compelling piped-in content. We needed, and still need, discussions about doing both better local and national radio. And we should have two tracks of discussion about market wars and bolstering radio overall.
When I asked readers for their suggestions on how to move radio forward, it was gratifying to see how many different ideas were put forth. Spotload was on the top of many lists, but not all of them. I agree with almost all of their fixes, but if a holistic plan is going to be overwhelming, I’m in favor of working together to fix spotload first. And I’m not naive about whether that could happen in an overleveraged world.
The most frustrating part over the years about radio’s struggle to sell fewer (or no) commercials for more money is having watched our streaming rivals selling four minutes an hour. I’ve referred to it elsewhere as watching somebody else flying above in the space car of the future we were promised. But maybe it’s time to finish what Pirate Radio’s Scott Shannon and GM Simon T. started. Or at least start discussing it again..
I Think that all AM, FM, Internet, Satellite, and Podcast radio should just get rid of the streaming crap, go back to their roots, and hear what the listeners/radio fans says.
Please don’t take my streaming away, Vaughn. It’s the thing that I’ve liked best about radio for the past 25-plus years. But I want it to be better and I agree that radio station device promos are part of what bogs the medium down, at least as they’re done now.
Mr. Ross streaming is drinking the life out of real AM, FM, Internet, Satellite, Podcast radio.
I’m a old school radio listener as a radio fan, i care about hearing real jocks live and in living color and not hearing AI jocks.
I’m talking about streaming as the thing heard over the air, not voice-tracking, the process of creating a jock break (with or without AI). We are agreed that more personality would be a good thing.
Sean, you’re right on. target. 100%. A Top 20 market has just lost national buys…not on a station…in the entire market…because only ONE station in the city reached the AQH threshold to justify a buy. It has nothing to do with share. Programmers can keep chasing each other around the format clocks with tactics to try and outmaneuver the other radio stations, but they’re chasing shares in a rapidly shrinking pie. And that pie will shrink if we keep punishing listeners with an unending stream of unlistenable commercials.