JimsRants

Ok, fun stuff, If I could change rule the world

Not saying anything political here, just looking at small inconveniences that bother me, and should be fixed fairly easily. On my previous site I mentioned this one and it has to do with the radio, I know many people now are listening to satellite radio or commercial free entertainment of some sort, but I still get most of my new music from the radio. I have always wondered about the programming directors that push the concept of playing back to back songs for roughly the number of minutes equal to the station number. My problem has been that everyone does this and everyone that listens to the radio knows that when the commercials do come on, it will be an uninterrupteable block of about 15 minutes of commercials, which to most people means time to flip the channel. Now think of this for a second, radio gets it's revenue from selling commercials, commercials are sold based upon the rating(or demographics) of the station and the long play time probably pushes the ratings up, but now we have trained the listener to flip off the radio station to a new one once a commercial airs which effectively negates the value of the commercial, I mean if I'm not the first commercial in the block, my advertising dollar is completly wasted.

I've always said that radio stations should instead of airing long uninterupted commercial free music, they should advertise no more than one commercial per commercial break. (or something similar, I'm not a marketing director of course they could make it more savvy for the listener) Think of it this way, you are listening to a music station, and a commercial comes on, some people automatically flip it, and try to find another good station with music in it, well you hit your pre-sets and find nothing worth listening too, which station do you go to? the one that is on commercial number 4 of a long block of 20 commercials? or the one who's on commercial number one of one commercial?

Another minor complaint I have had against radio stations is the selection of the music, I understand playing the top songs from the genre of music that you represent, and I almost always prefer to hear newer songs over older songs, but on a pop/alternative station which has a large catalog of music, what is wrong with rotating in older songs from a band that is currently having a hit song? Pirate radio in California used to do this and got very good ratings if I remember correctly. If Alanis Morrissette has a hot top ten song, that is appropriate for the genre of station that the music is playing, then it would be a good idea to reduce the number of times you are playing that particular song and putting some of her older stuff in there to add variety but still stick with the hot sounds. (numbers made up out of my ass right here) say that a station normally in a 24 hour time frame will play a top song 8 times(once every three hours) how about instead of doing it 8 times, you do it 5 times and the other 3 you put in a song from that artist's previous work(assuming it's not a new artist of course)

that is of course just the way I see it, others probably are just fine with hearing the same song every three hours or so.

posted by cardsfanboy @ 3:58 PM