A reader asks:
What do you think of running station promos first every time in each commercial break before any commercials?
Warning: My response will upset many program directors and consultants.
Current conventional wisdom holds that it’s a good idea, because it accords your station promo the coveted First Position in the stopset.
The two spots most likely to be remembered are the first and the last in the break. In Learning Theory, these are known as the Primacy and Recency effects.
The first one has the advantage of being heard before the listener potentially is turned off by a bunch of commercials. The last (the most recent) has the advantage of not being followed by any other commercial message to compete with it for the listener’s attention.
Personally, I think running the station promo first does a disservice both to the station and to the station’s advertisers.
1. Reserving the single best commercial position for the radio station sends a sad message to the advertisers: “We’re more concerned with our results than yours.”
How many magazines reserve the back cover or inside front cover for their own in-house ads? No, those prime spaces go to paid advertisers.
The smart radio station charges a premium (15% to 30%) to guarantee first or last placement in a commercial break. Just as magazines charge premiums for their most valuable ad pages.
2. You condition your listeners to expect a bunch of commercials whenever they hear a station promo. Your promo becomes their cue to mentally or physically tune out.
To make matters worse, most station promos properly end with the station’s name. So the Conditioned Response is for listeners to associate your station’s name with commercials.
Traditional Top 40 radio programming (my own training ground) stressed the importance of immediately following your call letters with music. This long has proved to be a very smart, effective strategy. Regardless of your format, it makes the most sense to juxtapose your call letters with the primary entertainment or information product for which listeners tune in.
Third, a good station promo is entertaining and involving. But if you follow today’s “conventional wisdom,” you force your listeners instead to think of your promos as “just” commercials. Honestly, how would you rate the average commercial on your station? Worth tuning in for? Or just clutter?
Rather than compete with your advertisers and reduce the image of your own promos, I recommend not including your promo anywhere in your stopset. Instead, run it solo elsewhere in the hour. You’ll shorten your commercial breaks, allow your sales department to charge a premium for First Position, and greatly increase the probable impact of your promos.
(I’m reminded of some programming genius who was quoted in a trade publication several years ago as saying that to make his station’s long commercial clusters seem shorter, he “breaks them up by including a couple of station promos.” Uh-huh.)
Finally, an anecdotal report:
Here in Los Angeles, years ago, I often listened to very good morning show. The station that broadcast this show:
1. Was the worst-produced major market station I’ve ever heard.
2. Began each (very long) stopset with a station-produced promo.
As soon as a stopset began, I’d automatically turn off the radio not because I wanted to avoid the commercials (commercial creation is one of my specialties, and I would listen to all-commercial radio if I could) but because I couldn’t stand to sit through 30 or 60 seconds of mindless, artless, inane, station-produced drivel.
In this case, the fact that every commercial break began with an embarrassingly bad station promo conditioned me to tune out the entire stopset. So I never heard any of the paid commercials on that station.
Do you suppose the advertisers would have been pleased to learn that the station inadvertently yet actively encouraged people NOT to listen to their commercials?
Comments on this entry are closed.
We run all of our programming promo’s between songs and not in a commercial break. It works well as it stands out between songs and releaves the burn on ID’s. Our commercial sets are shorter which means we get to the music faster which makes listeners happy. Since the promo is outside of commercial sets, traffic isn’t logging it and it allows programming to be in control which all PD’s like. Since we moved promo’s to outside of commercial time, it’s really improved the sound of our stations.
– Kevin Zahara
APD Newcap Radio Alberta Northwest.
I like the standalone promo idea too. What annoys me slightly more than that is a jock doing a lengthy liner into a promo … and what REALLY grinds my gears is when someone wasn’t paying attention (the jock or whoever schedules the liners) and reads the LINER for the thing the PROMO they then play promotes! Ugh!
Interesting and applys to TV too I’d say- for the most part.
I had been contemplating just such a change! Now I’m thinking much more seriously about it.
Very True. Well done.
If consultants and programmers seriously consider your suggestions, I’ll consider it a miracle. For thirty years, your suggestions were common sense to me, but gutless management never seemed to think for themselves…
“…a jock doing a lengthy liner into a promo…reads the LINER for the thing the PROMO they then play promotes!…”
As an on-air personality, I had been in situations where I was not allowed to do what was best for the station on-air: I had not been allowed to rearrange live, and recorded, promos that conflict and/or mimic each other. I have been forced to leave horrible sounding breaks as they were. And those guys get to keep their jobs…
Hey Dan, good blog about promo placement. I do have a question about item #2. If placing your station name next to commercials is a negative, then wouldn’t playing a sweeper out of the spot set be the same thing? I remember back in the Jacor days when we were instructed to NEVER use the station name going into the spot set, because “that’s putting a negative next to a positive”. If so, then what exactly SHOULD go there? The music is a positive, the air personality is a positive…an interesting conundrum.
@ Drew:
“If placing your station name next to commercials is a negative, then wouldn’t playing a sweeper out of the spot set be the same thing?”
No, because it’s not a matter only of juxtaposition. Conditioned Response also is a function of which comes first. Pavlov conditioned dogs to respond (by salivating) to the sound of a bell by repeated instances of the bell being rung, immediately followed by the presentation of food.
It didn’t take long before whenever the dogs would hear the sound of a bell, they would salivate — because, obviously, they associated the bell with the presentation of food.
But even though there was no attempt to measure this, it’s safe to assume that whenever they saw food they did not expect to hear the sound of a bell.
You were instructed not to give the station name right into a commercial break not because “that’s putting a negative next to a positive” (even if that’s how it was explained to you). Rather, the goal was to avoid putting your station name immediately prior to a “negative,” thereby conditioning listeners to associate “Station Name” with “commercials” because they would come to expect to hear commercials immediately after the station name.
On the other hand, if your music is perceived as a “positive,” giving your name at the conclusion of a stopset and immediately into music makes sense. The association to your name won’t be to “the last commercial in the break” that preceded it; it will be to the event that immediately follows it (music).
Boy Howdy,
Have I gotten my but in trouble with this one over the years.
I move the station promo to the end of each set. And load the AGY
Spots at the start.
However the sales staff hates it when I load the National Spot first and not the local joe spot.
The code I use:
1. AGY
2. Local produced spot with efx.
3. Local produced with just a music bed.
4.Any of the tacky Gawd awful spots that remain.
Thanks for this post, Dan. I’m changing my clocks now!