The Talk Radio Advantage

Are you annoyed by ads?

Most of us are, and that creates an interesting conundrum for businesses that need to invite potential customers to spend money with them via advertising.

In the early 1980’s when I was a top 40 rock and roll radio disc jockey on WMEE, I remember when we introduced “20 minute commercial free music sweeps” and even though I was all about the music and not really caring about advertising, this bothered me.

This was the beginning of conditioning our audience to perceive advertising as bad, as undesirable, as something to avoid.

Radio stations that played music would stop the music up to 4 times, maybe 6 times an hour to play a couple of commercials.  These commercial free music sweeps were to prevent listeners from changing stations when the ads played because the ads played less often.  The problem was that many stations still played the same number of commercials per hour but now instead of two in a row, they would play 4, 5 or 6 commercials back to back.  I recall about 15 years ago when a local music station promised to only stop the music once an hour.  I listened and counted 18 ads playing back to back to back for over 10 minutes.  Yes, they played 45 minutes of music back to back but all of those ads back to back created so much listener annoyance that people either switched stations when the ads came on, or they mentally tuned out.

Television suffered the same fate as ads became an irritant and people spent money on ad-skipping devices such as VCRs so we could record a show and play it back later and fast-forward past the ads.

What’s that have to do with Talk Radio?

Last month I was meeting with a new advertising partner and she was telling me why she believes Talk Radio is the best play for her ads.

To paraphrase what she told me, her perception is that when people are listening to Talk Radio, they are wanting to hear what is being talked about and they are more engaged than music radio.  When a commercial break comes on as she is listening to music radio, she’s no longer invested in that station because they are not playing music and whatever song they play after the ads, she may or may not like.  However when listening to Talk Radio, the conversation that she’s listening to will likely continue after the ads and she continues to be invested in that conversation.

There’s also the less annoying factor of ads on Talk Radio.

The theory is that I’m already listening to someone talk so when the talking on the commercial starts, I’m already accustom to talking on the radio.

I’ve got fresh radio rating data that I’ll share in a few weeks that show me the listening habits of listeners of all the 20+ local radio stations here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This data doesn’t tell us the why behind the ratings, but combined with my personal antidotal research over the years and some other studies, we can understand the Talk Radio advantage for advertising.

By the way, I can help your business reach Talk Radio listeners now on three radio stations…

News Talk WOWO continues to be my primary station, and I also have Sports Talk radio, 1380 The Fan that is filled with live play by play and commentary for sports enthusiasts. There is also one more radio station that has a 4 hour talk show every morning, 98.9 The Bear, home of Jason Lee and Kluck in the morning until 10am.  The other 20 hours a day The Bear is a rock music station, but those morning drive hours are an excellent spot for your business to connect with Talk Radio listeners.

More in the future…