I hate the radio for the commercials. Well I hate the talk to, but the commercials are even more useless. I used to listen to HOT 103.5 (yeah, that long ago!) but one of the reasons I started listening to other stations is because they have a lot of commercials; although the worst station is probably Buffalo’s KISS 98.5 (they had great song selection but something like 5 minutes of commercials every 20 minutes).

I still listen to the now z103 on occasion, but they have found new ways to infuse advertisements to annoy me. Some of their commercials now start off like “Hi I’m [DJ name] and I’m here today with [Mr. ABC] from [high margin industry like tanning or jewelry]…” and they go on for a minute. The whole talk makes it seem like the DJ is doing a live interview and not a paid commercial; except when you hear the same “interview” every morning, even the dumbest listeners will figure it out. Another tactic they’ve used is to start chatting about specific branded topics. For example, when NHL09 was being released, they had a five-minute discussion about how hard it was to find NHL09 in stores! OMG I need to go run out and buy it RIGHT NOW then. Right? Maybe they truly are talking about it for general interest, but now I’m wary whenever a brand is mentioned on the radio.

But the other day, I re-realized a more insidious form of advertising. As you probably know, labels compensate record stations for playing their artists’ songs for you to listen. That’s why you hear a lot of crap songs (like Pink’s So What) which gradually gain popularity once enough people hear it over and over. But what I realized was that no radio stations were playing NKOTB’s second single, Single. This song seemed to be made to be a guaranteed hit since NKOTB had the momentum of their comeback, AND it featured Ne-Yo. But why wasn’t it being played? I thought about when the NKOTB gravy train lost its steam, and they seemed to have stopped playing their songs on the radio right after their concerts at the ACC. Coincidence?

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: advertising, radio