Listening to ads on commercial radio

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

Over the last few days I have been listening to a bit of commercial radio stations to get an idea of peoples opinions on what is going on in the middle east. Normally however, I listen to the ABC.

I have noticed that there are lots and lots of ads - lots - like one third of air time is dedicated to advertisments, which I find incredibly irritating.

So, do you listen to commercial radio?

If so, how do you cope with listening to all the ads? Do you find them irritating but just put up with them? Do you find them not irritating? Whats the deal?

I could ask coworkers this but think it might come across sounding a little rude - but you guys know I am simply pursuing enlightenment.:slight_smile:

#2

Irritating?

Beyond irritating.

That’s why I listen to CBC and NPR, 99% of the time.

Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll listen to commercial radio. But when an ad comes on, I punch the buttons immediately.

#3

Yeah, I play the button punch piano when I hear talking.

I also can’t stand the fruity voices of the classical music station announcers; they get the button punch too.

#4

That’s the exact reason I switched to satellite radio (well, and so I could listen to Cardinals games.) It’s nice to be able to just turn the radio on and listen for hours without a commercial, and only the occasional station ID.

#5

I listen to baseball games on the radio. The ads are annoying beyond belief - because you hear the same 3-4 ads at least 18 times per game.

Fortunately, the ads only take up as much time as it takes to switch teams between innings - which isn’t long so I don’t change the station…but the repetitiveness drives me INSANE.

Commercial music radio, though…I live in Cleveland, so it’s dead. iPod for me!

#6

The only radio I listen to anymore is the ABC NewsRadio and the BBC World Service. I stopped listening to commerical radio over a year ago, since it’s clearly aimed at teenagers and has far too many ads for shit I don’t want to buy…

#7

I think I’ve given up on radio. Commercials might be one of the reasons. TV is bad enough.

#8

Hmmm. I suppose the SDMB is not the right demographic from which to expect an answer to this question. Some times ignorance is a good thing.

#9

I listen to commercial radio all the time and I totally ignore the ads. However, when I find myself singing jingles, I can see that part of my brain is not totally ignoring them.

Slight hijack: By the way, cable TV started out ad-less and now has just as many ads as network. Do you all think satellite radio will eventually have ads?

#10

XM started out with commercials on music channels, but dumped them a couple of years ago. I don’t think they’ll bring them back any time soon, especially with the furor over the Clear Channel-programmed channels instituting them (as part of a lawsuit settlement.)

The commercials on XM’s talk channels don’t bother me that much, although I am getting tired of hearing about Zantrex-3 and “Jim Blasingame’s Small Business Minute.” The Bruce Berman ads are a bit annoying too.

#11

Most weekday afternoons I listen to streaming audio of a radio program that originates outside my listening area so it’s only available to me over the computer. But it originates as a commercial program. They have 5-minute breaks at the half hours where there’s silence in place of local news (I assume) and some other 2- or 3-minute breaks near the quarter hours. Otherwise they play maybe 10-15 commercials that go out over the stream.

Annoying. Cheaply made. Local interest. Slop.

My only problem with muting them is that I wouldn’t hear when the show resumes. If I could, I would. It’s shameful and can’t possibly be effective. But it must be. I can’t be the only one annoyed. But there must be some in the audience supporting the sponsors or else they wouldn’t continue to run the same spot for weeks on end. Some of them have been running verbatim for two months or longer. Ridiculous.

#12

This is one of the reasons I refuse to get Pay TV. Maybe if they started offering an A La Carte service where I could pick, say, The Hitler… er, History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, The Comedy Channel, TV1, and VH1, I’d be happy- but to get those channels I’ve got to give Foxtel or Austar $80/month and get 200 channels of crap I don’t want as well…

#13

They’re moving a bit more towards that business model since the advent of digital. The prices have dropped, and you don’t have to have all of the unnecessary channels to get the ones you want. It’s still not on a “Pay $5 per channel per month for the channels that you want” type deal, but they’re getting better. We no longer have to pay $80 a month to get the channels we want as well as 15billion sports channels we don’t want.

#14

That’s certainly a step in the right direction! I can only hope that they will move towards “$5/channel per month” model sometime in the future, especially with increasing competition from the internet and DVDs…

#15

Two annoyances:

#1 Car Ads

What has always annoyed me about drive-time radio is the apparent fact that the radio industry is supported entirely by automobile dealers. And they always have some guy or girl with an annoying voice screaming about the great new deals and how they’ll GIVE YOU TONS OF MONEY if you can find the car cheaper elsewhere and how ALL CREDIT APPLICATIONS ACCEPTED and other audio-spam stuff.

Two out of three ads on our local stations are for car dealers. This is only compounded during peak hours when the commercials begin to exceed even the excessive times spoken of by the OP.

#2 Bogus non-ads during “commercial free” time

We have a local station that goes on and on about how they have a 20 song “music marathon” every day at 9, noon, and 5pm. But after you suffer through ten minutes of car ads at 4:55, they finally start their music at 5:05, and then something strange happens: after the first or second song, you hear something that sounds pretty much like an ad. A fellow comes on and talks about how great their station is because they play 20 songs in a row without interruption.

Another song passes and then they have a spot for their current contests. And so on. “Back in the day” when a station said 20 in a row without commercials, you heard just that, 20 songs, followed by a kind DJ rattling off the song names and then a buttload of commercials. Then it would start again, all day long!

Of course, they are truthful: they state clearly that they don’t consider station promotional announcements to be commercials.

#16

They’re a break from the horrible programming. I can’t remember the last time I’ve listened to broadcast radio. Yuck.

At work I listen to online radio, my current three are powerfm out of Dublin, Ireland; samurai.fm; and some French dance station. Honestly, I don’t even know if they have ads on them. I generally try to find French stations because I like the ads quite a bit; I don’t speak French, but I like to listen to it spoken. Similarly, I listened to VibeFM for quite some time, but finally gave up because I got sick of the music they played; I usually liked the ads as much as the music. (It looks like they’ve got their archive running again, however, so I may start listening to NuSkool Breaks again.)

#17

I generally tolerate (or tune out) most radio ads but I do get fed up when I hear the same ad five or six times within the space of 30 minutes.