I often listen to a radio while at work (office or on the road) and my station of choice (“never more than 10 minutes away from news, talk, and sports”) has the CNN Radio News on the hour, every hour. That news normally runs for 120 seconds, then 60 seconds of network ads, then 120 more minutes of news, then more local ads. Sometimes the station cuts out the last 2 minutes of CNN and puts on either local news or more ads.
More and more now, every day, there are instances where they air both the CNN news and ads AT THE SAME TIME, either due to human or technical error, or on purpose. During that, the listener can understand neither the ads nor the news.
I prefer to hear the intended news and I still prefer the programming on the station to most others.
I have telephoned the station twice, right after the dual transmission, and they then ran the ads only, instead of the intended news (right after the start of the news, on the hour). They’ve gone back to the duality.
I also wonder if they charge the businesses for the ad time that cannot be understood. The station said that they did not.
Another frequent glitch lately is 6 seconds or more of dead air after the 5-minute news slot.
Would the station have to have a contract with CNN that would or should require them to air the news without overlapping?
Would the FCC have any jurisdiction over such incompetence?
What can be done to alleviate the problem?
It’s a Cumulus Broadcasting operation, with 5 or 6 different stations at the same site.
You can be damn sure the station’s contract with advertisers requires that the ads are understandable. That’s why they run them over again.
As for the news, there’s one of two possibilities. Either they’re getting the news essentially free from the network, in exchange for running the network advertising. In which case, the contract with the network requires them to run the advertising.
Or else, they’re paying for the news and running their own advertising. In which case, they paid for the news, and that’s the end of it, right there.
As for the six-second dead spot, that can happen when the engineers switch from the live network feed to the tape-delayed studio broadcast. In theory, they’re supposed to start their local stuff six seconds early, but it sounds like your local station isn’t that sharp. Maybe there’s one operator who’s trying to run all five stations at once.
The FCC won’t get involved unless there’s a violation of technical rules (broadcasting with too much power, unapproved interference with another station’s signal, etc.) or unless the station is falsifying its official programming logs. If fumble-thumbs were a punishable offense, half the stations in America woould be off the air.
Your best bet is to complain to the advertisers. Tell them it’s a shame, but the station they’re advertising on is simply unlistenable. Once the paying customers start complaining, most stations clean up their acts pretty quickly.