It seems that every time before a commercial or after, the radio host updates people with a quick “And now its 4:15” or however they do it. Why so many time updates?
To cut down on dead air for one reason. The first station I worked at had a bell which would ring (not over the air, of course) if you had more than 3 seconds of “dead air” (no music, no voice). One other reason is to keep you updated as to time during what is known as “Morning” or “Afternoon” drive time. If you hear the time rather than look at your watch while you’re driving, it keeps your eyes on the road rather than your radio or watch.
Any of you other former jocks know of any other reasons we did (do) this?
Thanks
Q
Been almost 30 years since my radio days, but the reason we did it is because we assumed that people were doing other things while they were listening to the radio. They may be getting ready for work or stuck in traffic or whatever and the time updates let them know if they had plenty of time or would be running late.
Probably less important now since every digital device has a clock on it, but back then time displays weren’t ubiquitous.
Isn’t there an FCC rule on time updates per hour or is that just station identifications?
Just station ID and you don’t have to be absolutely precise with that. There’s a little leeway on either side of the hour.
When I first started out, I felt like I needed to get my name “out there”, so even though I was only playing commercials during the Braves games, I worked my name in on the station i.d.: “You’re listening to Braves Baseball along with Bill Craig on WBTR-FM 92.1 in Carrollton, Georgia”, and I made it count, y’all! Pretty soon I had the all-night shift, which turned into morning drive and then into talk show/news director. It wasn’t a bad gig, just didn’t pay worth a shit. 
Q
You forgot the time. Maybe that’s why they gave you the graveyard shift.
Didn’t have to give the time during station ID. Night-shift (and the Sunday preachers as well as broadcasted sports) are the way everyone in my part of the country started off.
Unless you meant that as a joke, in which case, yeah, I could have added that in and lengthened my little “bit” a bit!
Thanks!
Quasi
As others have said, it is to help people who are listening to the radio while getting ready to go to work, driving, running errands, etc. I find it quite useful when listening to the radio whilst commuting on my bike.
Not sure what current practice is, but around 1990 a lot of stations/format services had a “weekends are timeless” policy. Meaning that it was streng verbotten to ever announce the time on weekends. The idea was that listeners didn’t want to be “on the clock” at the weekend.