I’ve noticed across the U.S. on morning talk radio - FM specifically - that maybe once an hour they’ll cut to a single song, usually something well trodden, before resuming the talk portion of the show. Anyone know why this is? The music comes far too infrequently to appeal to anyone who might be interested in a “variety show” type format, and if it was just to give the DJs a breather that would seemingly be better served by selling more advertising. So is it an FCC requirement, and if so what purpose is it intended to serve?
Not required by FCC. It’s called “bumper music.”
From Wikipedia
No, that’s not the same thing. Bumper music is just a short clip leading in and out of commercial breaks, what I’m talking about is they’ll play a full length song about once an hour during an otherwise non-stop block of talk radio. I can’t remember a single FM morning radio show I’ve listened to that didn’t do this, even the nationally syndicated ones like Bob & Tom.
Bumpers are snippets of music. I assume the OP is referring to the playing of a full track.
I’ve wondered about this too. On the rare occasion I’ve listened to someone like Don Imus, I’ve noticed that he occasionally plays some seemingly random bit of music too. I can’t think of any reason other than to get a bit of a break when there is no scheduled commercial to play.
Piss break.
We have several FM Talk radio stations here in NE Ohio, and they don’t play anything other than bumper music (short clips).
If they were only doing it to give themselves a break then that would imply the possibility that they’ve sold enough advertising that one might occasionally come across a show that NEVER had to play songs, which is something I have yet to encounter. Besides, it seems like the way they’re programmed is pretty regular. It may not be exactly once an hour but I’m positive it’s >30 minutes.
That seems support for the proposition that it is a regularly scheduled break.
But it doesn’t explain why they don’t choose to sell more advertising to fill the time rather than playing a song, and besides, the songs are not usually lengthy enough to provide any kind of meaningful break… no more so than a block of commercials, anyway. If they played several songs in a row it seems to me that THAT would be more of an argument for giving the DJs a break. Besides, as often as they go to commercial and considering the DJs are typically only working 4-6 hr shifts at the most, I’m not sure how necessary an extra 3-4 minute break once an hour (on top of the commercial breaks) would really be.
If the on-air talent needs a five minute break, then a 3-4 minute song with 1-2 minutes of commercials will hold more listeners than if they played five minutes of straight commercials.
My best guess is that the national show has some breaks for the local stations to fill with local news and commercials. Sometimes the local station will switch back to the national feed before the national program has started up again. To avoid dead-air in this case, the national feed plays some random oldie during its breaks that fills the time out and covers for the local station’s mistake.
I don’t know in detail how these things are set up, but with computers funny things can happen. More than once I’ve heard mis-feeds of national programs where the regular programming is missing, resulting in complete silence, except when the commericals are played at their regularly scheduled times.
That makes a bit more sense, but if the key was retaining listeners you’d think the station managers would REALLY discourage any extraneous breaks at all. I don’t know about smoke breaks per se, but the commercial blocks go on long enough that I think just about anyone could make it to the bathroom and back. Why risk losing even a single listener just to give the DJs an extra 3-4 minutes of break time per hour?
If it were only the national shows that were doing it I’d say you were on to something, but even the local shows - who have nothing to cut to that they don’t control directly - do it. And I think we’ve established that the songs are programmed too regularly to be chocked up to something like covering for an occasional production error.
It’s “filler”.
Your typical morning broadcast team, let’s say, is on from 7-10. So they have to fill 3 hours.
Local news/weather/traffic is on for 5 minutes every half hour (30 minutes total).
Ads are allocated lots of ways but let’s say there’s 10 minutes of ads per hour divided among 30 and 60 second spots. (30 minutes total)
Guest interviews or station-arranged spots maybe take another 15 minutes across all 3 hours.
So the morning team has to come up with 1 hours and 45 minutes of stuff to talk about.
If there’s lot’s going on and the team is clicking, you may only hear 1-2 songs per hour to give them a break.
If they don’t have as much to talk about, it may be 4-5 songs per hour.
I take it you’re not a DJ. 
And, hey, they could always just pee in cups, and cut out those pesky bathroom breaks altogether. Chain them to their desks, I say!
Do AM talk stations do the same thing? (I’ve never noticed it.)
Most of the explanations in this thread would seem to apply equally well to an AM station.
AM stations are more likely to be “all talk” and probably don’t want to mess with the accounting details that come with tracking royalties for playing a song over the air. They might not even have a music library in the first place. The FM stations with the “Almost All Talk Show” in the morning probably run music otherwise.
It’s all about research and marketing. The radio station has done massive research to find out exactly how many commericals a listener will tolerate before moving stations.
This is something all radio and TV stations do. This is why there is music. They need filler and their reserach has shown that airing another commerical is likely to get their average listener to flip the radio to another station.
This is why TV stations air public service announcements. This is because they couldn’t sell the time and/or if they sold it it would make them look too greedy with commericals.
For instance if I could sell and $10/a minute, it may LOOK better to not do it and run a public service ad. That way it looks like the station cares about “causes” and “people” and is doing a service for their community.
One other consideration is that FM station with morning talk shows are music stations the rest of the time, with relatively little talk from DJs – news, announcements, announcer ads, etc. People who listen to such stations all day might switch away from the all-talk format, but are more likely to stay (or come back) if they’re enticed with a few songs.
There are four stations in the SF bay area that I can stand listening to. They all have morning shows, and they all piss me off – I want to hear music. Even during music programming, I switch stations during commercials, and I switch away from morning shows entirely. I don’t want to listen to CDs, because they don’t last for the entire commute, and I don’t like changing them while I’m driving; besides, news and traffic are not entirely unwelcome. So, I just try to find the least objectionable programming – music first, traffic, news, amusing blather, innocuous blather, raucous blather, commercials, sports – among the four stations. My third-favorite station plays the most music in the morning, but my favorite station plays the second-most, so I mostly just settle on one of those two until I get pissed off, then switch to something less annoying. If they’re all annoying (Tom Shane, prank calls, call-ins, and a spirited discussion of Paris Hilton), I go to the CD. When it starts to repeat, I go back to FM and start “radio roulette” all over again.
I miss my old radio that got stolen; I could plug my thumb drive right into the front and listen for hours with no repeats.
My brother and a friend both worked in radio back in the early 90s. They had a machine that you plugged cartridges into, and with one push of the button, it would play the carts in sequence. You got as long a break as the time of all the carts you plugged in. One 3 minute song, 2 minutes of commercials = 5 minute break. 5 minutes of straight commercials = people switching to another station, and lost ratings. Hence song + commercials. I expect modern equipment uses digital sound files instead of carts, but it’s the same principle. It’s to give the DJ a break.