All of us who work in radio or have an interest in the medium have thoughts about what needs to happen to make radio more relevant and appealing in today’s media environment. One element that gets near-unanimous agreement is that US commercial radio runs too many spots.
Considering that the commercial medium’s business is driven almost entirely by advertising, more ads mean more revenue. But too many spots, especially extended stop sets, are assumed to drive listeners away. In today’s media landscape, there are plenty of audio alternatives with few or no commercials (fee-based). As a researcher, my first question is: How many units do stations run now? What’s the baseline?
With some research, I was able to calculate a couple of numbers that, while not perfect, will give a decent indication of the volume of spots listeners deal with on commercial radio stations. Whether the numbers are perfectly accurate is irrelevant because every station is different, and each listener reacts differently to commercials. Some don’t want to hear a single one (this is nothing new), and others just go along and “don’t touch that dial”. Further, stations game the system with “commercial-free” music sweeps and load up the spots in hours that have lower listening levels so as not to upset the audience any more than necessary.
The estimates here cover part of June 2025 for a group of music stations in PPM markets. All major owners were included.
I used everyone’s favorite daypart, Monday-Friday 6 AM-7 PM (and yes, the daypart is the same in all markets using the local time zone), and worked out two numbers: the average number of units and the average number of minutes per hour.
Across the stations reviewed, each hour had an average of 16.5 units, which lasted 10 minutes and 22 seconds. The average listener during an average hour would hear over sixteen commercials lasting a bit over ten minutes. Here’s another way to look at it: 17.3 percent of every hour on these stations in this daypart consisted of commercials.
The researcher in me reduced this to a simple equation:
Free radio = 16.5 commercials lasting 10 minutes and 22 seconds per hour
Or put another way:
In return for free music, talk, entertainment, and information, is 16.5 commercials lasting over ten minutes an hour a fair price for a listener to “pay” in 2025?
Arithmetic is simple. 1 + 1 = 2. 1 + 1 ≠ 3. But we’re dealing with a psychological issue here. When I conducted perceptuals for Clear Channel back in the mid and late ‘90s, I would sometimes add a question asking respondents how many commercials in a row would be acceptable. The typical result was somewhere around 3.
With the “bow tie” clock, in other words, two stop sets per hour, the 2025 result means the average stop set contained eight units lasting around five minutes. Even if a station goes to three shorter stop sets per hour, the average would be between five and six spots. My guess is that the current number for multiple spots that a listener will accept is lower.
Commercial radio is just that. It survives and prospers based on revenue earned from running spots. However, all of the free versions of the various music streamers run ads as well, and not everyone can afford the pay tier to eliminate ads (Spotify just announced an increase in the monthly fee for their premium service). I don’t use the services, so I can’t knowledgably discuss spot loads for Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, etc., but my guess is that the stop sets are shorter, although perhaps more frequent. And commercial radio, in most cases, offers more than just wall-to-wall tunes.
Radio has a real conundrum. Local commercial television in the US is in serious trouble, yet that industry will pull in about $9 billion in retransmission fees this year, which is down from over $12 billion a few years ago but still a substantial number and a revenue source with no equivalent for radio. And local TV pulls in a ton of political dollars, a market that radio has had trouble tapping into over the years.
The “Big Three” group radio operators have been through bankruptcy, along with some smaller operators, and one is likely to go down that road again. Even with reduced debt loads, groups are offloading people and using more technology to stay profitable.
If we could reduce spot loads, does anyone have an idea of the new equilibrium number? Using the ratio from the rough estimates above, would ten spots per hour lasting around six minutes and change be the right amount? Would it be lower or higher than that? It’s a wonderful research question without a conclusive answer.
Let’s meet again next week.
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
