Fewer Spots

It’s already happening

 

NBC recently announced its plan to cut prime time TV spots by 20% and cutting all advertising time on its various networks by 10%

FOX is even more ambitious. According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), FOX wants to reduce ad time to 2 minutes per hour by 2020!

Yes, you read that correctly: 2 minutes per hour.

We’ll know soon if this is too ambitious but execs at both companies are finally admitting the obvious: we aren’t going to sit and watch 14 minutes of bad ads every hour. We haven’t since the invention of the DVR and the remote clicker.

And whether Radio wants to acknowledge it or not, listeners are not going to sit and listen to 14 minutes of bad spots every hour. They never have.

The longer we wait to admit reality, the more lead time we give to Sirius, Spotify and Apple Music — all of which know that they need to play some spots if they expect to make real money.

There is one way for radio companies to make more money every year when we need to cut the total number of spots aired each hour: Increase our value to advertisers.

I believe there are ways to do this. I know some companies are trying to figure this out and I totally support them.

We all should because like it or not, our future is fewer spots.