I can support what you say, Paul. Capital Radio sound to me, as a listener, as though they’re stopping every five minutes to play a couple of ads. It makes the sound of the station quite disjointed and the presenters seem to be continually “living for the future”, in the sense that they’re always focusing on what’s playing after the next ad break.

Here’s a quote from US consultant Mike McVay, of McVay Media, which backs up that point. “When I was the GM at WMJI in Cleveland, we stopped four times an hour and ran two commercials per set. Not minutes, but 2 units…period. We did very well until 106.5 went to two stop-sets of 5 minutes each and promoted 10-in-a-row. They stopped at :44 and :54 and killed us in music quantity images. Perhaps the most compelling reason why this concept won’t work in markets with a high number of stations is that research shows the more times you stop to play spots the higher the perception that your radio station plays too many commercials.”

As the saying goes – perception is reality. WMJI may have been playing fewer commercials but the listeners thought they played more because they took more breaks.

So there is hope!

I enjoy my local commercial radio station’s output. Hell, I listen to more than one. But the one thing that gets right on my tits isn’t the ads for double-glazing and mobile phones — sure, they’re irritating, but I can live with them. It’s the constant Government information spots. Road safety and anti-smoking are worthy causes, but some commercial stations really need to take a step back and wonder whether playing out noisy car-crash sound effects (“you could always hit the windscreen… or another passenger…”) twice each break is good for keeping listeners on board. Despite my enjoyment of the rest of the programmes, I don’t want to listen to shock-horror Government messages on hot rotation all day while I’m working.