A Lost Art?

Bill Dodd has such deep programming and management roots in the Kelso-Longview-Castle Rock area of Washington State, that it's easy to forget that he was a major market talent in San Francisco (see the 1975 KSFO scope here for proof), Portland and Seattle:

"We’re undergoing the agony of a new traffic system. Marketron merged with DeltaFlex and we are forced to change. Today I found out the new system does NOT provide for prioritizing the filling of spot breaks. For 20 years we have filled the last one first, etc--- a lot more music, a lot less talk. It’s worked great. Now we’re going to have to move spots by hand. Sheesh. We can’t be the only people doing this! These companies providing service seem to have forgotten that they are working for us. I suspect that today's traffic software was developed mostly for TV, and most stations just don’t care about what spot placement can make them sound like."

He's right, of course. With PPM's proof in minute-to-minute usage that great commercials can be eight times as engaging as normal ones, it has become even more of a competitive edge to set your breaks up so that the spots run in an order designed to hold maximum audience yet doing so with the new traffic software is next to impossible unless you do it manually.

Hopefully, someone at one of those firms reads this blog and a lightbulb goes off over their heads.

Meanwhile, do you have a system for setting up your breaks to maximize flow? Or, do you worry about it at all?