Sit Down, Kid, And Let Me Tell You How Much Better It Used To Be

Once upon a time, radio “programmed” commercial breaks. 

• Best spot first, second best last, worst ones in the middle of the cluster.
• Never put the same voice back to back in a cluster.
• Longest first, shortest last.
• Tags last and only one per cluster.
• Live reads first and only one per cluster.

I considered these things very important and felt that I could quickly recognize "a great radio station" because they executed it all so cleanly and consistently.

Then, almost three decades ago, digital traffic systems came in and made changing anything about the way commercials laid out either very difficult or completely impossible.

By and large, radio stopped "programming" clusters.

Ratings never changed at all.

That was one of the many times I have re-learned to embrace change, and focus on recognizing the things which matter from the ones that really don’t.

Another Post On Change

The farewell post on the American Comedy Network Facebook page from Joel Graham, who calls himself not just GM/Creative Director but also "Former Head Writer/Staff Writer/Producer/Current Voice Talent for American Comedy Network - I’ve done it all here and loved every minute of it..." is a classy exit, ending with "Thank you for making my dream job possible."

It will be interesting to see if the ACM website and brand find a way to live on as a source of comedy for new media, but then the brand was really only known to radio personalities and probably means nothing to anyone outside our business.



Dial Global President/Programming Kirk Stirkand told ALL ACCESS, "While always a fun, topical and creative service, it wasn't viable any longer in terms of national coverage. We think affiliates will be well-served by the great services from our partners, Wise Brother Media."

I could not agree more.

If your show continues to rely on the kind of lengthy, contrived song parodies and pre-produced bits that ACN innovated in 1983, it's time to take this quick test and find out what decade you're living in.

Why Breakfast? Why AOPrep?

Have you wondered why this is called "The Breakfast Blog" and why the domain name is "aoprep"?

Custom Channels' John Bradley asked that question yesterday and when I told him, he recommended I blog the answer I gave him.

Many years ago, now Cox/San Antonio Y-100 morning guy Jeff Roper when he was PD/morning host at CBS' WSOC/Charlotte suggested that if I set up a blog for morning show sharing, he'd moderate it.  Of course, we had no aspirations of competing with the venerable big dogs of morning show sharing sites, Bitboard, Radio-Online and RadioStar.  This was before Don Anthony took Morning Mouth from paper to online resource.

Sadly, at the start, Jeff and I were very active (as you can read if you go back into the archives to the very beginning) but we ultimately found that morning people were delighted to read and use the things WE posted, but seldom contributed very much.

So, I started making use of this space as a place to write things that fit that original purpose but as people commented and I watched the web metrics, I noticed that the most popular posts were opinion pieces about ratings, research, tactics, strategy and country music.

I just happened to love thinking aloud about those things, so that's what I started to do.  That was eight years ago.

The moral of this tale:  you often start in life in one direction and then things change on you and slowly you find yourself going in a completely different one.

As long as your passion and honest perspective shine through as you react to real life, success will follow you as you go.

At least, that's my story. 

What's yours?