Music radio

Music radio is a radio format where music is the primary source of broadcast content on both commercial and non-commercial stations. After the rise of television brought about the decline of old time radio and its dramatic content, music formats became one of the dominant forms of radio in many countries, though radio drama and comedy continues, often on public radio. Music has been one of the driving factors in the advancement of radio technology, from the adoption of wide-band FM to the current upswing in digital media.

Types of program segment

The classic item of music is a "single." This originally referred to a small phonograph disk played at 45RPM, with sufficient capacity to hold five minutes of music at good quality. This format determined the standard size of a song for popular music. Singles today are generally distributed on compact disc or as compressed digital files in such formats as MP3 or Windows Media.

Related Topics:
Phonograph - Compact disc - MP3 - Windows Media

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Jingles are the musical equivalent of neon signs, and they can be remarkably beautiful. Jingles are brief, bright pieces of choral music that promote the station's call letters, frequency and sometimes disc-jockey or program segment. Jingles were produced for radio stations by commercial speciality services. The most famous jingle service was called PAMS (External link), based in Texas. Jingles are not as common as they used to be, often being replaced by recorded voiceovers (sometimes called "stingers").

Related Topics:
Jingle - Call letters - PAMS

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The station will usually have a policy of announcing time, station call letters and frequency as often as six times per hour, in order to build station loyalty. Jingles can very useful for giving the station a branded sound in a pleasant, minimal amount of air-time. The legal requirement for station identification in the U.S. is once per hour, approximately at the top of the hour, or at the conclusion of a transmission.

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News, time-checks, real-time travel advice and weather reports are often quite valuable to listeners. The news headlines and station identification are often given just before a commercial. Time, traffic and weather are given just after.

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The engineer typically sets the station clocks to standard local time each day, by listening to WWV or WWVH (see atomic clock).

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Although valued by commuters and older people, these segments are less valued by young people, so many stations that prefer to attract young listeners, prefer to play music, and shorten or omit these segments.

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While most music stations that do offer news reports may simply "tear and read" news items (from the newswires or the Internet), larger stations (generally those affiliated with news/talk stations) may employ an editor to rewrite headlines, and provide summaries of local news. The summaries allow more news to fit in less air-time. Some stations can share news collection with TV or newspapers in the same media conglomerate. An emerging trend is to use the radio station's web site to provide in-depth coverage of news and advertisers head-lined on the air. Similarly, many stations contract with agencies such as Smartraveler and AccuWeather for their weather and traffic reports instead of having in-house staff to do the job.

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Most radio stations maintain a call-in telephone line for use during promotions and gags, or to take record requests. DJs generally answer the phone and edit the call during music plays. Some stations take requests by e-mail or even online chat.

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Promotions are usually the on-air equivalent of lotteries for listeners. Promotional budgets usually run about $1 per listener per year. In a large market, a successful radio station can pay a full time director of promotions, and several lotteries per month of vacations, automobiles and other prizes. Lottery items are often bartered from advertisers, allowing both companies to charge full prices while incurring wholesale costs. For example, consider a cruise vacation. Cruising companies often have unused capacity, and when given the choice, prefer to pay their bills by bartering vacations. Since the ship will sail in any case, bartered vacations cost the cruise company little or nothing. The promotion is itself advertising for the company providing the prize.

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