Programming: Shifting Time

Steve Hamley goes behind the dial to look at selling ads to the advertisers

In the last issue, we looked at making a radio advert. This time we go behind the dial to find out about selling airtime to the advertisers.

First step will come with the drawing up of an advertising rate card. This will set the prices advertisers will pay, both for one off spots and, more commonly, packages. A station's rate card may be open to a certain amount of negotiation. For example, some businesses, perhaps to introduce them to the benefits of radio advertising, may be given extra bonuses.

The Ratecard

When a station designs its ratecard, it takes several factors into account. The number of listeners varies throughout the day. Peak times are the morning and afternoon drivetime slots and off-peak times in the evening and through the night. If they charged the same amount whatever time of day a commercial was broadcast, advertisers would all crowd into the slots with the most listeners. So this doesn't happen, different rates will be set for different times of day.

To encourage advertisers to spend as much with them as possible, discounts will be offered. The greater the amount an advertiser spends, the larger the bonuses. This could be either in additional airtime or price discounts. Remember that a station's costs will be lower if an advertiser can be persuaded to buy a large package.

Let's take a look at a typical ratecard from DOSH FM. You'll see it's divided up into the three time zones. You may see these referred to as AA time (peak), A time (regular) and B time (off-peak). The rate card is worked out by setting a price on a standard, 30 second slot and then using this to calculate the prices for the rest of the card.

Discounts

To set the price of this standard, they will work out the cost per hour of running the station — including profits and future development. This is divided by the number of 30 second advertising slots per hour. In the example rate card shown, DOSH FM estimate a cost per hour of £40. Allowing for 4 minutes of commercials every hour gives a price of £5.00 per 30 second ad.

From this basic rate, all the other prices can be set. For DOSH FM, a 10% discount is given for 60 second commercials. AA time is 40% more expensive, while B time is 30% cheaper. For advertisers buying packages there is a sliding scale of 5% off for 25, 10% for 50 and 15% for 100.

Sales staff

Selling commercials to advertisers isn't that much different from selling products over the air. In fact, on many small stations in the States disc jockeys double up as sales staff.

Sales people are either paid solely on commission for each advert they bring in or with a basic rate plus a smaller commission per advert. There's usually all the other sales bonuses too: holidays for the top sellers, new cars... They may look after a particular part of a station's broadcast area or, more commonly in larger stations, a particular type of customer. This might be car dealers, supermarkets or nightclubs.

The first priority every day for a radio sales person will be to fill all the unsold time in the next few days and then secure new long-term contracts. There will be two kinds of customer to call on: current customers to discuss future campaigns and pick up copy for new commercials and new customers to persuade them to advertise with the station.

Traffic

Go into any commercial radio station and you'll find a traffic department. If you're expecting teleprinters churning out the latest road and rail information, you're wrong. It's a different kind of traffic: commercials.

The traffic department is in charge of the scheduling of commercials ready for airplay. This task is generally done with the help of a computer today. Each advertisement will be allocated to particular spots through the day, according to the advertiser's requirements. Other things will also be taken into consideration, such as not running two competing company's ads in the same cluster.

There may be some hours in which not all the advertising space has been sold. In this case, an internal promotion may be aired, such as for station merchandise, or a `PI' ad may be used. These are commercials where the station takes a percentage from the sales of a product. This was much used on Laser, with adverts for records, etc. which would earn the station a fee for each record bought as a result. However, the earnings from PI ads are not great, and they are generally scheduled in B time.

The log will show the DJ what time a commercial is to be played, who it is for and on which cart it is stored. Once the advert has been played they will initial the log as proof to the advertiser.

Advertisers will then be billed, usually monthly, for their campaigns. When the money comes in the sales staff will get their commissions — there could be quite a wait for a new sales person. However, this will mean that their wages will be spread across the whole year.

Next time, Radio Today's programming page begins a short series on news: using other news sources and original reporting.