Why I No Longer Listen to the Radio

Dear Broadcast Radio,

It's been a while since I've heard your voice (roughly about 2 years). Last night I wanted to reconnect and try to understand why I left you so long ago. After trivia night at a bar with some friends, I got in the car and tuned in to a radio station (who will remain nameless for now). I immediately was greeted by your commercial. Thinking I have bad timing, I waited for the show to return.



Keep in mind I was driving from Lowell, MA to Plaistow, NH (roughly 25 miles). After about 5 minutes of commercials, I started getting frustrated. Why on earth are there so many commercials? After another 6 or 7 minutes, I finally heard the voice of the host talking about what's going to be coming up next after a short break. What!? I've waited over 10 minutes to hear you tell me that you'll be back after a short break.

I remember this would happen often where the host would come on and say this, and usually they would return after a minute. So my frustrated self waited. The minutes went by. I arrived in Plaistow and still hadn't heard the show. The entire 25 minute drive I listened to commercials. Right before I got home, I got to listen to a couple minutes of the show. My 30 minute drive had about 25 minutes of commercials.

But maybe I'm being to harsh. Maybe that was an unfortunate circumstance, and I should give you yet another shot. So, this morning I turned on my radio again. I won't go into as much detail above, but here's what I observed. I tuned into a commercial (again), waited 6 minutes, listened to the show for 18 minutes, got more commercials for 7 minutes, and listened to about 10 minutes of the show before I got to work. I listened to 28 minutes of the show in my 41 minute drive. That's a horrible ratio (32% commercial time).

Why is that broadcast radio has such a higher ratio of commercials to actual show than TV or internet? A 22 minute TV show has about 8 minutes of commercials (usually 3 breaks) resulting in 27% commercial time. With Hulu, you have the same breaks but with a total of 3 to 4 minutes of commercials for 14% commercial time. Pandora has a 30 second commercial break after roughly every 3 songs at worst case, resulting in 6% commercial time (assuming 4 minutes per song).

So, I'm sorry to say, but I don't want to ever hear from you again... that is unless I'm on the road and want to listen to sports. But that'll happen rarely, and I don't want you to keep your hopes up. Let's go our separate ways, and maybe one day you'll mature into something that is reasonable to listen to.