Local Radio- Mature Thoughts

Posted on November 13, 2007

A few thoughts on how advertising affects me.  I am a great fan of radio at home and in the car.  But I have a very limited listening range. And as much as I love these stations, I am annoyed by advertising in them.

For AM I like WGN in Chicago.  Recently they changed their format to break up the time into even smaller sections.  It seems to me that they are about fifty percent advertising.  I notice this especially on Wed. AM between 7 AM and 8 AM.  At that time Spike O’Dell has his featured guest Paul Green,  professor at Roosevelt 

University and expert on 

Illinois politics.  He is well informed and very entertaining.  Recently WGN changed its format so that Paul Green has about three minutes to talk, wedged in between chatter and commercials.  He just gets going on a topic when they have to break for traffic, sports or whatever.  I get the impression that Dr. Green is frustrated, as he is frequently cut off in mid thought, although  in a cordial way. The station seems to have decided that the audience has a very short attention span, and I am annoyed. I think the audience can tolerate a longer segment by an entertaining and knowlegable expert on local politics.

I also like FM stations, mainly PBS and WFMT, the classical music station in Chicago.  The annoying factor here is pledge week.  This also applies to WTTW, Channel 11, the public television channel.  Each channel has its own annoyance factor.  When I turn into WFMT, the ONLY CLASSICAL MUSIC STATION IN CHICAGO, I want to hear classical music, or perhaps jazz or an interesting talk show.  What I do not want to hear is an hour of appeals for money.  The same annoyance applies to WTTW, Channel !!.  I watch these   unending appeals, and I want to shout; ” I am a member, I contritute, Just stop it!”. 

Perhaps the most annoying commercial intrusion is the category of political commercials.  So far in this seemingly unending presidential primary campaign, we in Illinois have not yet been bombarded by commercials.  It will come, I know, and I feel for the people in Iowa who are enduring this commercial assault. 

But I remember the last election campaign in which there were judges on the ballot.  There was a commercial on TV for a woman running for judge, an Irish name, Margaret Mary something.  Ordinarily I would be interested in voting for her. But these commercials were so frequent and so annoying that I decided that even if she was the most qualified person on the ballot that I would vote against her simply because the commercial was so very annoying.   In this case, the ads had the reverse of the desired effect on me. I don’t know how many others were similarly affected or whether she was elected.

These are the various ways in which I am annoyed by advertising.  I leave it to the experts to analyze and hopefully to change it.  I wish all political advertising could be banned. The money candidates need to raise and spend on ads is scandalous.  The ads tend to be so simplistic, polarizing, not to say expensive.  Couldn’t a candidate say something like “We are not doing commercials. instead we are giving the money to:  ( and list the various worthy causes to be the beneficiary).  But that will never happen.    

I really hate political advertising, and the pressures it puts on candidates to raise money. 

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