I listen to the radio a lot at work, generally, to pass the time whether or not I’m actually able to get things done. With that, I’ve picked up a bunch on what radio stations do in general or what certain kinds of stations do. Some of it I find annoying, though.
Radio stations have this thing where between songs they say what the station is. There are some weird things about this, mainly how they seem like they’ve got to add in these weird static noises like the radio’s breaking for reasons I’m not really sure of. Maybe they just need to make it really obvious that it’s the break between songs. Then other stations, usually pop stations, try to do this weird thing where they attempt to badly blend in the identification into a song with some cover artist who isn’t even really matching the melody. That’s generally annoying. Are they trying to keep people from taking the song from the radio? They’re just going to download it online if they really need to bootleg it, seeing that people would listen to music through their phones now, which aren’t tape players. And then now stations are jamming ads in between the songs which generally seem to yell out BUY A CAR NOW EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO MONEY. Don’t do that. Cars aren’t phones. Really, don’t even buy phones every few months if your current one works fine. Of course that comes from me viewing things practically and considering phones and cars as tools with side benefits such as games or music playback.
Also with ads, DJs will do this thing now where they go on for a few minutes about some random thing and then it turns into an ad about some service you probably don’t need and now it’s even harder to tell between when they’re going into an ad break or they are the ad break. I swear at some point there was some regulation for separating ads from content, at least on TV and regarding kids shows. I don’t know if that applies to radio. It definitely doesn’t apply to the Internet, especially not phone ads, which really seem beyond unregulated, but certain policies are in place depending on the sites. Generally, radio ads seem really long. That mid-half-hour break for TV ads where it’s two minutes longer than the other ad breaks, that seems to be about the usual length of an ad break for radio. Of course the ads on radio are a lot longer as well, usually a minute or so compared to 30 seconds. You’d think they’d find an effective way to get the message across quickly like on TV. Also, advertising TV on radio is just weird, especially if there’s importance to the visual aspect.
As far as the songs, that just depends on the station. Some stations play different radio edits for whatever reason that might just extend some part of the song in exchange for removing the end part, or just cutting it short before Juicy J gets to rap because that seems to be a repeating occurrence. Sometimes there’s even different radio versions, where certain words are blanked out but the music continues, the whole song blanks out, there’s some really loud noise in place of the part with the words, maybe it just skips ahead briefly and ruins the rhythm. Also, I’m not sure why but the version of the Safety Dance that plays on radio has changed, now they play the version that sounds like some dance remix, before they were playing the one that was similarly 80s but not that one.
There’s also the morning shows that seem to span from roughly 6 to 10 AM from what I can tell. It depends on the station, but some have local shows with local DJs talking about local things as well as random anecdotes and sometimes national news, and others decide to just bring in some pre-recorded or possibly live thing from out of state. The latter tends to exclude music, though, which I find annoying, it’s just constant talking and then commercials and more talking. Maybe there’s some moments in the shows but I don’t feel like sitting through it. It’s even more jarring if a station switches from a local show to a phoned in one. And then you have the practically automated stations that just run songs, breaks, and commercials in a loop without human intervention, claiming that DJs just get in the way. If you just want to play music, sure, but sometimes a decently organized morning show or even just overall daily stuff can add some needed personality to a station. It also opens up things more personally for giveaways, instead of just texting in keywords to some thing that’ll probably sign up any numbers that text it for some automated spam service. I get enough spam calls, so I’d also rather keep spam out of my texts.