A local radio station is advertising in one of the local newspapers (heck, it could be both, but I doubt it given the bias of the radio station in this case and the bias of the newspaper) and is trumpeting:

20 MINUTES COMMERCIAL FREE EVERY HOUR (during the prime morning drive time show).

Really?!?!  You want to trumpet that?  That's worth making a centerpiece of your advertising and promotions for your product?

20 whopping minutes of commercial free time every hour during your prime show?!!?

Oh, wait, must be a misplaced modifier somewhere in there.  Actually I'm sure that is the case, and I'm sure what the advertisement is trying to say is that every hour contains at least one 20 minute period free of commercial interruption, but what does that mean for the remainder of the 40 minutes in the hour?  Ooops, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  Don't look over there.  Look here.  Look here at the 20 minutes.  Ignore the 40 mintues that are jammed and packed full of commercial spots every 4 - 7 minutes, totalling about 25 minutes out of the 40 minutes that remain in the hour, if not even more.

Somehow the station (and it's poor listeners) will pay for that 20 minutes of commercial-less time, and the way they'll pay is by cramming even more commercials into the remaining time.

Actually, as it turns out, the station in question (who shall remain nameless for now) is famous for doing far worse by using a 'time condenser' device for radio that helps to eliminate some of the natural pauses and other 'dead air' time that is in a regular radio show so that can speed some of their nationally syndicated programming up by 2 - 6 minutes every hour.  Huh?  To make it clear, they basically fast forward, ever so slightly, the nationally syndicated content so they can have the show finish in say 54 minutes instead of 60 in the hour and then they squeeze in another 2 - 6 minutes worth of local advertising.  They do that for at least 6 hours worth of programming daily, and possibly more (I've not listened to them regularly in quite a while as that whole process and the effect it has on the voices of the talk radio hosts, etc.)

It amuses me to think that the clowns that run this station, and market their product, think that 20 minutes of time uninterrupted by commercials is some great feat.  If they chose to, they could easily air about 40 - 50 minutes worth of programming that isn't interrupted by commercials, but that won't happen as it would mean giving up too many advertising spots and too much revenue that they apparently don't believe they could make up by having more listeners and higher advertising rates for the limited periods when commercials are aired.

Finally, even the 20 minutes of commercial free time is a misnomer if not an outright lie as leading into the 20 mintues there are periods with plenty of commercials, and during that same 20 minutes there will be traffic reports brought to you buy, or weather sponsored by, or the broadcast will be coming to us from --insert sponsor name here-- studios and such.

Yeah, 20 minutes of commercial free time is something to brag about.

{ Borat }

NOT.

{ /Borat }