Paid Advertisements

If you want to dictate the precise content, time, and date of your mes­sage, you'll have to pay for advertising space. The size of your budget will determine what kinds of paid spots you can afford. It costs more to buy drive-time spots, when millions of commuters are listening to the radio, than it does to buy late-night time, when insomniacs are the main audience. It costs more to position your spots before the local news broadcast each evening than it does to buy a package deal for thirty or forty repetitions of the same spot when the radio station selects the posi­tions—perhaps guaranteeing that a certain percentage of them will fall in prime time.

Perhaps radio's greatest attribute is its utility in sudden or emer­gency situations, when it is necessary to get a quickly prepared message to the general public or specialized publics on short notice. When the air traffic controllers' union went on strike, seriously disrupting air service across the nation, the airlines quickly bought time to broadcast simple spots in which a calm and authoritative announcer explained which flights would be operating normally, which service would be curtailed, and what telephone numbers area residents should call for various types of information—one number for flight crews, another for ground per­sonnel, another for passengers with flights scheduled on that particular day, and still another number for general information.