Reduzir drasticamente a publicidade (um caso)

«Facing increasing competition from satellite radio and iPods, Clear Channel Communications is trying something radically different at a commercial radio station in Texas: getting rid of the commercials.
As of today, KZPS in Dallas — on the dial at 92.5 FM or online at lonestar925.com — will no longer run traditional 30- or 60-second advertisements. Instead, advertisers sponsor an hour of programming, during which a D.J. will promote its product conversationally in what the company calls integration.
For example, the D.J. will identify Southwest Airlines, one of the station’s first advertisers, as the sponsor at the beginning of the program. In a prototype provided by the station, the D.J. later discusses the South by Southwest music festival, a popular annual event held in Austin, and concludes, “You know, the best way to get down to Austin for South by Southwest is Southwest Airlines. They have tons of flights. It’s the way I travel.”
The product-themed chitchat will account for about two minutes peppered throughout the hour, in contrast to the 12 minutes to 16 minutes of commercials that most stations broadcast each hour.
(...) Clear Channel’s move is not unprecedented. In 2005, three stations on Long Island owned by the Morey Organization experimented with a similar model but eventually returned to conventional commercials.(...)
fonte: New York Times, «In Dallas, Commercial Radio Without Commercials», ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN, April 23, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/business/media/23radio.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Sobre a questão da redução de publicidade diz Mark Ramsey: «My gut tells me this advice is related to feedback from PPM markets where listeners tend to want stations to be more of what they promise to be and less of anything else, but that's a guess on my part. How does this square with my frequent advice that the stuff between the records is where radio's great advantage is? It doesn't, strictly speaking. But my advice is not about how to compete against your radio competitors in a PPM world, it's about how to compete against ALL your competitors in a world of many audio entertainment options»