Comment from Des DeCean, Past Director of Technology, Austereo
It is a lovely winters day. Chilly outside but sunny and blue sky. Inside the fire is blazing away in the loungeroom. Its Sunday afternoon and I’m about to settle down with a glass of wine, a fire side seat and yes some relaxing music on my new DAB radio.
I scan through the list of stations and am feeling totally spoilt for choice. I settle on Buddha Hits radio. The music is gentle, soft and relaxing. A lovely female voice says “tune in, chill out and relax – Buddha Hits”.
I was doing just that, admiring the great quality of Digital radio and enjoying the music, then out of the blue at deafening level comes TOTAL TOOLS WEEKEND SALE! This is quickly followed by HARVEY NORMAN BONUS GIFT CARD!
Well I dropped my glass of wine and almost tripped over the footstool as I grappled to find the stereo remote to turn down this mood breaking intrusion!!
I am sure many listeners to Buddha have felt the same way about the terrible mood breaking ad-breaks – some will have even tuned out – possibly never to return, thus marring what should have been an enjoyable DAB experience.
Even worse they may warn their friends about the mood breaking intrusion, thus spoiling the reputation of the station.
I am the first to acknowledge the need for advertising on Digital radio It is a sign of audience growth and development of the medium, however the commercial content delivery MUST be delivered in a way that is sympathetic to the format of the station.
Back in the day of Easy Listening stations on AM radio, commercials were read with a soft delivery to blend in with the energy level of the stations format. Ads were often rejected because the sell was too hard for an easy listening station.
This thinking needs to be applied to DAB services so that the station offers a total listening experience. The listeners will stay, the client will benefit from a delivery that is listenable rather than jarring and everybody wins!
Ok so there may be more production time involved and a cost associated with a separate read, but if the industry is serious about DAB and growing the audience, then this needs to be done! I noted that some of the offending ads were local content presumably inserted here in Adelaide, so it is important that local as well as National content is tailored to suit the format.
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Could this be Radio Self Sabotage? well this certainly doesn't help ... https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/sca-adelaides-ground-breaking-playout-experiment-across-fm-and-digital-stations
Des....I agree with your comments 100%. That is why Smooth is so successful in Sydney and Melbourne. The ads are part of the whole audio offering and must comply with the overall vision for the stations.
I suppose much of the problem may be in a broadcasting marketplace struggling to attract advertisers, stations aren't exactly in a position where they are spoiled for choice in which ads to run or in a position where they can turn advertisers away. In Melbourne, every ad break on every commercial station almost always contains advertising from the Victorian Government relating to the coronavirus pandemic. It's indicative of where the lion's share of advertising revenue is coming from at the moment. It would be a hard task to negotiate the content of those ads with the Victorian government. It's not as if FOX-FM and SAFM own the city like they may have in the glory days of Austereo's past. Personally, I think there's not enough advertising revenue to go around. Too many stations on DAB+ diverting revenue and audiences away from the flagship network stations that generate the revenue and create the jobs in the industry.
Almost as irritating: listening to a live stream on iHeart where every break you get 10s of the local ad before the webstream ad kicks in. Of course the web ad then ends 10s late too :-(
Hi David, thankyou for your comments on Radio Self Sabotage. Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that clients are selected because of their suitability to the stations format (but in a perfect world that would be great). What I am suggesting is that the clients commercial be recorded with a softer delivery for say,Buddah, than the same ad would have when aired on FOX. All in the interest of keeping a common energy level with commercial delivery as that of the stations format.
Des,
This has been a huge problem in USA TV https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials has legislation against it. In Australia TV has https://www.freetv.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OP-59-Measurement-and-Managemnt-of-Loudness-for-TV-Broadcasting-Issue-4-October-2018.pdf
To overcome this problem there are loudness meters and processors which uses loudness control as compared to the volume readings. Loudness not only include the frequency response of the ear at different volume and also the psychological effect of volume which includes the average sound level prior to the ad and the add itself.
In the days prior to the use of audio processing the sound operator was trained to not blow the listeners out of the room. For example some classical music for example, fades away at the end, so the following announcement has to have the volume slowly increased.
Dear Mr St. John,
The FreeTV document about loudness has been archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210318042401/https://www.freetv.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OP-59-Measurement-and-Managemnt-of-Loudness-for-TV-Broadcasting-Issue-4-October-2018.pdf .
The reason for including this link is in case the original page at freetv is removed resulting in a 404 error.
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting Belfield
Thanks Des,
I just tend to think they need to soften the tone of the sell across the board more generally. It's probably true that advertising has tended to get more shouty in recent years, and we're probably getting a bit sick of it. Musical hooks, shouty voiceovers and unfriendly dominant undertones in the script reads, it's been getting on everyone's nerves lately.