We forget now that when Bill Drake brought “more music” to Top 40 radio, he did it with stations that were playing two or three songs in a row between stopsets—and sometimes just one song. But even with six stopsets an hour, those stations sounded far more streamlined than competitors who always stopped down after every song. Eventually, of course, broadcasters rearranged their hours to play even longer sweeps and what had registered as “more music” through the mid-’60s and ’70s never sounded right again.

At the RAIN Summit North, held March 12 at Canadian Music Week, Slacker VP of strategic development Jim Rondenelli told the audience that his Internet radio service has “not had a month since second quarter of last year when we did not sell out our inventory.” I thought of the morass of PSAs and fill music that still typify the streaming experience of listeners to terrestrial stations and thought “well, he would never be able to fill up 14 minutes an hour.” (Yesterday morning, I heard Slacker run two stopsets of two minutes each, including a station promo, in an hour’s time.)

But Slacker and Pandora will never have to fill 14 minutes of inventory. And it’s clear now that terrestrial radio is on the verge of its own Drake moment where the expectation of an acceptable spotload is forever redefined—particularly as streaming radio continues its march to the dashboard. Commercial FM music broadcasters must come to the realization today that the present 12-14 minutes of spots an hour will not be tenable much longer. And for many listeners they are untenable already.

In the ’60s, the changes were readily apparent to broadcasters who could see one station in a market post instant results. Today, when “Commercial Free Mondays” can give broadcasters a nice boost on the day itself, but can’t single handedly win a market battle, the change in acceptable spot load is taking place in pieces. For Sirius XM subscribers, a typical terrestrial spotload has been unacceptable for years. For the younger listeners who have not learned the same loyalty to radio in the same proportion, that spotload has probably never been acceptable.

Broadcasters have long understood the ability of new platforms and their lower spotloads to undermine the 12-14 minutes paradigm, but they have rarely made the leap to “so we must do something differently on our own stations.” As somebody who has sat in plenty of station meetings where even a modest suggested reduction in spotload provokes the comment, “Well, that’s not going to happen,” it’s not hard to imagine GMs and group owners saying that in unison as they read this. Then again, there are undoubtedly General Sales Managers whose stations are now running the increasingly common “Commercial Free Mondays” who once said “that’s not going to happen” in a boardroom somewhere.

A drastically reduced spotload is going to become the new paradigm. And the only question is whether it’s going to be current commercial operators who offer it. To get there, they will have to revisit the notion of selling sponsorships instead of spots – a notion that pioneers like TMO’s Eastern Long Island stations and KZPS (Lonestar 92.5) Dallas tried, but quickly had to back away from. And on the Web where there are so many competitors with much lighter spotloads already, we must immediately ask why stations that are typically selling only a few minutes of inventory per hour are still asking listeners to sit through another 10-14 minutes of fill content that doesn’t entertain, pay the bills, or even truly reinforce a station’s community service mission.

Some broadcasters are reading this and thinking that it’s taken them a year to get to the point where they can sell those 12-14 units at an adequate rate again. Others are going to be typically defensive about anything that seems like pessimism about radio’s future. But I believe strongly in the competitiveness of radio’s content on all platforms. And I believe that most listeners still regard listening to commercials as a fair trade for entertainment. Pandora’s successful introduction of commercials has shown that. What has changed is what represents a good deal. In a decade, if anybody is still selling that many minutes of inventory on a music service, it’s going to be because somebody else has used a low spotload to force today’s commercial broadcasters out, then upped the commercial load again.

Slacker’s Rondenelli told RAIN attendees that they constantly research the “threshold of annoyance.” In the mid-’00s, when radio’s bulging stopsets could no longer be ignored, broadcasters briefly turned their attention to researching stopset length—although the question asked was usually whether listeners would prefer two or three per hour. Then PPM came along and two stopsets won out, even if that meant going back to six-minute breaks, or longer. Over the next few years, the “threshold of annoyance” is going to be one of the most important things that terrestrial broadcasters can research. And the discussions about retrofitting our stations to accommodate what we know about changing listener expectations need to start this afternoon.

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“Two significant things will have to happen for radio to be able to successfully pull off a major change like this. First, owners will have to accept lower cash flow margins, which, if handled properly, would still make radio one of the most profitable businesses on the planet. Second, advertisers would have to accept higher spot rates for the fewer number of commercials available to them … Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that either is likely to happen any time soon. Most operators are slashing everything that isn’t nailed down to protect their margins while, at the same time, advertisers are looking for reduced rates at every turn because they know when an industry is on the ropes (and there will always be low cost providers willing to accommodate their requests). And now we have PPM creating an even greater atmosphere of commoditization. Are we doomed? Absolutely not. Do we need to smarten up? Absolutely. Does that need to happen soon? We both know the answer to that one.” – Dennis Gwiazdon, VP/GM, South Central Media/Nashville

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“Good article about spotloads today, Sean. I think you’re right about where things are heading.” – John Boyne, VP, Coleman Insights

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“Dead on, but I actually think I’ve seen this movie before. For those who were there in the ’70s when FM began its march toward the seemingly impossible goal of 50% of radio listening, they can recall that one of the differentiations from AM was spotload. With AMs then running about 16 minutes, the de facto standard for FM was eight minutes. That certainly wasn’t the sole reason for FM’s success, but I believe it sure helped.” – Jim Smith, GSM, Uniradio/San Diego

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“Slacker, like FM before it, will redefine the idea of ‘how much stuff will I sit through to get to what I want.’ And most radio people won’t even see it coming, let alone think about reacting to it.” – Jack Taddeo

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“What about News/Talk? Many stations grab much of the ‘news breaks’ and replace them with local ads … It is jarring to listen to Andrew Wilkow on Sirius/XM and how much more he gets done in an hour. John Batchelor’s podcasts are about 36 minutes an hour with only the show content. With all the baggage around why show clocks are the way they are—‘traffic on the 8s, early out to carry Paul Harvey, etc.—who has the ability to cut the ad load? And what would happen [if somebody did], especially if you’re getting programming from a competitor who also owns your national rep firm?” – Fred Stiening, StreamingRadioGuide.com

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“I knew it would come to this: dragging stations kicking and screaming into how they have to compete. I remember in the ’80s, I worked for a station that had up to 24 minutes of spots in an hour. The GM never refused a last-minute buy, even if it took us to 26 minutes. I always used to say it was going to ‘bite us in the butt’ later.” – Arlene Tannis, Arlene Tannis Voice & Production Services

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“I can remember when the then [Gordon] McLendon-owned KNUS Dallas had the [positioner] ’99 KNUS, where you are never more than a minute away from music.’ Think anyone will try that now?”” – Tony Hayes

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“I think ‘now’ passed a long time ago regarding taking a look at spotloads. Without real outside competition for listening, most groups considered a clock’s impact on Arbitron ratings as the main criterion. The challenge now is that they have the Arbitron concern (made much more difficult with PPM), the listener’s ability to hear commercial-free content elsewhere, and very little pricing power in the ad market. It will be very interesting to watch how stations react as business continues to accelerate. Will they hold firm on the lower spot loads? Or will they add spots as they reach capacity?” – Rob Williams

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“ In 1993 at [WXKS-FM] Kiss 108 in Boston, I remember the trauma when we added a unit to our nine unit-per-hour spotload. In the 2000s, after consolidation, we were up to 18 an hour. Funny thing: when we were only running eight units an hour, we had around-the-clock live jocks, 24-hour reception (receptionist by day, security guard at night), and massive promotions (we gave away a house). Today that station has only two live shifts. Seems owners did just fine despite the lower margins before consolidation.” – Jeff Berlin

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“I remember in the ’80s when WYTZ (Z95) Chicago tried the ‘never more than two minutes of commercials’ thing. Trouble was, they stopped down every two or three songs. I think it lasted six months. I liked Clear Channel’s ‘less is more’ at the outset. Trouble was, they kept adding new rules and levels to the mix. And we ended up with a four minute stopset that sounded like it was 12 minutes, thanks to four :15 spots, four :30s, a couple of :05s, one :60, and a station promo, and a ‘blink.’” – Chris Rollins