10 of 60 mins commercial break. Sigh.

On Thursday's "How to produce for radio" lecture we were given some preparations to do before the next lecture coming up this Thursday. Among other things we're supposed to listen to a radio station for at least 30 minutes and think of what we hear, what happens, how does the presenter make you feel special enough so that you don't turn him off and leave him alone out there in media space? Also, we were told to preferably listen to a radio station which we normally don't listen to but since I haven't really been listening to radio since I moved to the UK I just decided to pick a random radio channel on my Sky box and go for it..

0107

Absolute

So an hour and a bit ago this the channel I got tuned on to. A commercial station that seems to survive on nothing else than commercial breaks and competitions every frigging second for people to pay a pound to enter with a 1 in a million chance to win a laptop.. Fair enough. After all, this is a commercial station and I do expect commercial breaks when listening to it, I would be sort of silly if not - but I was not expecting one sixth of the broadcasted time I listened to, to be commercial commercial bloody commercial breaks.

I ended up listening an hour because it feels like I would be able to give a fairer picture of the station the longer I would listen to it. So, 60 minutes ended up containing 10 minutes commercial breaks together and 9 minutes of win this fab prize if entering this contest. 19 minutes out of 60. That's a lot!

I have actually never thought about commercial radio like this before. And with this hour session I have realised that I do like the TV licence more than I thought I did an hour ago - because there is no silly commercial breaks. Long live the TV licence!! Hurray!!

Or would media work just as well without it..?

Hmm...
Mads