“I Only Have… How Long?!?!”
Sixty seconds. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time does it? Well, it is…annnnnnnnnnnnnd it isn’t.
When I first started in radio, when I was learning how to run a soundboard where every button I was hitting was causing something to go out over the air (or in some cases, NOT go out over the air - OOPS – but only 1.5 million people heard that, right?) the prospect of ONLY having sixty seconds scared me. It downright terrified me.
So there I am learning how to segue music and sound elements, how to broadcast commercials, how to run a cart machine, all the “technical” things that a “board op” does, the prospect of ONLY having sixty seconds seemed like a blink of an eye. (As one Program Director said to me, “If I could train a monkey to do that, you’d be gone tomorrow”. Now, with automation and computers, he’s gotten his wish but that’s another blog for another day.) I’d stare at timers and my li’l fingers would hover over buttons, shaking nervously and uncontrollably. Let’s face it, I was a mess.
Flash forward all these years later and sixty seconds is a lifetime. It’s amazing what you can get done in that amount of time. So what’s this have to do with writing and producing a radio commercial? Excellent question. In DR, sixty seconds is NEVER sixty seconds. How’s THAT for a head scratcher?
I’ll explain.
You’ve got your product. You want to market it on radio. The normal units to time to buy are :30 and :60. The smaller the unit of time bought, the less expensive the time is. Makes sense, right? So you decide you want :30s. Here’s why you need :60s.
As a rule of thumb, a call to action (how will someone get my product/service and what will I be enticing them with – hence forth known as “the offer”) will take :15. Do you have a specific legal disclaimer? It can hopefully be done in :10. That’s :25 of your :30 spot. Oh yeah, you haven’t even begun to describe what your product is, what it does and why someone needs it. You thought :60 was a short amount of time? Good luck explaining the features and benefits of your product in :05. I don’t think the great John Moschitta could pull that off.
Ian Cohen, Production Director