Advertising on Radio Program

While I was listening the radio program of Pop Music, I found the advertising that inserted in the program were quite annoying and unattractive. It decreased my interests of continuing listening. However, I know it is necessary for a radio program to use advertisements to survive in the changing trends brought by Internet and mobile phones. Therefore, after finishing my presentation, I was curious about is it possible for the broadcast of advertisements to have a positive impact on the radio programs.

First of all, creating appealing messages of the radio advertisements is helpful to reduce negative feelings of audiences. The way that broadcast present an advertisement is different from television as messages can only be delivered without visual media, which means broadcast advertisements need rich imaginations from audiences. However, most advertisements on radio are generally loud, jarring and background music often suppresses the contents of the message, which are easy to develop irritable, angry and stressful emotion of the audiences. To avoid such feelings, I think the radio advertisements should resort to an emotional or humorous way to present the advertising. In the respect of advertising theories, the purchase intentions will be higher for those humorous advertisements containing moderate incongruity than those conveying message directly (Pornpitakpan, 2000) and also the most memorable advertisements among target audiences should be those that evoked the most positive feelings that could arouse the common senses among mass audiences. Therefore, for the broadcast advertising, they should compose appropriate music for the advertising as well as trying to make audience associate the messages to their personal experiences unconsciously.

In addition to the dull and boring messages of the advertising on radio make people feel troublesome, the long period of time advertising also increases the negative emotions of the audiences. Because of lacking of visual communication, it is much easier for people to change the channel when the advertising time on radio program. It is quite annoying to inserting advertising frequently during a music radio program, especially during the part of interviewing a guest. No matter the program Pop Music in Taiwai or the Chinese music program Music Radio I often listened, both of them prefer to insert 30 seconds or 45 seconds advertising for at least 3 times during a 30 minutes’ interview. To be honest, I prefer they play all of those advertisements in one time rather than broke the whole interview for so many times. Just as what I mentioned in the very beginning, advertisements are unavoidable in media industry so in order to dispel audience’s boredom towards advertising, combination of advertising and program appeared as a fresh style to present an advertising in television program, especially entertainment programs. That is, let the guest and host to present the advertising in their program through a creative and suitable way. Taking the most popular program named “Who’s the Murder” in China as an example, it is a detective program that let 6 players doing a role play and try to catch the “murder” in different suspenseful stories. In this program, all of them will use OppoR9s phone to take picture and they will also mention the slogan of the Rejoice shampoo “線索千絲萬縷，飄柔一順到底” while they collect the evidences, sometimes they will use Rejoice as their props as well. In this case, those advertising seemed became one part of the program so that it is not only make those audiences accept advertisements in a humorous way, but also protected the consecutiveness of the whole program. In order to keep the patience of the audiences and cut down the dissatisfactions of audiences, broadcast could also try to inject the advertisements in their program. Mention the products in their conversation in a proper time and atmosphere, which may also increase the interesting of the program. However, mentioning an advertisement too frequently would also deduct the quality of the program and interrupt people appreciate the content.

Furthermore, government is supposed to take the responsibilities to develop the broadcast industry. Nowadays, broadcast industry is restricted by rigid content and advertising rule in Hong Kong, this may limit its flexibility to competitive with other media providers, such as TV, Internet. Facing the challenge of the new trends brought by mobile devices, the market of broadcast is shrinking severely. Although, with the development of technology and science, broadcast would be replaced by other media and die away one day, there still are many things that government is able to do for broadcast industry to slow down the vanishment at least. For example, in China, Chinese government provide many platforms to those people who are enthusiastic in broadcasting. They support some companies to create broadcast apps, such as “Lichee FM”, “Himalayan broadcast” “Skimmer FM” and so on, in which many broadcasters can publish their program there. Moreover, some music apps, such as QQ music, Cloud Music, they also provide the function of music broadcast, which attractive a lot of young people as well as many famous singers to join them. In this case, it is necessary for the Hong Kong government to increase their budget for broadcast to build diverse and high quality programs, meanwhile, they have a duty to review the relevant policies and rules of advertisement in order to ensure that the broadcast industry is up to date.

In conclusion, broadcast is not only one of classical culture in Hong Kong, it was also brought many unforgettable memories to Hong Kong people, especially those old generations. However, it is a pity to see many nice broadcast programs be occupied by commercial advertisements gradually as well as it fades out in people’s life unconsciously. As the young generation, despite of searching Internet is more convenient than listening a radio, it could be a fresh experience to try to pay more attention to the old media rather than our mobile phone since it can bring you back to those old days and give you more peace and leisure time.

Reference:

Belch, G. E., & Belch, M. A. (2015). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective (10th ed.). Boston: Irwin. McGraw-Hill.

Schulberg, P., & Schulberg, B. (1996). Radio advertising: the authoritative handbook. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Business Books.