Dayparting - Dayparts On Radio

Dayparts On Radio

Arbitron, the leading audience measurement ratings service in the United States, divides a weekday into five dayparts: morning drive time (6–10am), midday (10am–3pm), afternoon drive (3–7pm), evenings (7:00pm–Midnight), and overnight (Midnight–6am).

In radio broadcasting through most of the 1990s, dayparting was also used for censorship purposes. To wit, in many cases if a certain song was deemed unsuitable for young listeners, the song in question would only be allowed airplay during the late evening or overnight hours when children were presumably asleep. Even today, the Federal Communications Commission dictates less stringent decency requirements for programming aired between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am local time.

The drive time dayparts coincide with rush hour; these dayparts are traditionally the most listened-to portions of the schedule, since these are the times when most people are in their cars, where radios remain nearly ubiquitous. Most stations (both talk and music) have local programming in one or both drive time slots. The midday, or "at work" slot, has in recent years become particularly prone to voice tracking, as large station ownership groups cut costs and use supposedly local jocks at multiple stations (often in different time zones). Music stations often are careful not to repeat songs during the midday shift, as they generally have a captive audience, and will often use "9 to 5 No Repeat Workdays" and all-request or specialty lunch hours to lure listeners and air a broader variety of music. Evenings are a popular time for syndicated programs, while overnights are generally automated, either with or without a voice-tracked jock, though there are a few niche programs that target special audiences in the overnight and early-morning hours (America's Trucking Network, Midnight Trucking Radio Network, and the National Farm Report among them). On weekends, music stations often air syndicated programming, without regard to time slots (though Saturday nights often remain live with either local or syndicated hosts, especially on oldies and country music stations, to take requests) and talk stations air niche network shows or brokered programming. Religious programming often airs on Sunday mornings.

In talk radio, where voice tracking is impossible and broadcast syndication is live and national, these lines blur somewhat. The Rush Limbaugh Show airs in a time slot that is in midday in all time zones, but other than that and overnight shows such as Coast to Coast AM, a show that airs in the Pacific time zone's afternoon drive time (for instance, The Lars Larson Show) would fall into a less-listened to evening time slot on the East Coast. Similarly, a show that is in early middays on the East Coast (such as the Glenn Beck Program) would be in morning drive on the West Coast, and may not live up to the expectations of listeners expecting local, informative content. The general solution for this problem is to tape-delay programming to fit schedules.