Posted by
The INFORMER (Cokie907@yahoo.com) on Monday, November 01, 2010 3:25:10 PM
We patriotic Americans love one thing almost as much as our Constitution, the timely and informative stream of diatribe we receive each day from talk radio. But there's a downside....the repetitive litany of annoying commercials which at times, might feel like a 3/8" drill bit being bored right through the middle of our forehead! Don't despair Grassroot Troopers, I have a solution.
Those who dine on a regular diet of "Meat and Taters" know that I'm not the traditional blogger in the sense that I editorialize, I think outside the box, offer advice and best of all solutions to your problems. Voila! The TALK RADIO SOLUTION. Keep in mind that in 60 minutes of talk radio, you are only getting 29 to 31 minutes of content which leaves plenty of time to get stuff done. :-)
Skipping the commercials is easy if you learn the schedule and know that most commercial breaks are between 4 and 5 minutes. You just turn the radio off (or unplug it to save wear and tear on the switch...lol) and turn it back on when the time has elapsed. Another way is to memorize when each host goes in and out of commercial breaks. It sounds hard but they go in and out with amazing regularity (we are after all, creatures of habit) and once you get good, you can "smell" the commercial breaks coming!
Starting with the Big 3 radio hosts (and only the Big 3 to keep the blog reasonably short).......
Hannity is the EASIEST of all because he has 2 big, meaty segments: 1) :07 to :22 and 2) :35 to :50 You listen to anything else on his show and you're talking very small potatoes, without the meat...lol. It's great with Hannity because you can actually do your shopping or other tasks without missing all that much content. Sadly, not the case with our remaining Big 3 hosts.
Next is Levin who jumps around on his breaks (likely because he's a relative newbie in the talk radio world or because he's a sly one and wants to keep us guessing...lol). Levin can be counted on to do the following talk schedule for his superlative diatribe:
1) :06 to :19 2) :24 to :28 3) :34 to :44 4) :49 to :53 5) :57 to :59
The so-called "Godfather of Talk Radio", Rush Limbaugh is a much harder nut to crack on silly,stupid commercial avoidance because he has adopted the Paul Harvey approach of using "drive by commercials". What are these? Commercials inserted in the dialogue that he sneaks up on the unsuspecting listener and BAMMO! He springs them like a trap when the listener least expects it. His schedule:
1) :06 to :19 2) :24 to :30 3) :34 to :47 4) :51 to :54 5) :58 to just shy of :59.
But with Limbaugh you can never be too sure of the break lengths, this is why I use what I've called the "Two Radio Solution". When he's on, I tune a radio in a nearby room and turn the volume down nice and low so I can only hear his intro "bumper" music which leads him in from the commercial break. When he goes to commercial, I will unplug the radio where I'm working and just wait to hear his bumper music on the radio in the other room. Don't worry, if you miss the music, you'll definitely hear his voice booming through as he starts the next segment and you will miss very little content.
One a related and somewhat sophisticated note for the true talk radio afficianado. It wouldn't hurt to get an oven timer, mount it next to your radio and set it to 4 mins 30 secs. That way, when you turn your radio off, you can press the countdown button on the timer. If you get distracted, the alarm will beep just like it would to keep you from burning your muffins.
No....I don't bake.