Full-service radio

Full service (also known as hometown radio) is a type of radio format; the format is characterized by a mix of music programming (usually drawing from formats such as adult contemporary, country, or oldies) and a large amount of locally produced programming and segments, such as news and talk focusing on local issues, sports coverage, and other forms of religious and brokered content.

It is found mainly on small-market AM radio stations in the United States and Canada, particularly on smaller, locally owned stations in rural areas. The format differs from community radio in that full-service radio is usually a commercial enterprise and is not as often ideologically driven as some of the more prominent community radio operators are. Nonprofit community radio stations often run formats comparable to those on commercial full-service radio, albeit usually with less mainstream music.

Programming

Programming generally heard on full service stations can include:

• Local and national (or top-of-the-hour) news, often including agriculture reports.
• At least one local talk show (often under a generic name such as Viewpoint, Dialogue, or Hotline), occasionally along with syndicated talk programming.
• Music, frequently drawing from a number of popular formats. Common ones include middle-of-the-road, adult contemporary, country, and oldies/classic hits.
• Automated programming in overnight time slots, or even a sign-off (many daytime-only stations run full-service formats).
• Tradio, a free advertising service for listeners to offer things for sale.
• High school football and other local sports. Frequently, there will be an NCAA Division I university broadcasting football and basketball games (or, in northern regions, ice hockey), and often a smaller college in the market – especially if the college does not have its own station – will also have its games carried on the station; a full-service station may also affiliate with a major professional sports league team's radio network (this is especially true of the NFL, which plays most of its games during the day, when most AM stations can make best use of their signals).
• Locally based contests or prize giveaways, such as the "cash call", where a dollar amount is given out and a caller who has submitted an entry to the contest is called to tell the host what the amount is to win a check in that amount, usually a sum between $20-$75; if guessed wrong the amount is increased and the jackpot rolls over. (This is much like on television with the Dialing For Dollars format.)
• Sunday morning church services, often from several local congregations. Sometimes, a station will also have a daily sermonette at some point during the day, from possibly a rotating pool of pastors giving a brief but inspirational message, scripture reading, or "thought for the day." Conversely, major-market stations that are corporately owned are apt to carry local church services less frequently, preferring to carry automated, syndicated or brokered programming, or use syndicated features such as the daily commentary of Focus on the Family in place of a sermonette.
• Limited brokered programming, usually during off-peak hours.
• Significant local advertising. Small full-service stations have an advantage of being an attractive advertising option for smaller businesses that only need to reach a small footprint and thus would not advertise on larger corporate stations. Thus full-service stations tend to work best in small towns that have large numbers of small businesses that can advertise on the station.

Depending on the ethnic composition of the station's coverage area and/or ownership and management, at least a portion of a full-service station's weekend programming is often set aside for ethnic or specialty music programming such as polka, Italian music, native American music, Celtic music or other widely varying ethnic programming, almost always by a local host. Many stations also set aside a block of programming for golden oldies, or music from the 1920s through early 1960s, with genres ranging from early rock and roll and pre-1965 country music to pop standards, swing, jazz, big band and – sometimes – existing recordings predating the 1920s.

Background

Full-service radio was the predominant form of radio broadcasting during the network radio era, before the debut of contemporary hit radio (top 40) in the 1950s. In the old-time radio era, most stations would mix local programs (of a wide variety) with the networks' offerings. The name of the format implies that the station serves a broad spectrum of listeners and demographics with small portions of various types of programming.

Since the full-service format is traditionally confined to AM and rural listeners, oldies/classic hits, adult standards and classic country tend to form the basis of most music rotations on these stations. Full service stations tend to have somewhat more of a freeform playlist, allowing disc jockeys to play favorite tunes, and as such, album cuts, B-sides, "forgotten 45s," local bands and lesser-known performers and songs can see more air time on a full-service station than on most other commercial formats. The freeform playlist also enables jockeys to fit in caller requests more frequently, whereas larger stations owned by corporations may only take requests at designated times if at all (and then have restrictions on top of that, such as only current hits plus recurrents within a certain time frame).

Full service is not one of the formats defined by Nielsen; in most cases, full-service stations are usually listed under the blanket category of "variety." Smaller full-service stations rarely show up in the Nielsen Ratings in part due to their general refusal to pay for the company's services; this also allows such stations to set their own advertising rates in response to what the market supports.

In the United Kingdom, the term "full service" is sometimes used to refer to the Independent Local Radio stations of the 1970s and 1980s, which were contractually obliged to feature a broad range of output (specialist music, speech, sports commentary, minority programs) as opposed to the tightly targeted all-pop music stations of the 1990s and 21st Century.

In New Zealand, the format was known as community radio and was widespread amongst the smaller centers until the late 1990s, when these stations were replaced with network programming.