The single most common confusion in radio traffic, and it is not a fault in anything.
An advertiser is told their spot runs at 8:20. They listen at 8:20 and hear a song. They call.
Why it moves
Automation clocks are sequences, not timetables. The hour is a list: play this, then that, then a break. A break happens wherever the songs before it finish — so its real air time drifts by minutes, hour to hour, depending on what was scheduled in front of it.
Nothing has gone wrong. That is how every automation system in radio works, and it is why hours run long and short and get trimmed at the top.
So what is the number for?
It is a name. The minute against a break is how the traffic system and the automation agree on *which* break they are both talking about. It identifies the break; it does not predict it.
Once you read it that way, a lot of things stop being confusing:
- The as-run showing 8:23 for a spot logged at 8:20 is not a discrepancy. It is the same break.
- Reconciliation matches on the break, not on the clock time — which is the only way it could work, given the above.
- Two spots in the same break have the same label and different air times, and both are correct.
What to tell an advertiser
Not "your spot runs at 8:20." Say "your spot runs in the 8 o'clock hour, in the first break after the news" — because that is the thing that is actually true, and it is the thing you can prove from the as-run afterwards.
It also happens to be a better sell. A break position is a real piece of information about who is listening. A minute that will not be kept is not.
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*The longer version, including what happens when an hour runs long: Breaks, and why times move.*