Common examples Common examples are religious and political programs and talk-show-format programs similar to
infomercials on television. Others are hobby programs or vanity programs paid for by the host and/or their supporters, and may be intended to promote the host's personality, for instance in preparation for a political campaign, or to promote a product, service or business that the host is closely associated with. A live vanity show may be carried on several stations by
remote broadcast or
simulcast, with the producer paying multiple stations an airtime fee.
Financial advisors and planners often produce this kind of programming. Brokered commercial programs promote products or services by scripting shows made to sound similar to
talk radio or news programming, and may even include calls from actual listeners (or actors playing the part of listeners). The programs are a specific type of infomercial, as they focus on a topic related to the product and repeatedly steer listeners and "callers" to a particular website and/or
toll-free telephone number in order to purchase the product being featured. Although presented in the style of live programs, these are typically pre-recorded and supplied to stations on tape, disc, or digital downloadable formats, such as MP3 files. Such programming is most common on talk radio stations and used to fill non-
prime time slots and to augment income from spot-advertisement sales during normal programs. Most of these programs feature a
disclaimer at either the beginning or the end of the program (or both), usually read by the program's host or (most often) by a separate announcer; some radio stations play a standard disclaimer before all such programs. Certain mainstream sports and entertainment broadcasts may resort to buying brokered airtime to air on television if they cannot secure a deal that pays rights fees or a barter agreement. Examples include the last years of the
Professional Bowlers Tour,
Major League Baseball's short-lived
The Baseball Network venture in the mid-1990s, professional football leagues such as the 2009–2012
United Football League and
Alliance of American Football, and
motorsports events produced and sponsored by
Lucas Oil. In the case of professional football, brokered programming has typically not been feasible in the long term, as the sport requires rights fees to make it viable; leagues that have relied on brokering television time have collapsed in short order due to financial losses. Program time is often brokered to churches on Sunday mornings in a manner that parallels
televangelism; there are also religious stations that rely primarily on brokered programs, and these stations often get the derisive title of "pay for pray," a play on the unethical practice of "
pay for play" on music stations. There are also some
AM radio stations that are dedicated to the brokered format, selling time for as little as 15 minutes or even selling the entire broadcasting day to a single entity, with the station holding the
broadcast license and providing the facilities. That long-form type of brokered programming is especially popular among ethnic and religious broadcasters as well as with privately owned U.S.-based
shortwave radio broadcasters.
Music radio programs Brokered programs are not exclusive to talk radio; music radio programs can also be brokered. The brokered format, popular among specialty and niche music formats (e.g.
polka music), usually involves the show itself lining up its own advertising and paying the station for its airtime. The idea reduces the risk for the station and assures the show remains on the air as long as the show's producers continue to pay the station's airtime fee.
Record companies Record companies (through independent promoters) may also purchase brokered time on music stations to have the station play a new single as a "preview", which has the potential to be inserted onto a station's general playlist but has not received the traction to do so. These spots are often the length of the song with an introduction and disclaimer at the end of the song stating the artist, album title, and releasing label, and come under titles such as
CD Preview. The segments must be carefully disclaimed by the record companies so as to not violate
payola laws and the playing of the song, as it is paid for, cannot be applied to song popularity charts, as has happened in the early 2000s with some forms of this concept.
Brokered time through agencies Oftentimes broadcasters will seek the help of an ad agency to secure a brokered radio show. Agencies such as I Buy Time in Dallas, Texas or Bayliss Media Group in Los Angeles, California have the knowledge on how to negotiate a lower per-hour rate than what may be quoted by the radio station to the individual broadcaster.
Local marketing agreements If a station sells all of its time to a programmer, essentially
leasing the station, it is a
local marketing agreement (LMA). Like owning a station, this counts toward United States
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) caps that prevent excessive
concentration of media ownership in the United States and Canada. However, in the case of television stations, LMA's do not count towards caps in the United States. ==Examples of brokered, non-religious programming==