How are radio commercials broadcast?

Question

Does the DJ flip a switch or something to switch the air program to an endless commercial stream? Or are they all manually played on a cart system?

I intern at a non commercial station, so I'm trying to figure out how commercials work in a commercial station. Please explain if you know.

Leave you station's call sign if you are affiliated with one!

Answer 1

Commercials used to be played on "carts"

Most stations now upload the audio into a file on a server hard drive.

Answer 2

Kronsteen is right.. It used to be handled by the DJ who would insert a tape which kind of looked like a 8 track (oh boy am I showing my age) into a machine to play the ad copy... He pretty much had to keep track of the tapes he played and such.

Now adays most ads and music is all loaded onto a hard drive and programs insert the music when and where as well as the ads when and where it's needed.

In fact some stations even pre-record the DJ and let the computer insert the Dj comments, the music and the ads when it's programmed to do it.

Not affliated with any stations at present. But have many friends in the radio business who have showed me these systems