This is a comment I left elsewhere in response to someone asking why people would complain about T-Radio, given how noisy the stations already are:

Yeah, T-Radio was approximately 33% ads and inane chatter, and none of the songs ran more than 2:30, 2:45 at the outside, which means a lot of songs just...stopped before they were done. I'm told "Hey There Delilah" was cut off after one verse and one chorus.

As a subway performer, I'm biased against T-Radio on that basis; after sitting and really listening to it for an hour, I hate it because it's crappy radio. A fair percentage of it was just T-Radio promoting itself, and I hope the advertisers didn't pay much for those ads, because if a train came through, both the train noise and the announcement of the train's arrival drowned out the ads. I missed one entire 30 second ad because of train noise. Still don't know who it was for, which makes for very ineffective advertising.

*****

Yes, I sat in Airport Station and listened to T-Radio for an hour with a stopwatch and a pen and paper. I wonder if the musicians they play know that their songs are getting cut short, or if they'd care. "Hey There Delilah" usually clocks in around 3:50 or so, which means they were playing just over half of it. "Umbrella" (ella ella ay ay) shows a timing of 4:15. Mariah Carey's "Hero": 4:21. "When Doves Cry", Prince: 3:47 (radio version, I think). "1000 Miles", Vanessa Carlton: 4:26. As a musician, I find this offensive.

Don't get me wrong; I do understand the concept of a radio edit, but I don't know of any overriding radio philosophy that states that every song must be edited to exactly two-and-a-half minutes, and usually radio edits involve things like fades and cutting extended instrumental passages, not just...stopping.