On Internet radio, let’s play name that tune

Evidently it’s been since the ’70s that radio stations needed instrumental “filler” music (the tunes you heard in New England, to cite examples from real experience, when the DJ on duty needed something he could easily fade out going into the news or when he was trying to plug in the Red Sox feed). Because of ad contracts, when Internet listeners from outside certain DMAs tune to, for example, KABC in Los Angeles, they are played a musical interlude instead of commercials.