Why weren't there any commercials?

A question I am always asked is why weren't there any commercials on RAM FM - and a good question it is. Well at the beginning there were - four commercials each hour - for Dove, Coca Cola, Western Union and Dallah Rent a Car.

As far as I know, these slots were given either free of charge or for very little money for six months on a trial basis. As we know, none of the above continued to advertise on RAM FM, the reason (to me) not known. In fact nearly very few companies advertised on RAM FM and the question is why?

I can think of a couple of reasons - at least from the Israeli advertisers point of view. RAM FM was a Palestinian radio station. The stations license came from the Palestinian Authority, the transmitters were in Ramallah, as was the head office. I suppose it would be very hard for an Israeli company to advertise on such a station. I do not know the terms of the broadcast license, so I do not know if it was forbidden to receive advertising from Israel or not. I DO know that in the beginning at least, the stations focus was on multi-national companies.

I also heard (and I do not know if this is true or not) that the station wanted equal advertising - meaning the same amount of commercials from Israel as from the P.A. This never happened, so there was no advertising at all. This could have been another reason for the lack of advertising.

Towards the end, we did get sponsorship from Cheerios cereal and from the "Curves" gym, I still remember the boxes of cheerios piled up in the Station Managers office - wonder what happened to them?

The lack of advertising may have been "one" of the reasons leading to the closure of RAM FM in August 2008. I can completely understand the investors when they put out so much money on the station, and didn't get anything back in return.