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.
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.
[5] 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.
Some packages of high school football and basketball games are brokered more with the specific purposes of college recruiting and future name, image, and likeness deals in mind rather than the actual team matchup, which is mainly prevalent with nationally-ranked high school athletic powers that do not play traditional local schedules against local opponents and highlight certain heavily-recruited players.
Each arrangement depends on whether the station can deliver enough listeners to allow the syndicator to earn money from ad sales.
The format of brokered programs varies; many sports radio stations will use brokered programs from sports handicappers and prognosticators to fit their format, while news and talk radio stations will often rely on brokered programs that sell vitamin or nutritional supplements, financial planning products and services, and alternative medical products, fitting those stations' older audiences.
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.