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Clear Channel would be free of ads through April 1, in response to “a lot of negative comments about in-stream ads,” Pittman said in an interview.  The announcement was made in November.  Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman told The Associated Press that negative listener reaction to Pandora’s in-stream ads, described as disruptive and annoying, influenced the decision.

The radio company will keep part of its iHeart Radio online service ad-free for at least a few more months.  “There are a lot of negative comments about in-stream ads,” Pittman said in an interview.  Traditional radio is a completely different experience, “When you’re in your music collection, you want to escape from the world”.

The radio company will keep part of its iHeart Radio online service ad-free for at least a few months eventually pushing back the introduction of ads in the custom service of its music streaming service.  Meanwhile the company will need to make a way to make them more “compatible” with user experience.

Apparently a consumer backlash against ads on Pandora Media Inc.’s competing service instigated the Clear Channel decision.  Pandora, facing a plethora of comments on Twitter mentioning their detest of the ads, some of them describing them as mood-killers that made them want to stop listening, has declined to comment.

Since its debut as a public company in June, Pandora has been under pressure to boost the revenue it gets from ads. The company’s ad revenue doubled in the year through January and pared its losses, but its stock was trading just above $10 on Wednesday, nearly 38 percent below its $16 IPO price.