You can buy fixed or run of schedule.
Fixed are specific shows/times. You pay more based on ratings. These are usually non-preemptable, and if available (national network buys or certain ratings periods) you get an audience guarantee of X number of eyeballs seeing your spot. If it falls short you may get makegood commercials to make up the difference. But these will be the most expensive commercials. The amount you will pay depends on market size and ratings, but for this example let's say your 30 second commercial fixed during the news is $5,000 for each showing.

However you may find you can pay $250 per commercial showing for a Run of Schedule (ROS), which means the station will run them wherever they want. So you may get 20 airings for the same amount of money. These are considered preemptible, so they might get bumped and never air if the station schedule is full of fixed premium price. You might find prime-time is filled with fixed position spots and you get second and third rate times of day or night. During elections , candidate and election commercials have a deadline (they have to run before election day) and most are fixed price and certain FCC rules control price and making equal airtime at same price. You may find all your commercials get shuffled to overnight or Sunday Morning, when fewer people are watching and low advertiser demand. Or you might find it gets pre-empted for fixed (which will take priority -- more $$) . If you spend a bunch of money on having your commercial filmed and buy run of schedule you might find none make it on the air before your sale is over. You may find the station will bump your commercials fixed or for another ROS buyer, but one who buys 5,000 ROS commercials a year.

However if you know the way advertising works you might get good prices and placement for your ROS if you buy when demand is low, like after Christmas and after Christmas sales are over.

Political season commercials bring in lots of money for radio and TV.

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