First off, I should say that I do not work in radio and do not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of how scheduling works. I do, however, know about music (I have a summa cum laude degree in the subject and years of analysis to back it up), I understand misogyny (I am a woman and I read), and I get the basics of capitalism, corporate America and those flashing dollar signs (I live in the western world). Therefore, I feel I am at least semi-qualified to speak about such matters involving radio, not just of the last seven days, but also of the last few years in general.
In some ways, I am your target demographic. No, I am not a male, a gender with whom you have become overwhelmingly preoccupied during the past few years with the influx of former rock listeners into the format. I am a female, a female on the cusp of her twenty-third birthday, slipping nicely into that 18-24 bracket that eats up the offerings of Luke Bryan, Hunter Hayes, and Florida Georgia Line, to name a few. I began listening to country music of my own volition in 2006, consuming predominantly mainstream, contemporary country with forays into the past and relative obscurity on limited occasions due to time restrictions. I am not gay, which means I have the capacity to be attracted to male performers. On the surface, I am your ideal listener.
However, for some years now I have struggled with the music being played on your format. I credit myself with being an intelligent individual; I hold a college degree, I read often, and I enjoy poetic lyricism immensely for its multiple interpretations and opportunity for deep analysis. I enjoy fun music too, but I think you’ll gather from this that my fun songs need to be original, interesting, and not juvenile. Still, I am hardly alone, with the vast majority of young listeners wanting, at the very least, a variety of subject matters and styles ranging from the rudimentary “kick back” track to the exploration of the darkness behind the human condition. Even for those who prefer simple and straightforward lyricism, most still look for something to engage with, that can set the song and the artist apart from the rest.
Although you claim to have researched into the wants and needs of your listeners, as per Windmills’ fantastic analysis of callout reports these are far from perfect and usually only represent a small sample size of avid listeners. As a result, you (collectively) have induced a self-fulfilling prophecy where songs and artists of similar style and theme are the only ones that achieve any notable airplay. Playing into safe hands that target an extremely narrow range of music and a particular type of listener means that many have abandoned you to find their music via other means. Streaming and internet radio are now where the vast majority of devoted music listeners consume existing and discover new music, meaning that your role is limited to that of entertaining the casual listener, providing background noise for commuting and other monotonous daily activities.
Let me introduce my first home truth: if you do not change the way that you do things, country radio is going to take an even sharper decline than it has in recent years. Devoted music listeners are the bread and butter of the music industry because they can always be counted on to make music a priority, both with their time and particularly with their disposable income. If you continue to pitch to those who simply want a continuous mix of unchallenging music to run alongside other activities that are more important, well, I hardly need to tell you that your business is over. What’s more, advertisers don’t all want to target the same demographic, and you’ll find them searching elsewhere for people you aren’t reaching with your homogenous programming.
There was much made of SaladGate last week and the comments radio consultant Keith Hill gave to Country Aircheck. Rightly so; the backlash has been unprecedented but refreshing considering that it has led to a number of stations programming women-only shows (as a one-off, but it’s progress), and far more folks taking radio’s misogyny seriously. A number of our writers have discussed various aspects of the argument for more women, so I won’t go into that here (links at the end of the article), but what I will say is that no matter what, the current format is patronising its listeners. It assumes we would struggle with serious, even dark material. It assumes we would shy from something remotely twangy. It assumes we wouldn’t know how to handle an artist we couldn’t ogle. It assumes that we only want one style of music all the time, even as it claims “kids listen to everything these days”.
The irony is where stations have begun to pick up songs from other formats, most notably from pop. As Taylor Swift left for greener pastures, radio chased her, desperately trying to cling on to her powerful and yet still grossly expanding fan base. They told their detractors that they see no reason why other stations should benefit from hits when they can too, but they missed the point entirely. Firstly, of course, if we are to have genre-based formats, then we should stick to them. R&B stations aren’t playing the latest Blake Shelton hit. Hip hop stations are not playing Florida Georgia Line, no matter how convinced some may be of their validity in that field. We, at FTCR, do not cover non-roots material. It’s not that we don’t like other genres, it’s that we made our niche and we stuck to it. For radio to work, as an ecosystem, it needs to share the load, not run in to cover the same twenty songs across all formats. If a listener wants to switch the station to listen to rock that day, that’s totally fine. Your job is not to please everyone all of the time. Your job is to do what you do and do it well; people will come back if they understand who you are and know that you understand it too. If you take risks, some may tune out. That’s all a part of figuring out where you fit in the ecosystem and finding the audience that is right for you.
But the irony of all of this is how radio defends itself for playing songs from other formats, in the interest of the “variety” that the kidz these days apparently want. Yet, they don’t consider for one second that all of that variety could be achieved by just balancing what they do with actual country material. A balance of women, men, female-based groups, male-based groups, party songs, story songs, happy songs, sad songs, traditional songs, pop country songs – or perhaps a slightly weighted balance given your particular station’s focus. It’s okay to be weighted, as long as it’s to be different, not the same.
Some radio programmers know exactly what’s up, and that’s admirable. I commend that. Many others, however, are the exact kind of misogynistic, narrow-minded morons that we’ve been exposed to this past week. We need more of the former, and we need them fast if country radio is to retain any of its credibility and an ounce of its listenership.
Your move, radio.
