(How Country Wins Or Loses At) The Radio Game

Reid Morgan, Pattison Radio Group/Lethbridge Director of Programming for CHLB-FM and CJBZ-FM, writes: "Driving back from lunch I punched through the five major stations we compete with. (CKVN excluded) Country 95 was playing a new Can Con song, Roadhammers/Homegrown and B 93 was playing a recurrent song Jordin Sparks/One Step at a Time.

Here's the game: the other three stations, Rock 106, The River and The Lounge were playing..

Abba / Dancing Queen
John Melencamp / Hurt So Good
Pat Benetar / Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Try to match the song to the station! (Of course, depending on when you happen to listen, you might hear any of those songs on any of them.)

The point is, country and CHR are the only ones doing anything unique, the other three can be completely interchangeable and IMHO the musical identities have become blurred. I also think this opens great opportunities for us, but, of course, in the battle for the strongest song at this moment C95, admittedly, would not come out on top. While country needs to work on our song power and familiarity to keep cumes up, the formats around us seem to be creating loyalty, music differentiation and TSL problems for themselves."

Thanks, Reid. Great points. And, as if to underscore your perspective, I drove into another client market last evening and heard Joni Mitchell/Big Yellow Taxi on a station which calls itself "classic rock."