Leaving The "Class Of 1989" Boom Tunes To Classic Country

Is 2011 going down in country radio history as the year that "country boom years" (1989 to 1995) titles and artists move from mainstream country playlists to classic country libraries?


A&O's 8th annual "Roadmap" perceptual study was conducted in January and February by more than ten thousand listeners to 80+ radio stations across the U.S. and Canada of many stripes.

For the first time, listeners to the mainstream stations rated the early 90's era the lowest ever, while users of classic country stations ranked that music 42% higher.


Should mainstream country stations defend aggressively when they start to hear a classic country station they duplicate cume with move newer?

Only if they want to play lower testing songs with their 2011 target listeners.

.. and, only if they want to expose music that today's 25-44 year old country fans don't enjoy anywhere near as much as they do today's country.

The better new country music does with 25-54 and 18-49, the more exciting the potential becomes for classic country stations to move into the rich vein of songs and artists from country's biggest decade ever, the 1990's.

Six Million Divided by ONE

It has been fun to watch the impact that the arrival of John Paul at Senior Director of Country Programming joining longtime Denver programmer John St. John and the team at Dial-Global/Denver just after the first of the year.

When the staff at DG wants to talk to the boss, all they need to do is yell “hey, John.” I received a note from both of them this morning, making an impressive announcement:

Dial Global now supplies American Forces Radio with their Mainstream Country 24/7 format and rebroadcasts it over their worldwide network.

In addition to our network of over 200 radio stations in the United States that carry us through Dial Global Radio Networks, we are now heard in 188 countries around the world wherever there are military installations, bases, offices, etc. We are heard in every United States Embassy and Consulate around the world. We are also heard on 37 ships at sea, including all aircraft carriers.

In addition, some of the installations broadcast us terrestrially so surrounding English speaking civilian support personnel and the native civilian population can listen.

The conservative estimate is that the audience of Mainstream Country on the American Forces Radio Network is over three million per week. That doesn’t include the domestic cumes of nearly three million, making Dial Global’s Mainstream Country format the most listened to country outlet, not only in the United States, but around the world with a total weekly cume around six million.

Paul tells me that they are starting to get requests from oversees, Birthday wishes and e-mails from all over the world.

“We are making overnights a little more important (since it's midday is the Middle East). Being extreamly topical and throwing in the more songs like "Angel Flight", "Arlington", etc. Many people are getting their "pop culture/Nashville news/things happening at home" from us in real time. Memorial Day we are planning on doing military greetings all weekend. We have to be careful because we can't really promote this on the air. Local affiliates don't care and don't want us to promote it. We can't sell the numbers (since AFR covers our spots with messages). It's a HUGE benefit for Nashville and country music. They get their music and artists exposed to millions oversees.”

I have worked with John Paul since he first started in radio in his hometown of Kelso-Longview and was trained/mentored by the venerable San Francisco, Seattle and Portland vet Bill Dodd, while he was working with GM Jeff Silver and now PD Wendy Lynn at WYRK/Buffalo and then KUPL/Portland and I can testify that he has a positive impact where ever he works, so there’s one thing I know for sure: he has his personalities talking to those six million sets of ears around the world ONE PERSON at a time.

No matter how big your cume becomes, they still experience it in first and second person singular, one at a time.