In 1989, All It Took Was Seven

In 2012, we have at least 12 so far (in alpha order):

Jason Aldean
Luke Brian
Kenny Chesney
Eric Church
Toby Keith
Lady Antebellum
Miranda Lambert
Tim McGraw
Brad Paisley
Blake Shelton
Taylor Swift
Carrie Underwood
Zac Brown Band

.. and that's not counting Reba, George Strait and a few others who were filling arenas just a year or so ago.

So, the question for me isn't "do we have enough new names who can sell 10,000 tickets on the strength of their own brand power and drive the marketing of country's new generation of music to the new generation of new listeners", but can we possibly find room for any more right now?

No matter how many new artists come through the funnel, we can still only play 14 or 15 songs an hour unless everyone starts releasing 2:30 hits, which would be extremely nice, but shows no signs of happening.

The Stealth Superstar

John St. John, Program Director, Mainstream and Classic Country for Dial Global/Denver was at KYGO’s thirtieth anniversary show with Tim McGraw and Lady Antebellum last weekend.

“I went around with a microphone to get listener audio for sweepers and promos from tailgaters before the show. At some point in almost all of my ‘interviews’ I would ask who are your favorite country artists? Of course, headliners Tim McGraw and Lady A were mentioned a lot. But, get ready for a surprise. On this particular weekend in the Rockies, Garth Brooks came up a lot and I mean a LOT (just as strong as McGraw and LA combined). Of course, I had Chesney, Taylor, Miranda, Urban and a few others but almost everyone included Garth in their list of favorites. More than George Strait, Toby Keith, Zac Brown or Alan Jackson! (Perhaps, because Toby will be at the same venue in a couple of weeks?) Not surprisingly, new artists were not top-of –mind.

“I know that Garth may not be testing as well as he used to in recent studies and that might be due in part by the sonic presentation of the older production values of his material and the fact that he has no currents or recurrents at all right now.

“If I were Garth, I would put together a radio only disc of remastered cuts that stand up sonically with present Nashville production. As his Walmart release proves, he’s still big to a lot of folks.

“It was purely anecdotal. I probably talked to about 60 people. The end result was that I got some great tape for sweepers and promos. Tailgaters after a couple of beers are fun to get talking.”

Also, of course, he's performing intimate shows for some 12,000 people each weekend in Las Vegas, yet I have to admit that hearing a tune from the early 90's on a station calling itself "new" or "today's" country makes me scratch my head a bit too. Does the music match the marketing message?

Where does Garth fit (or not?) in your programming today? Is country like adult contemporary today, with a strict dividing line between the ages of 38 and 42, where if you target 40+, you play Elton (Garth) and if you target under 40, you don't?

A Down Period As Seen By An Optimist

Heard last week at the Billboard-CMA Country Music Summit in Nashville:

“In chaos there is opportunity.” - CMA chairman Steve Moore

But, the writers covering the meeting reported that the panic is palpable and quote Anderson Merchandisers CEO Charlie Anderson predicting that the industry will “implode” within three years if it continues to operate in the same manner.

Is this the current decade's equivalent of the legendary 1986 New York Times Robert Hilburn piece which pronounced the country music business dead?

A reminder: that pronouncement came at the very same time that Garth was marrying Sandy and “the class of 1989” was recording and starting to release their early music, which by 1993-1994 drove the format to its highest heights in history!

If so, it seems - while the patient certainly has seen better health nationally than right now - the early signs of a strong recovery are already becoming visible.

Even after all these decades since then, Country remains the #1 adult music format that hasn't fragmented in any major way, still hanging onto very loyal leading edge boomers while attracting passionate teens and 20-somethings too.

More cause for optimism:

Taylor Swift continues to prove that Country can still sell plastic albums as well as digital downloads when the product and the marketing is right.

While numerous 'wannabe' acts are no-doubt struggling in the 20’s and 30’s on the charts, just this week in Fresno a KSKS-presented $5 concert series show featuring Bucky Covington, Matt Kennon and Jerrod Niemann was a complete sell-out.

“It was incredible,” notes PD Tom Jordan, “This is the first time KISS has ever sold any concert out!”

On the summer superstar touring circuit, a dozen or so major Nashville acts still are packing concert venues.

Give them something that excites them, and they still do respond.

Early indications from the first month's rating trends of spring are that country's national average losses were more in time spent listening, not as much in cume, meaning that - again - the market is largely still there, we simply need to give 'em a reason to spend more time with us.

Country needs a Lady Gaga?

We may already know the names of some of them who will join Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Sugarland and Carrie Underwood, among others, who even now are drawing as well or better than Tim, Toby, Reba, George, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson or Kenny Chesney.

Lady Antebellum? Zac Brown Band? Easton Corbin? Billy Currington? Jason Aldean? Dierks Bentley? Blake Shelton? Miranda Lambert? Luke Bryan? Chris Young? All/any of the above? Someone whose name we don't even know yet?

It's a good time, as always, to listen very carefully to everything.

The country format's issues are nothing that great songs won't solve. It seems to me that we have plenty of very talented artists in the in-basket.

There’s tremendous cause for optimism for country’s future, thanks to the changing of the guard happening on right now.

Who are you excited about?

Four Out Of Ten! (if you don't count Elvis)

Celine Dion is the most popular musical performer among all US adults, but country's stars more than held their own. (click to read more fascinating results)

This Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between March 1 and 8, 2010 among 2,320 adults (aged 18 and older). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

Music Promotion's Nightmare Scenario

.. but country programmers have to be loving this week, as Brad Paisley, Sugarland, Keith Urban and Tim McGraw all come with new releases, almost certain to consume spins in the next week or two.

That's going to suck a lot of the air out of the room, with only eight of the top 25 ranking chart songs on 100% of the monitored panels.

Get ready for the big flush.

Why Is The Country Format Ignoring Its Listeners?

You are, if you're placing the top ten chart songs into your power rotation without looking at local research on all of those songs. (shown clockwise, l to r, R&R's chart this week, A&O's crosstab report from Rate The Music where they rank well by "favorite" but also have extremely high negatives and burn scores), and the Bullseye Callout ranker from R&R. To enlarge, click the item.)

After making such a radical claim, I think I need to put A&O's "bias" right up front: research is not something to be feared, it's a guideline to what listeners are saying they want/don't want to hear. Properly conducted and interpreted, research is simply the process of systematically asking random listeners what they think and then carefully analyzing their opinions, applying what you learn. This approach was new and untested thirty years ago, but for three decades it's been proven to improve targeting, cume and time spent listening growth.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, three of the top 10 charted songs this week do not appear on most of the national callout and internet rankers higher than #13. 30% of the top spun songs this week are by females, meanwhile all ten of the top ranking researched Rate The Music and Bullseye Callout songs, to pick two of the many widely-available national research rankers, are by male artists.

Theory #1: so many copies of the Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift albums have been sold over the past year that core listeners are already tired of hearing them before radio got around to adding them. Fly in the ointment for this theory: Sugarland's "All I Want To Do" is off the brand new "Love On The Inside" collection and yet in this week's Mediabase national callout, conducted by Clear Channel-owned Critical Mass Media, it already has 20.9% total negatives in spite of being a favorie of 36.3% of the CMM national callout panel of 844 25-44 year old country music radio listeners. When ranked by net positives (total positive percentage minus the total negatives), Sugarland is #11, with familiarity at 87.4%.

Theory #2: listeners are telling us they don't like the newest songs by Taylor, Miranda and Jennifer when compared to the new ones by men like Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, Jason Michael Carroll, Jimmy Wayne, Josh Gracin, Keith Anderson, The Lost Trailors, Gary Allan, George Strait, Craig Morgan and Keith Urban.

Who knows if either of these guesses/theories is correct or if it is something else entirely, but I do know this: we should be asking ourselves why we aren't playing the songs listeners rank so well a lot more than the ones which they rank a lot lower.

Researched music drives ratings; thirty years of history has proven that. Will country's national ratings slip this summer? If so, I'll "know" why.

It's a very nice feeling when other stations are down, but yours is UP! Hopefully, you're listening to your listeners, not the charts.

Who?

1. Sebastian Bach, Irene Cara, Mikalah Gordon, Jermaine Jackson, Chris Kirkpatrick, Lorenzo Lamas, Sean Young and John Rich = the new cast of "Gone Country."

2. Bobby Brown, Carnie Wilson and Maureen McCormick = CMT is reuniting them for a second series, "Outsider's Inn," premiering on Friday, Aug. 15.

3. Laura & Sophie, Ashlee, Melissa, Coffey, Shawn and Gabe = the 'still active' contestants on NBC-TV's version of Nashville Star, hosted by Billy Ray Cyrus and fellow judges Jewel, Rich, and Jeffrey Steele. (and they wonder why the ratings have been so dismal?)

4. Laura Byrna, Joshua Stevens, David Nail, Emma Mae Jacob, Jason Brown, Jason Matthews, Trailor Choir, Jeff Bates, Steve Holy, Emily West, Lance Miller, Cody McCarver, Justin Moore, Eric Durrance, Roger Creager, Todd O'Neill, Last Light Band, Shooter Jennings, Cowboy Crush, Stoney Larue, Mulch Brothers, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Brynn Marie, Randy Rogers, the Stickers, Corbin/Hanner, Ashley Gearing, Madison County, Dan Adams and Darren Kozelsky = the names of people being promoted to country radio and standing in line right now.

Listening today to the new tunes from this group of "who cares?, get the hook" calibre talent, I not only worry that country music radio's truly bankable superstar list is starting to look like an endangered species, but unfortunately we're going to continue to be bored by these, who fail to make it to even "B," let alone "A,"- list status, for the rest of our lives = thanks to reality cable TV and summertime "fill" programming on the major (?) networks.

WSOC: March (Country Music) Madness

Check out the women's bracket, the men's bracket, the groups, the wild cards and vote for your favorite artist to help them move on to (your guessed it) "The Final Four."

Have You Checked To See If Your Station Is On "Yes.com?"

Smile, you are being monitored (commercials too, in many cases)!

Yes.com's mission: "Turning broadcasts into communities allowing audiences to interact with 2,600+ radio stations."

It looks to me like they use Mediaguide as their source for immediate monitors in real time. Now, monitoring your competition just got even easier.

New Book Names Top 100 Country Music Fan Clubs

Writer Amy Jordan, offers an inside look at America’s top country music artists and their fan clubs, including superstar entertainers like Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, George Strait and Rascal Flatts.

Each listing includes free stuff like music, download and photos that fans can get without joining a club.

The top 100 are named alphabetically from Trace Adkins to Trisha Yearwood. The book includes perennial favorites with informal clubs like Garth Brooks and Reba, along with newcomers like American Idol Carrie Underwood and The Wreckers.

Among the book’s more controversial picks is the Dixie Chicks, whose comments about President Bush and the war in Iraq have become a lightning rod for debate in the country music community.

“Country music stands for freedom. That the Dixie Chicks are free to write songs that speak from their hearts makes the music all the more special,” Jordan said. The Dixie Chicks do not have a formal fan club but you can sign up for free email news. Free is good. And country music fan clubs offer a plethora of freebies for their fans. “Country music fan clubs are just a wonderful, secret treasure-trove for fans,” Jordan said.

Want free music and free photographs? Visit a fan club website. Want to meet your favorite country music singer? Join the fan club and you may get a meet-and-greet pass for the next concert in your town.

Country music fans can get free screensavers, photographs, newsletters and even new music online. Most new bands have street teams that can be joined for free. Or pay to join the official fan club and receive extra benefits like the chance to meet your favorite singer or autographed merchandise.

The book includes a chapter with tips on how to join a fan club. Each fan club entry includes:

• How to join and the cost
• Contact information
• Who offers backstage passes, and how many
• How to get free music, photos and autographs

Carrie Underwood Is #1 Star

American Idol season four winner CARRIE UNDERWOOD is currently Yahoo's most-searched-for country singer. Carrie holds a commanding lead, earning twice as much search buzz as TIM MCGRAW.

The Top 20 searched-for country artists on Yahoo right now are:
1. Carrie Underwood
2. Tim McGraw
3. Rascal Flatts
4. Taylor Swift
5. Kenny Chesney
6. Johnny Cash
7. Keith Urban
8. Dixie Chicks
9. Martina McBride
10. Faith Hill
11. Sara Evans
12. Reba McEntire
13. Garth Brooks
14. Brooks and Dunn
15. Dolly Parton
16. Big and Rich
17. Josh Turner
18. Sheryl Crow
19. Gretchen Wilson
20. LeAnn Rimes

Look at all those females! "Search buzz," eh? You won't see that on any local country station's research on its listeners preferences for radio airplay. This listing says more about Yahoo than it does about who's really hot in country music, of course, but I sure do agree that Carrie is a star, no doubt!

The ONLY Artists You Should Play Once An Hour

And, maybe once every TWO hours...

The number one complaint from listeners: country radio plays the same artists over and over. Here are the 18 (Flatts and Chesney made both lists) which probably do deserve extra heavy play, according to your listener. If you have your artist protections set at an hour and five minutes for every artist in your library, it's time to rethink that "we've always done it that way" plan based on this new data, don't you think?

The "Edison Research Country Music Awards"

The CMA has been handing out awards for 40 years. 2007 will be the ACM's 41st. It's also the third year for the CRS Edison Research 'awards' too.. and even more meaningful, these "awards" come from folks who don't give out trophies, just their time, listening to country music radio (see above!).