Then there was the radio broadcasters’ annual survey, conducted by everyone’s favorite ‘research’ group, Edison Media Research. Obviously, the country music industry still hasn’t abandoned it’s obsession with trying to capture the ‘youth market,’ as this was the focus of this year’s presentation, the 15-29 year old demographic, and ways to lure them over to the country music market. Their ‘findings’ were that only 19% of the people in this demographic liked country music, that the vast majority favored rock, hip-hop/rap or pop, and only 12% favored country music over other genres. Nothing there that the average rational thinking person didn’t already know. Of the percentage that listened to country music and stated that they listened to country radio less this year than the previous year, the top reasons were: 85% said their musical preferences had changed, 46% said they’d grown bored with it, and 42% said that the music wasn’t as good as it used to be. When asked where they learned about new artists, 91% said on the radio. The presentation then went on to make marketing suggestions on ways the country music industry could lure this demographic. According to speaker Howard Handler, "While I know country radio is concerned with adult demographics, it is essential that radio and the whole country music industry continue to cultivate listening among younger groups if the genre is to prosper into the future. With the information presented we hope that everyone who attended this session will understand how to appeal to 15-29s without losing any ‘older’ listening audience."

Apparently, they still just don’t get it. Country music is a niche genre with a niche audience, and also an adult oriented genre, that people have to ‘grow’ into. Always was, always will be. How were past generations of country music’s audience ‘cultivated’? The ‘youth market’ was never consciously targeted, yet there was always a strong audience for country music. The genre certainly prospered without the ‘youth market,’ as many a country performer became a millionaire, long before the dawning of Garth Brooks. It didn’t die with the advent of rock & roll as were the dire predictions at the time. In truth, there is indeed a hardcore (not pop-country) country music fanbase out there between the ages of 30 and 50 that will all proudly admit to being metalheads and punkers during the years they fell within this demographic, and some still are. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that many of the artists out there today doing the most traditional and hardcore country music, were all former punkers and rockers.

Where will the next generation of country music fans come from? Obviously, the same place they always have, the ranks of those in the demographic that presently say they don’t like country music. The same demographic that saw our many of our grandparents jitterbugging to big bands, our parents, and even ourselves, rocking rather than two-stepping when we were all that age. As far as that demographic, it’s just the nature of the beast, it’s an age of rebellion and self-discovery. The age when one is separating from their parents and stretching their wings towards independence. Creating their own identity, yet also succumbing to peer pressure. Some grew up with country music, and when they reach the age they’re again ready for it, it will be a re-discovery, a return to the familiar. For others it will be a ‘new’ discovery, something they’d never considered in their youth, perhaps something they’d never had an opportunity to be exposed to before. After all, look at the high percentage of those in the demographic which was surveyed, who said their tastes had changed- in just a year.

Coinciding with the CRS, here is an excerpt from an article on Clear Channel by Christine Y. Chen, that appears in the March 3 edition of Fortune magazine: Lowry Mays is the Big Daddy of radio. The founder and CEO of Clear Channel, Mays oversees 1,233 radio stations with some 100 million listeners across all 50 states, and runs a company with $8 billion in revenues and a $23 billion market cap. But ask Mays about what he does for a living and you won't hear much about musicians or how to bring up ratings or who's the best DJ. Those things don't interest him much. Truth is, Mays isn't that passionate about what goes out over the airwaves. As long as his broadcasts sell ads, he's happy. "If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company," says Mays, 67. "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products."

And there lays the problem. ‘Product.’ Now even The Opry is being peddled as a ‘brand name,’ a despicable insult that degrades one of our greatest institutions of country music history. Every branch of the music industry is responsible for bringing on it’s present pitiful condition- all by itself. Deregulation and merger after merger has resulted in the music industry being taken out of the hands of the people that know the music industry, who were instinctively and creatively able to maneuver the industry even through it’s rockiest times, and was placed in the hands of number crunchers, who’s only concern is the bottom line. One only needs to turn on the radio or look at the steady decline in music sales to see the results that has produced.

On the day the CRS convened, Craig Havighurst wrote an article which appeared in the Tennessean, a lighthearted, but truthful dig at radio, listing 12 songs that radio should be playing, but refuses to. He wrote a similar one last year, and said he’d gotten a letter from a radio programmer saying that his list was a ‘formula for disaster.’ Personally, like Mr. Havighurst, I fail to see how their ‘formula’ of playing the same 15 songs by a half dozen artists (it could be more, but geeze, you know, they all look and sound the same to me), isn’t already a disaster. Back in the dark ages, (about 12 years ago), when radio played every style of the music from any given genre, there was little complaining by listeners. Of course every person didn’t like everything that was played, but there was enough variety that they heard more of what they liked than what they didn’t, thereby staying tuned in longer, being exposed to all the sounds within a genre without having to be inconvenienced by having to constantly play radio station roulette. Radio stations had solid and loyal audiences, instead of transients flipping from station to station in search of something that appealed to them, and artists were instantly recognizable because they all sounded different from each other. The artists were doing well, the listeners were happy, and all was right with the world. No, radio station owners weren’t getting obscenely wealthy, but they were making a decent living, and more importantly, most were in it for the right reasons.

Alas, the ‘free market,’ corporate America’s thirst to own all the tea in China, changed all that. I can answer why those particular 12 songs, and many others, aren’t being heard on radio. It’s not because any of them are ‘unmarketable,’ that the listeners don’t want to hear them, but because they’re all on small independent labels. These labels don’t have the millions to play the payola game- so therefore they’d be directly ‘unprofitable’ to them- in the short term- which of course would spell ‘disaster’ to them. You see, everything to numbers crunchers is in the ‘short term.’ Shoddy, cheap, disposable and boring, what do they care? They don’t listen to their own stations, and the quickest, shortest, dirtiest route to the dollar is all they care about.

Instead of wasting precious resources chasing after an audience that’s just not interested right now, it would make far more sense to prepare for when they are ready, and to refocus ‘growth’ on the 50% of the audience that radio and the major labels lost and who want to come back- if only they were given something to come back to. In order to do that, there has to be a return to balance. 91% of those surveyed said radio was where they hear about new artists. New artists doesn’t always necessarily have to mean ‘new’ artists. Artists and songs from the past are also ‘new’ music to someone that’s never heard them before. Why are artists like The Beatles or Elvis selling to people of this demographic today, many of whom weren’t even born when they ruled the airwaves? Because their music can still be heard on the radio. And the truth is, labels make even more money off of an artist’s back catalog, than current releases. Another truth is that radio is running in a backwards direction, contrary to today’s business practices. ‘One stop shopping.’ Entice the consumer by saving them time, the convenience of offering a large variety of products under the same roof. Supermarkets figured that one out many years ago. Then they added fresh meat and fish, in-store bakeries, pharmacies, flowers, they sell postage stamps, greeting cards, they have ATMs (if not actual bank branches), and many have stations to drop off packages to be shipped. Retail stores have followed suit, you can shop for a new pair of jeans, and can grab a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk while you’re at it. Oddly, radio was one of the first purveyors of ‘one stop shopping,’ yet today it inconveniences and alienates the consumer. They choose to look at themselves as being astute businessmen, but their business practices are in reality bad business. Because they bought up so many stations in single markets, they’ve micro-managed music into so many ‘sub-genres’ of the same genre so as not to compete with ‘themselves,’ one now spends more time flipping stations, (something people tend to find highly irritating), than they do actually listening to a station. People like variety, they hate repetition and ‘one sound’ only formats, even 15 year olds cited ‘boring’ as a big problem. They also honestly don’t have a clue as to the size of the audience they’ve lost due to their way of thinking, and therefore no idea of the size of the audience they stand to gain by returning to much broader formats- ones that includes not only (more than a few) current artists and one particular sound within a genre, but varied sounds within a genre, that also includes music from the past, and those that are just emerging. They look at meaningless numbers of 1009 people here, 601 people there- in a country with more than 280 million people, and seriously consider this an accurate and fair sampling of the majority. Their ‘profiles’ of the ‘average listener’ couldn’t be more off base or far fetched. For every one listener they do have, there’s another four that have shut off the radio completely. That adds up to a lot of alienation. Perhaps next year the CRS might consider a holding seminar which includes a panel and audience of former country radio listeners that might serve to enlighten them.