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EDITORIAL:
In looking over the TCB Reader Feedback page, it seems that I’ve struck a raw nerve with my comments in last month’s editorial, both among fans as well as those in the country music industry. Many of the comments that were posted on the feedback page went well beyond the usual few sentences, as many people expressed their frustrations at the direction country music has taken over the past several years with great passion. I want to thank everyone who took the time to weigh in on the subject, especially those who work in the industry, so that people who aren’t familiar with the inner workings can see there’s also a great deal of frustration from within as well. What I observed from the range of comments is that there exists an enormous gulf in perception between those who make the decisions and those who live with those decisions, and a great need for open dialog between the parties. Problems can only be solved through honest, open discussion and that needs to continue if anything is to change, and many of you responded with some excellent points and comments. Among all the comments, sticking out like a sore thumb, was a response sent in by Tony Conway- member of the CMA board of directors and chairman of Fan Fair. Mr. Conway not only accused me of being clueless, but also of making false statements. However, he oddly never did elaborate on just what those false statements were, and directed me to call Ed Benson to answer the questions to which I made false statements. Huh?? (Is Mr. Benson a professional player of Jeopardy?) However, if Mr. Conway is on the CMA board of directors, then shouldn’t he be able to address anything he found to be ‘wrong’ or ‘false’? Why then, direct me to speak to someone else (in an expensive game of long distance phone tag no less?!) ? Or is he one of the board members who hadn’t received his copy of ‘the memo’ yet? TCB extended an invitation to Mr. Conway and/or any other member of the CMA who cared to challenge anything that was written as being ‘false,’ or to further clarify their position. Needless to say, as expected, TCB received no response. However, I see that Mr. Conway received some less than agreeable responses to his totally irresponsible (not to mention, rather rude) remarks. The ‘wrong information’/‘false statements’ accusations really have me baffled, particularly since much of what was written was based on well documented statements made by various CMA personnel, including Mr. Benson, as well as information posted on the CMA’s own Website. The information and statements appeared in virtually every trade publication and newspaper around, which even both Reuters and AP picked up, and the stories appeared on numerous Websites including CNN and MSNBC. Nielsen ratings are easily researched, the numbers are there in black and white and are indisputable. When the genre sales rankings came out, they were published everywhere from Billboard to the local newspapers and just about everywhere in between. Country Music Magazine was indeed shut down, nothing to dispute there. No falsehoods in the programming being shown on CMT. The CMA Website lists all the members of it’s board of directors. I counted ‘em three times just to be sure, and came up with 61 all three times. I did not see one press release, or hear one member of the board, denouncing the banning of country artists on country radio stations, even after the matter got so ridiculously out of control, that even indie country music artists who are struggling to make a living, became innocent victims caught in the crossfire. This is called supporting country music?! Nor have I seen anything where the CMA has addressed the issue of corporate radio station payola, at least in regard to the country stations. Indie artists are conspicuously absent from corporate country music playlists and awards shows. So are many of our country music legends and long established artists who are still putting out very marketable, viable music, as is the classic music of country music’s past. And country music’s past goes back well beyond the Garth Brooks era- by about 100 years or so. Isn’t the CMA supposed to be promoting and supporting ALL country music artists EQUALLY? The major labels have produced neither artists nor music that is generating any interest with the country fans, so isn’t it about time to look outside those narrow boundaries to the artists out there who are? Where is the promotion and support for artist diversity and creativity? Where are the falsehoods in any of this? Is Conway that far out of the loop that he’s saying that the CMA DIDN’T announce that as of next year, Fan Fair has been renamed The CMA Music Festival? (And might I add, not even the CMA Country Music Festival!!) Is he denying that CMA press rep Scott Stem made the following statement, which was later repeated almost verbatim by Ed Benson?: "As for the term ‘Fan Fair,’ it will remain a part of the CMA Music Festival. We are very proud of the 32 years of tradition that comes with the name, and we will continue to use it in some form at the CMA Music Festival." "A part of" and "in some form." Key words there, Mr. Conway, very key words. Add that to the numerous statements made by various CMA personnel in regard to adding sports, film and TV stars, along with the already added soap opera actors, and the empty autograph booths of the current crop of country music ‘superstars’...is he saying that the name, now being relegated ‘in some form’ to a small component of a larger entity- is really Fan Fair, in any true sense of what it was always about and came to stand for? And is he saying that the drop off in revenue hasn’t coincided with the growing number of no-show artists? A look at the names of the no-shows, shows that all but a very few were NOT touring. So their excuse for not attending would be? A few people who responded to last month’s piece stated they were former attendees saying they’d become unhappy with the direction Fan Fair had taken over the last few years and stopped attending. The name change was made and the event is no longer being called ‘Fan Fair’ and is now the ‘CMA Music Festival,’ the event is being overhauled, and whether the CMA chooses to admit it or not, they have merely driven another nail into the coffin of country music’s heritage and tradition themselves. Where was any wrong information given or any false statements made regarding any of this? If any statements were ‘wrong’ or ‘false’ then they were made in haste, without being thought out by various CMA personnel who had conflicting information- or no information- that has indeed been widely publicized. If that is the case, then it shows total irresponsibility on the part of the CMA, by making any announcements regarding anything before ‘the memo’ got around to all the directors informing them of the particulars, and before any definite plans were made and were/are still in the discussion/negotiation phase. That in turn just serves to further prove my point about an overly bloated organization that’s long lost sight of it’s vision and has outlived it’s usefulness. The CMA currently suffers from some very serious credibility issues to be casting any stones at anyone else. According to their Website: "Fan Fair drew its biggest crowd in history in 2002, with an estimated aggregate attendance of 126,000." Yet in an article written a few weeks ago by Jeanne A. Naujeck in the Tennessean, she writes "Drooping attendance is the main reason the CMA has lost money on the event since before it left the fairgrounds. Out-of-town attendance has topped out at about 21,000, Benson said. The CMA again lost money on Fan Fair this year (although it won’t say how much)..." This is just one example of the multitudes of contradictory statements this organization puts out. Clear Channel is currently under investigation by the government for unfair and questionable business practices and monopolization. WHY do they hold a seat on the board of the CMA? Gaylord, who also holds a seat on the board, is currently under investigation by the SEC over their financial statements. And then they wonder why people question their motives?! On to just who the ‘clueless’ parties are. Does anyone in the CMA or the Nashville establishment ever bother to look out of the windows of their ivory towers? Do any of them see what’s going on past the Nashville borders? The responses here to last month’s editorial barely even begins to tell the story, but the rest can be told with as much passion by the countless numbers of others out there, who are just as unhappy with the state of country music. The core country music audience has been turned off and run off by what mainstream Nashville has been churning out the past 8 or 9 years. The ‘trendy’ crowd who became briefly enamored with country music in the early 90's have all long moved on to the next trend- about a dozen trends ago...only Nashville has either failed to see that or simply refuses to acknowledge it. The slicked up, popped up, plastic image Nashville has created for this imaginary audience and has tried forcing down our throats, has only made us gag on it all the more. It neither relates to us or connects with us and only served to push us further away. If the country music industry wants to turn things around, see their sales and revenues increase, then they’d better start listening up, because we ARE the MAJORITY, contrary to their idiotic marketing and demographic research. Clue #1- start listening to the ‘consumer’ and give them what they want, and stop dictating to them and forcing on them what they don’t want. Clue # 2- There’s a country song titled ‘Thank God For The Radio." That hasn’t been the case for years, since these corporate behemoths bought 80% of them up. It isn’t our fault and shouldn’t be our problem that when radio was de-regulated, a bunch of greedy men wanted to be king, and borrowed heavily and beyond their means in their race for the crown. Yet we are the ones paying the price by having playlists cut by more than half so these corporations can sell more advertising time to bring in more revenue to re-pay their debts and still maintain profits. They’ve cut radio station staff to the bare bones or have gotten rid of it altogether, and pipe in programming from a centralized location. They have reduced it to nothing more than Muzak- same sounding songs by same sounding artists. Somebody better do something about it and FIX IT. By law the airwaves belong to us and by law these owners are required to best serve the audiences in their markets. If they can’t afford to do that, then make them sell the stations to owners who can. The overwhelming majority of listeners want to hear a wider variety of artists and styles within the genre- and that includes both new music and old. It is an outrage that listeners can’t even hear current songs that have become popular! "Murder On Music Row," "Man Of Constant Sorrow" and "Hurt" come to mind. Despite listener demand for these songs, corporate owned country radio refused to add these songs to their playlists. "Murder On Music Row" went on to sweep wins at the awards shows, as did "Man Of Constant Sorrow," which also propelled the ‘O Brother’ soundtrack to nearly 7 million copies sold to date. It was MTV...the pop/rock/hip-hop music channel...that broke the video for Johnny Cash’s "Hurt," weeks before it was picked up by CMT. The single was then picked up by modern rock stations- and ignored by country stations. (It’s presently up for several MTV awards.) No brainer - sales are down because what radio wants and what the consumer wants are two very different things, and the vast majority shut off the radio years ago. If the record labels want to see sales increases, then they better start paying more attention to what their ‘consumers’ want than what radio wants. Since both corporate radio and the major record labels hold seats on the CMA board, why isn’t the CMA lobbying them to change their practices? Clue #3- Nashville has broken no new acts since the Dixie Chicks several years ago, that have ‘superstar’ and staying potential, and there are none on the horizon. They best start looking beyond their ivory towers, because there’s lots of them out there- from San Francisco to NYC, from Chapel Hill to Austin and everywhere in-between. A great deal of the kind of music we want- that we’re listening to and BUYING- can be found by looking at the Texas Music and Americana charts. It can also be found on the most popular Webstations. These artists are not conformists who play ‘follow the leader.’ They have their own individual personalities, styles and sounds, that run the gamut of every style of country music out there. They are diverse and creative, their music honest, raw, and full of real emotion. And no, some of ‘em ain’t real purty and a lot of them are well over 30. But hey, we’re all past high school so we’re not age biased, and we tend to listen to music with our EARS, so we’re not really much interested in ‘purty.’ Until radio starts playing these independent/small label artists, there won’t be any new ‘superstars’ in the country genre, because it’s these artists who are causing all the excitement with the hardcore country music audience that walked out on mainstream Nashville well over a half decade ago. And there also won’t be any until the country music industry loses their ‘image’ obsession. We want good MUSIC- not good looking ‘singers.’ That’s just for starters. A few other clues for the clueless: Country music fans would like to know exactly what is meant by the too often used phrase in Nashville, ‘too country.’ We’d like an explanation of why the Opry vets who’ve dedicated their long careers to country music never seem to get put on the schedule during the televised portion of the show, and when they, or any other hardcore country act, is scheduled for prime-time, it’s always when CMT decides to air a re-run. The ridiculous prices and content of CDs is also a major point of contention. We’re tired of being treated as numbers, demographics, and looked at as merely ‘consumers.’ We are the largest portion of ‘the market’ out there, and still with all the money they pump into their marketing research- they have failed time and again to find the target and miss what’s sitting right out in plain sight. And then when their attempts fail, and sales and revenues still keep falling, they lamely accuse us of stealing the music by downloading. WRONG! We’ve simply gone elsewhere- and we’re supporting the people who ARE giving us what we want. All the business degrees in the world are worthless unless there’s at least a lick of common sense that goes with them. And all the ‘market research’ in the world is meaningless when it’s so obviously wrong . And they ask, with straight faced audacity, why sales and market shares keep declining?! Who’s clueless? There are people sitting on the CMA board of directors who represent every area in the genre that’s rife with problems, yet they address none of it. Charitable work is commendable, but tossing money to worthy causes is not addressing or solving any of the problems within the genre. No, it’s not ‘negative’ stories and comments that are killing country music- they are merely bringing to light what is killing it...the people and organizations that are supposed to be preserving, supporting and promoting the genre, but instead take a ‘deaf, dumb and blind’ stance. AnnMarie Harrington Take Country Back What you think? Send us your 2 Cents to info@takecountryback.com |
