Missing The Boat

3/18/1994

What to play? When to play it? When to stop?

These questions have faced programmers since radio began playing records. As formats split and become niched to super-serve specific slices of the audience, these questions have become even more prominent. The niche formats, coupled with the concurrent microscopic focus on narrow demographic and psychographic groups, have made the answers almost indefinable. Reams of research are printed out and studied weekly as programmers seek positive definitions.

Record promoters used to ask, “Why won’t you play my record?” The answers were usually one of three: “I don’t like it,” “I’m not sure it’s a hit,” or “I don’t see any sales.” That gave record companies the opportunity to get the song played on other stations to prove it was a hit, to stimulate sales with a marketing campaign and to hopefully change the program director’s personal feelings by playing the song for him again.

Today, the question is still the same. But the answers are very different. The two heard most often: “It doesn’t fit my format” and “It would confuse my core.” They’re hard to argue. Since formats are defined by programmers, record promoters are suspect if they say their record fits. It’s the programmer’s format; what does a record promoter know about radio? And since many programmers don’t even understand the tastes of their core, how is a record promoter supposed to argue?

Radio seems to be coming up with more reasons for not playing a record rather than searching for records that their audiences might love to hear. Today’s audience is evolving into a group that wants more and more to hear what’s new…not what’s old. In the ‘90s market, where the audience has many more avenues than ever before to be exposed to new product, it is imperative that radio move to the cutting edge of the locomotive rather than continue to hunker in the caboose. Too many programmers pay lip service to the term “cutting edge” rather than apply that definition to their station. Cutting edge is a lifestyle practiced by a segment of the audience that grows larger by the minute. We need to do more than acknowledge it. We must find ways to cater to it.

Mainstream Top 40 flourished in “the good old days” because those radio stations provided their audience with a window into the hip world of the future. What’s happening in the city? Where to go? Who’s coming in concert? What are the latest sounds? Those questions are now being answered by others on the mass communications super highway. Radio is now providing less information and certainly less hip information. New music? Not much.

It’s a mistake.

It will be a bigger mistake if radio doesn’t acknowledge outside factors and begin to make changes before the audience leaves in larger droves.

We in radio are quick to make decisions on what our audience likes and doesn’t like. Several weeks ago, I wrote an Editorial about a research project The Network Forty commissioned that questioned what many believed to be the basis of niche formats. As programmers, we like to believe that we know our audience. Too often, we reason accurately to inaccurate conclusions. These refrains have been in a power rotation too long: “Our audience doesn’t like to hear Rock songs next to Dance songs;” “Our ethnic audience will be confused by non-ethnic songs;” “We can’t cross formats…that’s a Country sound, not an R&B sound.”

Bullshit.

A perfect example of this failure to recognize the taste of our audience is illustrated on this week’s cover. MCA has destroyed the logic many of us cling to with the release of Rhythm Country And Blues, a CD featuring duets by seemingly divergent artists like Vince Gill and Gladys Knight, Al Green and Lyle Lovett, Aaron Neville and Trisha Yearwood, Little Richard and Tanya Tucker, Patti LaBelle and Travis Tritt, and George Jones with B.B. King, just to mention a few. Vince Gill singing “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing,” Al Green on “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away,” Clint Black wailing “Chain Of Fools” or Marty Stuart moaning “The Weight” would never fly with our audience, would it?

The CD debuted last week at #2 on the R&R chart, #10 on the Country chart and $21 on the Pop chart. It’s the first time in history that has happened. Probably because it’s the first time an album of this nature has been produced.

It sure as hell points out that our core audience might not be as confused as we are.

So, why is Mainstream Top 40 virtually ignoring this offering? I don’t have an adequate answer.

Here’s a record that crosses all boundaries, a record that virtually every segment of the audience likes. They even care enough to take the time, get in their car, brave the crowds at record stores, take out their money and make the purchase. What is happening with this CD proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that people’s tastes are not as far apart as the perceptions of most in our industries. Believe. Yet with few exceptions, Mainstream Top 40 has so far ignored it.

What’s wrong with this picture? The fish are in the trees again.

MCA has not released a single. Who cares? How many times have we accused a record company of releasing the wrong cut off a CD? Here’s an opportunity to pick one that makes the most sense for what you perceive to be the taste of your audience. How can you lose? If you dare to believe that a consumer must like a record to buy it (and if you don’t believe that, you aren’t reading this Editorial anyhow), then your research is already done.

We’re always looking for the one record that will bridge the gap across the formats. This one is a no-brainer.

And don’t simply pass this off as an anomaly. Maybe your audience isn’t as niched as you believe. Maybe your station is narrowcast because of your beliefs, not because of the tastes of your audience. Consider challenging your audience by challenging yourself. Consider that you may possibly increase your audience by subtle expansion and experimentation rather than lose peripherally by squeezing even more. Consider all these factors.

Then have the guts to make a move.