At first glance, it makes perfect sense: Nashville, the home of Music Row and the Grand Ole Opry, has four commercial country stations, while New York, the nation’s biggest broadcast market, doesn’t have any. No city in the world is as closely associated with a single genre of music as Nashville is with country, and no city is as dependent for its tourism dollars on one genre’s fans.
But there is considerable disagreement among radio programming consultants, music journalists and the Nashville stations themselves as to whether keeping four in the same format makes business sense in an increasingly consolidated and competitive radio milieu. Much as country music is at the core of the city’s identity, the fact remains that businesses have to make money to survive—something that’s only gotten tougher in recent years. Complicating the situation is that Music Row record companies rely on country stations for their success, so if one station goes away, its absence is noticed.
The dilemma is summed up by Scott Borchetta, a senior executive for promotion and artist development at DreamWorks Records: “The labels want as many opportunities as possible to expose new music, so nobody on the Row wants to lose an opportunity. But I think we all know it’s likely that we will have one less country station at some point this year.”
In the Arbitron ratings book released Dec. 30, the top-rated radio station in Nashville was Adult Contemporary WJXA-92.9 FM, which won every ratings book last year. WSIX-97.9 FM was the top-rated country station and the second overall in the Nashville market; WKDF-103.3 FM was second in country and sixth overall; WSM-95.5 FM was No. 3 in country and No. 11 overall, and WSM-650 AM finished fourth in country and 12th overall. All four country stations showed ratings increases over the previous book.
“There is plenty of room for the four to co-exist,” argues WSM-FM’s program director Kevin O’Neal, whose station is owned by Gaylord Entertainment. And yet, he points out, the local listenership for country music has fallen in recent years. “It is rough being No. 3 or No. 4 because the revenue stream is short out of the Top 2. This format has around a 16 to 18 percent share [the total of the four stations’ ratings in the market]. That compares to the early 1990s, when this market had a 30 percent share for country.” Still, he argues, “This is Music City, and three FMs and a legendary AM station...can be supported.”
That AM station, WSM-AM, is also owned by Gaylord and is likely the most important country station in history; it’s been the home of the Grand Ole Opry since 1925. When Gaylord considered changing the station’s format to all-sports last winter, it unleashed a firestorm of criticism from fans and the media. The company decided to keep the station country. But with ratings continuing to lag a year later, Gaylord has taken some drastic moves of late, two weeks ago firing the entire office staff at WSM-AM, in what trade paper Radio&Records called “a huge stunner.” Among those terminated was program director Kyle Cantrell, who had worked at the station for 20 years. Gaylord said it needed to increase WSM’s profitability, but it did also say that the station’s format would remain country.
Would people react nearly as strongly if any of the three FM country stations in town switched to another format? The answer is clearly no—even though all three stations have a larger audience than WSM-AM. “In the end, one of the companies will blink and only two of the FMs will be left standing,” predicts Bill Miller, the Nashville-based publisher of country radio’s weekly Blue Chip Radio Report. “FM radio formats change almost as fast as Reba [McEntire] changes stage outfits.”
WSIX-FM, the home of Gerry House’s popular morning program, is owned by Clear Channel, the world’s largest radio company. Based in San Antonio, Clear Channel counts five Nashville stations among its massive holdings. The other four are WRVW-107.5 FM (pop), WNRQ-105.9 FM (classic rock), WUBT-101.1 FM (urban) and WLAC-1510 AM (news and talk). The conglomerate also owns 70 percent of the world’s concert business and over 775,000 billboards worldwide. Clear Channel is the ultimate example of the double-edged new media giant. The company gives artists unprecedented opportunities to get their music heard, but allegedly also uses its muscle to squeeze competitors and record companies. At last year’s Country Radio Seminar, for example, it charged Nashville labels $35,000 for the chance to showcase their acts before Clear Channel programmers.
Given Clear Channel’s monolithic status, it shouldn’t be surprising that WSIX employees would express confidence about their position in the local media landscape. “I just think it’s too crowded a marketplace,” says Mike Moore, the station’s program director. “Many markets larger than Nashville have gone to two FM country stations. I think there will always be room for WSM-AM because that’s unique, but one of those other FM guys needs to give up and go away.... We’re doing well because we’ve managed to stay on top.”
Eddie Foxx, the music director at WKDF, agrees. “I don’t think the market can support four country stations,” Foxx says. “At some point in time, somebody’s going to have to give. We’re not going anywhere, though.”
Carl P. Mayfield’s morning program has been a big reason that WKDF, the most recent of the four to switch to country (in early 1999), has consistently been close on the heels of WSIX in the ratings wars. Experts say that WKDF, which is one of two Nashville stations owned by Las Vegas-based Citadel Communications, has done an excellent job of attracting male listeners to what is increasingly a female-oriented country format by programming more records by testosterone-stoked acts like Montgomery Gentry and Toby Keith. WKDF has also been drawing more male listeners since it became the flagship of the Tennessee Titans Radio Network this fall. “The big difference between us and the other three,” says KDF’s Foxx, “is [that] we have fun.”
One of the main reasons WJXA has swept the ratings all year long is that it’s the only station broadcasting the Adult Contemporary format in Nashville. Advertisers hoping to reach the AC demographic will naturally flock to WJXA. According to Jeff Green of Radio&Records, AC and country stations “both lean female, generally targeting ages 25-54, and often 35-54. They’re generally both family-oriented.... I think you’d find that AC stations attract listeners with more income and more education than country, though there are a lot of affluent country fans because there are so many more country fans overall.”
Does that mean that some of the country stations are losing money here by dividing their ad revenues with their three direct competitors? “Nashville and Salt Lake City [which also supports four country outlets] are both great country markets, but both have 'too many country stations,’ ” says Jaye Albright, co-owner of Seattle-based Albright & O’Malley, Country Consulting/Radio IQ, a firm that provides playlists and other guidance to stations across the country. “If there were two stations, both of them would gain as much as 30 percent in their share of audience and revenues.”
But that’s less likely to happen, thanks to consolidation, which prompts companies like Clear Channel to hold on to as many stations as possible in a single market. These groupings of similarly held stations in a city are referred to as “clusters”; the clusters pool their marketing resources and often lay off large numbers of air personalities and support staff in desperate moves to reduce costs. That’s because the parent companies frequently accumulated huge debts when they bought these stations, sometimes at exorbitant prices. Clear Channel’s debt load in 2001 was more than $10 billion.
The result is that the entire FM bandwidth has been affected, because large radio companies have effectively planted themselves at several points along the dial in every city. “In this cluster-vs.-cluster competitive environment,” Albright explains, “it is no longer just about one station being No. 1. It’s about adding unique listeners to your cluster’s combined share, which can be delivered to potential advertisers.” The execs at Clear Channel don’t care about dominating one format in a city—their goal is to dominate the whole city.
The radio business has changed radically since 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act into law. Prior to that legislation, no company could own more than 40 radio stations nationwide. There now are no limits on total station ownership, except that the maximum number of radio stations a company can own in a single market is eight.
In the words of Randy Michaels, the somewhat infamous former head of Clear Channel Radio, the Telecom Act created “an Oklahoma land rush.” In a flurry of station purchases between 1996 and 2001, several conglomerates spent billions of dollars and emerged as the dominant players in radio. Clear Channel gobbled up 1,238 stations that brought in $3.265 billion in 2001 revenues. Viacom-owned Infinity Broadcasting, which has no Nashville radio stations (although Viacom owns Country Music Television), was second in radio revenues at $2.081 billion, with 183 stations in large markets. Cumulus Media, with three Nashville radio outlets, owns 258 stations nationwide, second only to Clear Channel; Citadel has 206 total stations. Never before were so many stations controlled by so few, a concentration of ownership that worries many but is similar to what has been happening in other industries—such as the newspaper and television industries and the record business.
Companies like Gaylord Entertainment, which owns only three radio stations (all based in Nashville), and South Central Communications, the Indiana corporation that runs WJXA-FM and 11 stations in all, are now distinctly in the minority. But if giant corporations have the advantage of massive resources—though critics often accuse them of strong-arm tactics—smaller radio companies tend to be more flexible. Last spring, for example, WSM-FM’s O’Neal tried a “Live 95” format. The station aired live morning concerts and used its huge catalog of Opry broadcasts to provide listeners with something new—live cuts of songs previously heard only in studio versions. It didn’t immediately catch on and certainly lost money, but “Live 95” was the type of innovative programming that probably could not have happened anywhere but here. WSM-FM also says it aired the first-ever stereo broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry.
The ultimate example of flexible country radio has been at WSM-AM. In the wake of the recent changes, though, the future of WSM-AM programs like Opry Star Spotlight and Classic Saturday is uncertain. Those shows, however, made listeners fiercely loyal to the station—and made it unique.
Veteran country journalist Hazel Smith hopes things stay exactly as they are. “People who love country music from their hearts, people like me, listen to WSM-AM,” she says. “None of the other stations, great as they are, program yesterday, today and tomorrow, and mix it up.”
Record labels and country radio need each other, but their relationship is constantly evolving in the post-consolidation world. One of the most dramatic impacts of consolidation is a slower movement of records on the charts. Ten years ago, in pre-consolidation 1993, 32 different singles made it to the top of the Billboard country singles chart. Last year, only 21 country singles made it to No. 1, as some records lingered on the charts for six months or more.
Bruce Hinton, the recently retired chairman of MCA Nashville, says that record labels used to be able to work three singles per year, per artist to country radio; that number is now closer to one-and-a-half. Another executive notes that labels can only realistically make four to six of their artists a priority at radio. Meanwhile, people at radio say they are overwhelmed with the number of singles the Row sends them each week.
“One of the biggest factors [that makes it hard to break new artists] is the time it takes to get a single into meaningful rotation,” DreamWorks’ Borchetta says. “There are fewer opportunities for all of the labels because of the slow-down of the charts. But it’s not the charts that are at fault. They are just a reflection of what’s going on. When consolidation kicked in, we lost a lot of companies going head-to-head to try to beat each other by being more aggressive musically. Now most stations are encouraged (and sometimes dictated) to be overly safe, over-researched and over-consulted.”
A well known and much discussed case in point: Country radio totally missed on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which has sold over 6 million copies. O Brother’s traditional bluegrass and Southern gospel material was never really given a crack at radio; as a result, the record never produced a Top 10 single, despite topping the album charts.
Radio is an extremely fluid business. In Nashville, there are at least 25 radio stations on the air every day, as opposed to four TV stations and two daily newspapers. Three of the 25 radio stations have changed formats in the last nine months. WSIX-FM’s Moore says that moving deejay Billy Mayfield to afternoons has boosted the station’s ratings from eighth to third in that part of the day in just a few months. Will this same fluidity lead one of the three country FMs to change formats within the next year?
According to Harold Bradley, the president of the Nashville chapter of the American Federation of Musicians (Local 257), “Country music has glorified this town. I think the town should glorify country music more. I think it’s real important to keep the four country stations, because, first of all, country music is what built Nashville. I would hate to see any of them change. And besides, why are they considering changing formats when sales of country albums were up so much last year?”
Albright, the country radio consultant, says that country’s unique audience may lead things to stay the same, even though economic sense would seem to dictate otherwise. “As long as media buyers support three or four country stations and station ownership can’t possibly make more money in a different format—due to the great qualitative and large number of loyal listeners country radio delivers—the 'senseless’ competition will continue. And listeners as well as advertisers love the fact that they have more choices in hotly contested competition rather than less.”
Stay tuned.
