A few months ago, Luke Stricklin returned to the United States after 12 months in Baghdad as a soldier in the Army National Guard. The mixture of strict discipline, constant stress and hopeful idealism he found there makes Stricklin uniquely prepared for the mission he faces today: his very first Country Radio Seminar. CRS is a unique institution in country music, an annual gathering of about 1,000 radio programmers and an equal number of record-label personnel who converge on Nashville for three days of seminars, showcases and shop talk. This year’s CRS is particularly crucial, coming at a moment when developing technologies are promising to either make radio irrelevant or ensure its survival. In this uncertain environment, record labels will showcase hopefuls like Stricklin. He will sing, give endless interviews and press an astonishing amount of flesh in an effort to get a better hearing from the people who will decide if his new single, “Does That Make Me Bad?,” is a hit or a miss. Stricklin is luckier than most young acts attending their first CRS. He has already squeezed into the country Top 50 with “American by God’s Amazing Grace” (from his album of the same name), a song he wrote while serving in Iraq. “I can go in and introduce myself, hopefully make some relationships, get a little more rapport and set the next single up for success,” he says. Stricklin is also fortunate because his military service offers him a great story to tell in all those interviews, and it taught him a little bit about how to cope with stress. “I think I’ve about lost all the nerves that I had,” he chuckles. CRS is held Feb. 15-17 at the Nashville Convention Center, but the action spills out a little before and after those dates, and all over downtown. Seminars and showcases start before 9 a.m.; shows fill the evenings and the schmoozing goes on until all hours. All the tumult has several purposes, but the one that provides the week with most of its excitement is finding young singers who will pump new blood into everyone’s business. Stellar CRS performances were crucial to getting radio’s initial attention for acts like Alabama, Tim McGraw, Gretchen Wilson and, most recently, Sugarland. “In 1990, Garth Brooks played at a CRS lunch, and that just slingshotted his career,” recalls R.J. Curtis, operations manager at KZLA radio in Burbank and second-term president of Country Radio Broadcasters, the industry organization that has presented CRS for the last 37 years. “You have to have something extraordinary that cuts through,” says Scott Borchetta, president of Big Machine Records, the Nashville startup he recently co-founded with country superstar Toby Keith. “I know that’s obvious, but it’s still the truth. Something that can talk the talk and walk the walk.” But CRS is important to everyone in the business of country music, not just new artists and the labels pushing them. It’s a time to strengthen the bonds between the people who write, record and market the music and the nationwide outposts that send those wares into the air and move product out of the stores. “It’s an impressive display,” says CRB president Curtis. “A kum-ba-yah moment.” The relationships forged and maintained between the artists and radio programmers are just as important. “[Radio professionals] get to hang out with the artists on a personal level and get to know them better,” says Danielle Peck, a singer signed to Big Machine who is currently enjoying her first Top 30 hit, “I Don’t.” “If they like you, it couldn’t hurt, you know?” There’s nothing like CRS in other musical genres, which is a big reason why there are more country radio stations in the United States than any other format, and the number is still growing. It’s currently 2,042, up from 2,021 in 2004; when CRS began 37 years ago, there were 690 country stations in the nation. “You walk out with a greater understanding of where radio and records are right now,” says Borchetta. “It always helps to move the game forward.” When all those industry folks converge this week at the Convention Center—and, more importantly, at the bars, in the hotel hallways and in the parking lots—you can bet they’ll be talking about changes in the radio landscape that are causing ripples in the medium not seen since the advent of television. These days, you the listener aren’t just turning on the radio to hear your favorite records—you’re discovering the hundreds of channels on satellite radio, playing your old favorites stored by the thousands on your iPod, and finding new ways every day to ignore your old friends on the FM and AM bands. Professionals in what is now pointedly referred to as “terrestrial” or “over-the-air” radio—to distinguish it from burgeoning satellite radio—aren’t panicking yet, or at least they aren’t letting on. And maybe they shouldn’t: according to Arbitron’s Radio Listening Trends Format Report, country radio listenership is at its highest level since 1999. It’s just possible that radio can grow along with its competitors, as music junkies up their intake and vary their delivery systems. But then, it’s conventional wisdom that country fans are slow to adopt new technologies, so maybe they just need time to catch up. Satellite radio in particular is drawing greater audiences by the day: the two major subscription-based services, XM and Sirius, have about 9 million listeners combined, lured by the promise of commercial-free music, seemingly endless variety and bolder programming choices. (Think of them as HBO, giving you The Sopranos and Entourage instead of the broadcast networks’ sitcoms and reality shows.) Granted, that number—or even the 15 million that the two services expect to have on board by the end of 2006—is still minor compared to the 230 million who continue to listen to terrestrial radio every week. “If you look at the penetration of satellite, it still hasn’t reached its tipping point,” shrugs CRB’s Curtis. “I don’t know if it’s really affected us yet.” “I think the buzz about satellite radio has died down significantly,” says Dave Kelly, program director at WKDF-103.3 FM. “It’s an expendable-income opportunity. But is it viable? Yeah. Anything that somebody could be doing other than listening to my radio station, I consider competition.” Satellite radio may still be a flea on terrestrial radio’s ass, but it’s beginning to bite. Satellite holds a particular appeal for artists, who get the ego stroke of hearing live and long-form programming devoted to them in a way that terrestrial radio’s formats won’t allow. One XM country channel recently played every George Strait song ever recorded in a row and was rewarded with a one-hour on-air visit from the extremely interview-averse Strait. Eric Logan, executive vice president of programming at XM, is particularly proud of “The Long Haul,” a series in which the service played every Top 30 country song from 1940 through today. Such programming, says Logan, “further helps give us credibility. When I come to Nashville, I’ve got a proven record of how we take country music and put it on a pedestal.” The format’s deep playlists also allow airplay for songs that terrestrial radio wouldn’t dream of spinning, which is music to the ears of acts like Pinmonkey. The band enjoyed a Top 25 hit in 2002 with “Barbed Wire and Roses,” then watched as the follow-ups stiffed and their record label, the RCA Label Group, dropped them. Now signed to the EMI subsidiary Back Porch, the group plan to attend CRS in hopes of piquing programmers’ interest in their new single, “Train Don’t Run By Here No More,” and their upcoming album, Big Shiny Cars. But they’re already finding more acceptance at satellite radio and are ready to seize the opportunity. “I got a royalty check this week, and every bit of the royalties were from satellite radio,” observes lead singer Michael Reynolds. “It lists what songs were played, and I was like, ‘They’re playing that song?’ ” “[Satellite] really means the end of the 20-song-deep playlist,” says drummer Mike Crouch. “They’ve gotta fill that time.” Despite country listeners’ real or imagined technophobia, the genre has received a hero’s welcome on satellite radio. “When you have 6 million subscribers with 160 channels to choose from, and I can confidently tell you that three of our seven country channels are in our top 10, that sends a very powerful message,” says XM’s Logan. Washington, D.C.-based XM put its money where its mouth was by setting up a broadcast studio inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Logan recounts how country star Jo Dee Messina, fresh from the recording studio, once parked in front of the Hall of Fame, walked in unannounced and handed the DJ a newly cut song to try out on the air. “Just the content that walks up to the studio without us even making a phone call is priceless,” says Logan, noting that XM aims for a relationship with country artists like the one boasted by local radio luminary Gerry House of WSIX-97.9 FM (“The Big 98”). “He can say something on the air, and just organically, Alan Jackson will be on the phone,” says Logan. “His persona is kind of what we have for all of our channels.” Logan asserts that satellite has already been instrumental in breaking new country acts, citing Sony BMG’s Miranda Lambert, who has sold more than half a million copies of her 2005 debut album, Kerosene, without ever hitting the Top 10 on traditional airplay charts. “We can expose artists to millions of people,” he declares. “This will be the primary focal point for breaking country music in the future.” The deep, wide playlists of satellite radio and the mix-and-match listening experience of the iPod have begun to affect what you hear on traditional radio as well. Pop’s so-called “Jack” stations, like Nashville’s 96.3 FM, utilize lengthy playlists programmed for maximum variety and surprise, and little or no DJ chatter, just like your iPod set on “shuffle.” Country stations with the same concept, like “Hank” in Indianapolis and “Willie” in Denver, have begun cropping up. Curtis notes that the format is popular, but limited—it only works as an alternative to standard-programmed radio stations and by nature can’t break new artists. A no-DJ policy only works, after all, if the listener already knows what he or she is listening to. “I don’t know that that’s gonna be the new thing for 2006,” says Curtis. “Is everybody gonna go for the country version of Jack?” Still, the notion of expanding playlists and surprising listeners (at least a little) is beginning to creep into traditional stations as well. In September 2004, Nashville’s WSM-95.5 FM became “The Wolf,” mixing country-flavored rock acts like The Eagles and John Mellencamp (and even, on occasion, oddball choices like The Commodores and Quarterflash) into its playlist of current country hits and oldies. “It’s worked wonders for our numbers,” enthuses Frank Seres, the station’s interim program director. “They’ve gone up steadily since we debuted as The Wolf, and we’re going to continue doing what we’re doing.” The expansion of playlists is a turnaround from radio trends since at least 1996, when the federal Telecommunications Act removed restrictions on corporate ownership of radio stations. Companies like Clear Channel and Citadel (who have each chosen mostly to skip CRS this year) bought up stations by the hundreds and centralized programming. The new chains tightened playlists, based on the idea that it’s better to please casual listeners who want to hear their favorite songs (most of us) and risk burning out loyal listeners. A downturn in the popularity of country following the early-1990s boom didn’t help, making it more difficult to break new artists. The explosion of satellite and other competitors can be seen in part as a reaction against this trend, as music fans have become fed up with the limited choices afforded them by over-the-air radio. “Terrestrial radio stations have been examining the shorter playlists that they’ve adopted over the last decade, and I see a lot of stations expanding the number of titles they play as a result,” says CRB executive director Ed Salamon. “You know, it’s not a perfect science. Sometimes you’ve got to pull too far to the right before you start to pull to the left.” Traditional radio’s most direct reaction to the satellite explosion, and the one expected to cause the biggest buzz among this year’s CRS attendees, is the development of HD (High Definition) radio. HD allows stations to multicast additional signals to listeners with special receivers. The result offers an approximation of satellite’s attractions—better sound quality, additional musical formats and onscreen information about the songs—with commercials but without subscription fees. Salamon says that there is now an HD country channel in New York City, which has been otherwise without a country radio station for several years. XM’s Logan considers HD just another sign of satellite’s success. “Look at the names and formats of their channels, and I think you’ll uncover that they look identical to our music channels,” he cracks. “There is nothing innovative or original that they’re doing that we haven’t been doing for five years.” But broadcast and satellite aren’t the only games in town anymore. For example, Pinmonkey have ventured onto MySpace.com, an Internet site that began as a simple meet-new-friends service but has become an ideal way for artists, from bedroom hobbyists to major-label acts, to let their music be heard and to boost turnout for shows. “If you’re touring on a grassroots level like we are,” explains drummer Crouch, “you can search demographically by age group and pick, say, 19- to 42-year-olds in Winston-Salem, N.C., knowing that you’re going to be there in two weeks. Then you send out a message to those people saying, ‘Come check it out.’ You can micromarket.” Of the technological advances offering the public new ways to hear music, Internet radio is one of the few that actually works in the radio industry’s favor. Major terrestrial stations have taken to streaming their signals over the Internet because, for many workers in buildings that interfere with radio reception, it’s a way to continue listening to their favorite station on the job. WKDF began streaming its signal at www.103wkdf.com on Feb. 2. “The early reaction we’ve gotten has been pretty significant,” says KDF-FM program director Dave Kelly, “and the only way we’ve marketed it so far is on the website and on-air.” Big Machine’s Borchetta acknowledges that the labels are paying attention. “Internet radio is on the radar,” he says. Radio stations are finding other ways to use the Internet to their advantage. At The Wolf’s website, listeners can sign up to receive an e-mail or text message alert when their favorite song is scheduled to be played. “We think our job is to get people to make appointments to listen at specific times,” says WSM-FM interim director Frank Seres. “This helps them keep The Wolf at the top of their mind.” Podcasting, Borchetta says, “is still just a buzzword,” but some country stations have at least tentatively embraced it—including traditional country standby WSM-AM, which offers podcasts of the Grand Ole Opry and Eddie Stubbs’ Classic Saturday program at www.wsmonline.com. “Podcasting is a viable entity,” says Kelly. “Podcasting is to radio what TiVo is to TV.” As it attempts to step into the future, the biggest challenge facing terrestrial radio is an old-fashioned one: an uncertain economy making advertisers skittish about buying ad time. “Country radio is faced foremost with the battle for what has not been a growing advertising dollar,” says CRB’s Salamon. “In the last couple of years, businesses have been very conservative with advertising investments.” The radio world is being roiled by other changes, all of which will be much discussed at CRS: the promise of further label consolidation and other media mergers; New York state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer’s payola probe, which has already resulted in settlements with two major labels; and the decisions by a couple of major radio chains in the last several weeks to stop reporting playlist adds to the trade magazine Radio & Records. In a constantly shifting landscape, broadcast radio can always rely upon its oldest and greatest asset: a connection to the local community. “I’d contend that as long as you’ve got some local content—traffic, weather and whatnot—you’ve got a leg up on the competition,” says Seres. “Be live and local.” “That’s one thing a lot of the major companies have learned over the past years in consolidating,” Kelly adds. “You can’t lose your localism, or you will wind up being homogenized, and a lot of these things that may not have taken up a lot of people’s time—iPods, the Internet, PlayStations, CD players in cars—will take up more of their time.” It’s instructive, given the technological advances and endless distractions that have been thrown at it over the last century, to remember just how resilient radio has proven to be. “This time 25 years from now, we’ll probably be sitting here talking about something else that’s gonna kill off radio,” Seres says. “I think radio is alive and well, and it’s gonna be around for a long time.”
