Dancing To The Country

If You Sound Grizzly, Will You Get The Girly?

Take a look at this:

1998

MWS

2006

Third Day

A programming friend and I were talking about core artists the other day and we came up with this simple scratch list. Do you notice any changes between then and now? I think what popped out at me was the lack of females in the core. My pal mentioned that none of the artists who are core now were signed directly by their major label partners (I think Third Day was brought up through the Reunion system).

Change is a good thing. I think our community can be proud of the fact that we've help develop a new generation of artists and that after 2003 things really changed dramatically. I get a lot of press releases telling me x and o are selling a lot more records now and ratings are getting better, but there still seems to be a malaise doesn't there? Maybe it's just me but I find that core artist list for 2006 to be pretty homogenous. If I throw a Todd Agnew song into the middle of that list my quarter hour will sound like Grizzly Adams took over my station.

Does this sort of "sameness of sound and texture" help define our stations and help us reach our target better or are we becoming wallpaper? Or did that 1998 list sound like wallpaper back then too?

Billy Pulpit