You Got A Nice Package There!

If you go to Chinatown in San Francisco you'll see great little shops and in those small bodegas you'll find an incredible array of gadgets, tchochkies and doodads all enclosed in cool little packages, neatly stacked in categories, even for the simplest things. There is great packaging on nearly anything you can imagine when you enter.

Sometimes the packaging is just as great an experience than the item it wraps. There's a lot of chatter lately about Christian radio embracing mainstream artists who are Christians and the support stations are giving artists from Carrie Underwood to The Fray. It's an interesting trend and it seems that the jury is out on if it's a good thing.

Many contend that there are plenty of artists who are being distributed by Christian labels that need the support of Christian radio stations and that these "Reverse Cross" artists are taking up valuable slots for new artists. Other stations say these artists bring new listeners to their stations especially when they are scheduled when their mainstream counterparts are in commercials. Bring 'em on!

But packaging is just as important as the music contained in that 3 minute pop song you add from an artist on the other side of the fence. See Christian radio has a leg up on any other format because we can (and should be) both song AND artist driven. Our audience doesn't just want the hits; they want the experience of being able to tune in for the package on the outside and inside. That's our special package and our artists are able to be known in an intimate way by our audience.

It can be thrilling to see and hear about an artist like Natasha Bedingfield come out about her witness and she has a song that may or may not sizzle on the air, but we have a tendency to think that just because we get a mainstream distributed artist on the air, it somehow makes us relevant, interesting and desirable. It couldn't be further from the truth. If we're looking around to find a few artists that are not serviced to us by Christian labels, is it a reflection of the lack of great, new music being serviced to us, or are we fascinated by the packaging we see on the outside?

Billy Pulpit