December 13, 2006
"Same forty songs on the radio..."

Call (call...call...call...) the music police!


Radio consolidation is shrinking playlists and creating a homogenized musical landscape, several singers and songwriters told the Federal Communication Commission Monday.

"Big radio is bad radio," said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America, told FCC commissioners in the second of six public meetings nationwide. "You can drive I-40 from Knoxville to Barstow, California, and hear the same 20 songs on every country radio station."

Carnes was among several writers and performers, including Jenny Toomey and Naomi Judd, who addressed the panel. Most urged the commissioners to put more restrictions on media ownership or at least hold the line on current regulations.

"I'm not against companies making money," said country music great George Jones, who said he and his fans have suffered under tighter radio play- lists that he says are often determined by a relative few with little knowledge of country music history.

"But you know, sugar is sweet, but too much can kill you," Jones said to loud applause from the crowd at the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University.


We've explored this road before, so I won't reiterate everything we've talked about. I just continue to be amazed that the short-playlist concept, whether for classic rock, 80s tunes, our country music, can succeed in today's iPod-and-satellite-radio world. I stopped listening to two of those formats because I just wanted, every once in awhile at least, to hear a song that I hadn't heard a million times already. That's not so much to ask, is it? The weird thing is that consolidation doesn't have to lead to a forty song playlist. I don't know why it has done so, and so often, but I don't see any logic that dictates it must be that way. It's just strange.

(In case you didn't already know, the title and link text for this post come from the classic Austin Lounge Lizards song "Put The Oak Ridge Boys In The Slammer".)

Posted by Charles Kuffner on December 13, 2006 to Music | TrackBack
Comments

Back before Clear Channel became a swear word among music fans, I remember hearing or reading an explanation from a DJ (possibly my cousin, who used to work at the local top-40 station in the 80's) about why they played hit songs over and over and over again: No matter how many times they played the latest big hits, they got calls requesting it. They could play the song every half-hour, and they'd get phone requests on the quarter-hour demanding that they play it again right now.

I think it's only serious music fans who are bothered by the short playlist problem. Casual fans are just fine with it, and they outnumber the serious fans by a large margin.

Posted by: Chad Orzel on December 13, 2006 7:47 AM

replace their musical stardom
with brickbats and two-by-fours...

Posted by: julia on December 13, 2006 10:21 PM

Ugh.

I haven't made the jump to sat. radio yet, as my office is in the center of the building I work in. However, I do have a 20 Gb mp3 player, which I can hook up to my car stereo.

Between that and Pandora for at work listening, I haven't listened to the radio for more than 10 minutes or so for a couple of years.

In those periods when I am reduced to the radio, I am constantly changing the station to try and hear something, anything, different. Terrestrial radio, in general is just plain awful. Give me local ownership, local artists, and more than 40 songs to listen to. Otherwise, I will never go back to listening to the radio.

Posted by: David (Austin Tx) on December 14, 2006 2:34 PM