Last Of A Dying Breed

First of all, happy New Year!

Now, the headline refers to a new Neal McCoy song that is in the "To Be Considered" pile of new songs. It sounds like a hit from a long suffering artist who gives an energetic live performance and is an all around good guy. The last song was fun, and this one is a hit. So there's my unsolicited plug for one of the industry good guys.

An honorary good guy award has to go to Bee Gee Barry Gibb, who bought the Johnny Cash estate, saving the house from destruction. Gibb will use it as a songwriter retreat and summer house. Amazing that it took a Rock Star to see the spiritual value of a house like that. Not sure if any of these "modern day" country millionaires care about Cash and the people who paved the way before them.

Appreciation for history is something you either have or don't. Maybe it's education or culture, I'm not sure, but "getting" traditions like the Opry and appreciating buildings like The Ryman is so important. Country music today is half solid country and half churned up seventies pop. The balance is ok right now, but if it slides more out of balance you just have pop.

Hearing a country record, a real one that comes from folks like Alan Jackson, holds the wheels on the road. Cash music is selling again big time, and maybe that will inspire the audience more toward real country and less heading to bad AC/DC junk that you hear as encores of at least one so-called country artist.

Stern got a big bonus this week for grabbing subscribers to Sirius. XM got the exclusive rights to the Fox News Talk channel. The battle is on and the audience is the winner. Making terrestrial radio LOCAL is the only direction for the bosses to go, because you simply cannot "out music" the satellite radio gang. You can be local and do what radio always did when it was locally owned served the community. The people who allowed consolidation are the bad guys in this story (of course, they're a faceless bunch of suits and on-the-take congressmen). Stern the bad ass broadcaster many love to hate is going to help shake things up to a point where radio will be local in the morning or be eaten alive by satellite radio and local TV news shows (which are growing at a percentage much higher than morning radio).

Reading the trades and watching the same old suits moving around the country to "save the next market" shows the lack of any foresight and intelligence from the owners. These suits don't know what got them there and sure don't know at this late hour how to keep the wheels on the car. When's the last time a hot kid broke out with a morning show? Too long to remember. Why? The idiots killed off nights a decade ago and new kids had no place to learn. Cheaping out the stations with no overnights, no LIVE nights, etc. is a price that is NOW come to be paid. You never grew any new people. Here we are!!!

Radio is a great medium. It's so personal when the listener and broadcaster connect. Talk radio today is great and keeps that one-to-one relationship. Music radio has to figure out how to get the marriage with listeners and a Larry Lujack, Charlie Van Dyke, Charlie Tuna, Howard Stern, Dr. Don, or Rhubarb Jones. These men and their on-air families made it fun to listen. Stern's radio family understands. He connects and is real. It's great theater of the mind. It's demented, mind you, but you can listen and just imagine what is going on and how fun it would be to be there.

There's a theme running in this column, and that theme is to learn from history. Respect tradition. It's the source of creativity. You mostly can't reinvent the wheel. You take the ingredients of several great old things and make it a new thing, whether it be in music, architecture, film, or any of the arts.

Country music and Country radio must go back and see where it came from. It was not a bad place. Go back and get the vibe. Change it. Put a shiny coat of paint on it. But as any good coach does with a new team, get the basics down and then add to them.

Today's radio is in bad need of a dose of the past. Google WLS jingles and go listen to them or the ones from WABC. Try to remember why we remember those stations so fondly today. That is the magic we must rediscover.

Rock star country stars like Keith Urban are fun. He's a talented guy. Neo New kind of country star Brad Paisley is a great example of someone who honors the past while being modern.

The music folks are doing an overall good job of finding the new talent. Little Big Town and Sugarland are just 2 new fresh faces that do it right.

Radio badly needs to adapt to the world it lives in now. Local news guys, traffic, weather and a good mix of music. FUN on the air. A sense of family. It's not easy to do, but the reward today is survival of a medium -- terrestrial radio -- that is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

The concert business will see country music stars doing big business this year. Tim and Faith's tour will just be one of the crossover success stories. Radio needs to spend a lot of time in 2006 reattaching to its audience. Making radio at NIGHT be important again to kids in school, , for example. Making morning radio a must-hear. If you're in St Louis that doesn't mean having some jack leg show out of market be your morning show.

Mancow, Tom and Bill or Tom and Bob is just crap. Imported by a radio station trying to save money. Keep this up and you will save a salary and kill your future. Terrestrial radio is running out of time. Some of you will say go suck an egg old fart. Well one thing you do get with a little experience and seasoning is you learn to appreciate history. TRY IT. History can be a fun trip. Take it soon.