Where Does The Buck Really Stop? One of the most-often heard complaints from label executives is that Urban radio no longer has the patience nor a commitment to develop new artists. Radio, on the hand, says while they understand record labels' plight, their focus is on ...

Why It's Necessary In A Restructuring Environment In response to many of you who have e-mailed me recently, we are going to take a look at career building. In an age of social media and the proliferation of blogging, cutbacks and news aggregators, programmers once ...

Inflating Our Worries & Shifting Into Reverse As the economy continues to tank, surviving in the Urban radio world has become a daily struggle. Your station probably has many listeners and households where both parents have lost their jobs. The recession has claimed ...

Saying No To The Niche Notion Urban programmers today face more obstacles and demo dilemmas than ever before, including having their ratings affected by Arbitron's attempts to contact unreachable cell phone-only listeners and savvy audience members who get their music off ...

Speculation About The Format's Future Who knows what lies ahead for Urban radio? Taking a stab at crystal ball gazing, programmers attempt to predict how the format will fare in the next few months. Will there be continued growth in terms of the number of total stations ...

Measuring The Immeasureable Some very successful Urban and Urban AC programmers have experienced ratings dips recently and naturally nerves were frayed and questions were being asked by their bosses. In many cases, these ratings dips were caused in part due to the ...

The Promise & The Reality If you took all the borders and restrictions away from Urban programmers today, there is no doubt that in many cases you would have a better product ... one that served its community the way broadcasters promised to do when the got their ...

'Get Closer To The Curb' Programming has become increasingly complex in recent years, requiring more time and effort than ever before. And despite that it looks as though Urban radio's ongoing economic woes may very well exacerbate that trend. The problem is that off-air ...

As we conclude our current series on "Sisterhood," this time we want to examine the new Mrs. Jones. It's true, "She's got a thing goin' on." This time it's not the jukebox that's playing her favorite song, it's the radio station. And the thing that she's got is that she's ...