“When you pass on, what you gonna pass down?”
That question haunts the final moments of “McArthur,” a star-studded HARDY collab with Tim McGraw, Eric Church and Morgan Wallen while addressing bloodlines, business and legacy. It’s at No. 24 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated March 21, in its sixth week on the list.
To sell — or not sell — the family farm has emerged as a popular theme in country music during an era when the culture is struggling with heightened economic inequality and uncertainty. Justin Moore tackled the topic in “This is My Dirt,” Cody Johnson dug in on it with “Cheap Dirt,” and Jordan Davis and Luke Bryan brushed up against it with “Buy Dirt.” The story plays well in large and major markets, but it particularly resonates in smaller markets, which are generally closer to America’s farmland.
“Those are our core artists right there: HARDY, Cody, Justin Moore,” says WQMX Akron, Ohio, PD/morning co-host Sarah Kay. “I mean, we’re a very traditional station in our sound. We’re very eclectic, but that’s what works, our traditional kind of ‘dirt’-y country, for lack of a better word.”
The family farms at the center of those songs aren’t the only businesses that live out a David-vs.-Goliath scenario in the heartland. While mammoth chains have gobbled up a good portion of the country’s radio stations, some holdouts — such as WQMX; WTGE Baton Rouge, La.; and WJVL Janesville-Beloit, Wis. — still operate with an old-school mentality. They’re a part of more compact broadcasting chains that operate from just one city or condensed region, maintaining a small-town product with heavy attention to live, local air talent; in-market personal appearances; and comparatively unconventional playlists.
Staff from those outlets, and hundreds of others, arrive in Nashville for the annual Country Radio Seminar March 18-20 at a time of contradictory developments.
Cumulus, one of the industry’s largest conglomerates, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 5 for the second time in less than a decade, citing a difficult advertising climate and changes in listening habits influenced by the growth of streaming services. Several executives and analysts — most notably producer-label executive-Apple investor Jimmy Iovine — have predicted obsolescence for those same streaming companies. The development of radio stations fueled by artificial intelligence meanwhile raises the specter of further employment cuts in broadcasting.
Those uncertainties don’t seem to bother the small-town programmers, whose tactile connection to their audience provides a more stable environment for their stations.
“There’s still a whole lot of fantastic radio stations like mine that are locally owned and programmed, and we don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff,” says WTGE PD/midday host Jimmy Brooks. “The iHeart stations, they kick off every hour and they talk about how they’re guaranteed human, but in reality, it’s kind of making a fool out of the listener, because if people listen to any of those stations, they know that those people are not downtown in a studio in their city. They’re cranking out these tracks to 15-20 different stations a day.”
The reality for those monster chains is quite different than the experience of the small-town stations. The largest radio companies maintain smaller staffs at their individual outlets than in earlier eras, with employees holding multiple jobs across several stations in different formats. They often rely heavily on nationally syndicated shows and make many programming decisions at a regional or national level.
In contrast, the smaller stations tend to feature larger playlists with greater variety and more local personalities who generally make more appearances at public events. Even their advertising tends to lean on local businesses, which only emphasizes for the listeners that the station is servicing their community in a meaningful way. The PDs oversee just one station, and they tend to rack up larger time-spent-listening among their audience, which allows more flexibility in breaking the informal rules that guide most stations.
“When’s the last time you heard of an owner or a GM telling you to talk more?” WJVL PD/midday host Justin Brown asks rhetorically. “Ben and Scott Thompson, they tell us, ‘Personality — personality radio.’”
The Thompsons, appropriately, have a deep background in family businesses and bloodlines, tying them neatly to the family-farm scenarios playing in “McArthur” or “This Is My Dirt” on their stations. Scott Thompson made his mark originally as an attorney specializing in trusts and inheritance, assisting the transfer of farms across generations. He established WJVL’s parent company, Big Radio, when he purchased his first stations in 1996, the same year that the Telecommunications Act passed, loosening ownership rules and setting up the rapid expansion of the larger radio chains. He and son Ben own 10 stations between them in a 50-mile stretch of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.
WTGE, owned by Guaranty Media; and WQMX, owned by Rubber City; are both part of four-station radio firms in a single market. They contrast with the larger chains. At those companies — where chunks of the on-air lineup are often syndicated, and the local personalities might air on three different signals — visitors are sometimes surprised by how few employees inhabit the offices. The smaller companies take pride in their in-person vibe.
“When anyone comes to 929 Government Street in downtown Baton Rouge, you’re going to see people in the hall,” Brooks says. “You’re going to see people sitting behind a console in a control room, pressing buttons and doing things at any point of the day.”
When those small- and medium-market broadcasters arrive at CRS, the contrast between their day-to-day existence and that of their peers in larger markets will be on stark display. Many of the issues that fray the nerves of big-city programmers are mild or non-existent by comparison. And one of the biggest differences is their ability to take ownership of their product. At the larger companies, corporate and regional managers often make granular decisions for the chain that may not account for idiosyncrasies in individual communities. In the smaller markets, where upper management is closer to the actual customer, they have additional incentive to respond quickly to changes on the ground, since they can witness firsthand the effect their decisions have on the community.
“I have a giant microphone in my face, and I get to make a difference,” Kay says. “My whole station does, and all my staff, and we get to raise an insane amount of money for local charities. I never thought that would be my job, ever.”
Like their big-market compadres, the small-market staffers still put in long hours — “It’s not like they don’t overwork me,” Kay quips — and when they attend CRS, their interests align as well with many of the topics that resonate at those larger stations. Agenda items that have them intrigued include the skill-focused Workshop Alley, a diversity panel and artificial intelligence discussions. They have little or no fear that they might lose their jobs to AI, but still want to find ways to use it more efficiently as a tool. And, of course, the networking matters.
“There’s all kinds of artist hangs that I’ve committed to,” Brooks notes. “A lot of labels have gotten creative this year in terms of just putting 50 radio people in a room with an artist and booze.”
The partying at CRS provides a welcome respite from their day-to-day existence, though when programmers get back to their markets, the hard work will continue. The titles that that cropped up about holding onto the family farm parallel efforts by broadcasters to leave a legacy for the next generation of radio professionals to carry forward. The workers in those smaller companies are convinced that they’re in a setting where they can accomplish that.
“I believe in the future here,” says Janesville’s Brown. “I think radio will survive, but it’s going to be the small and medium markets like ours that are really, really going to be successful.”
