02.27.07 An Insider’s Look At Christian Radio Pt.3: Testing Killed The Radio Star

I was played on every Christian Adult Contemporary radio station six years ago.  Seven singles were released from my first CD (some kind of record, I was told, for this industry). And not just released.  They were played.  Five of them climbed the charts.  Three of them were top five.  Two went to number one.  One was the second most played AC song in the country in 2001.  I got a plaque and everything.  Mom was proud.

It wasn’t an easy feat.  The first single was a song called “Welcome Home,” a confession of sin and a plea for sanctification.  For a few months it languished with only a handful of stations adding it to their playlist.  Then two men changed everything.

I had discipled Matt Austin’s daughter.  She was in a small group I’d led for a couple years before signing a record deal.  When that group ended, my wife, Becky, met with her and a couple of her friends weekly to encourage and teach them and, well, help them understand boys.  We were close.  Matt managed, and still does, WAY-FM in Nashville (A CHR station, not Adult Contemporary).  I’ve been told by other folks with WAY-FM that he went to bat for me in a song meeting all those years ago, vouching for me as a person and strongly urging his music director to play “Welcome Home.”

WAY-FM spun the song at all the stations in their network, the first major CHR station to play it.  The next week, a load of other CHR stations followed suit.  WAY-FM, at least in part because of my friendship with Matt and his family, lead an entire format to play a song some had previously said was too Adult Contemporary for their listeners.

The second man to change everything for me was John Rivers, at the time presiding over KLTY in Dallas.  John’s voice is heard all over the country; he’s the leading voice guy in our industry.  A long tall Texan complete with cowboy hat and boots, John and I hit it off.  We talked TexMex.  I visited him at his ranch, got kissed by his camel Moses and petted his Llama too.  We’re not close friends, we’re not even friends at all.  But we spent enough time over a couple visits for him to like me or my music I guess - enough to get him to try out “Welcome Home.”

The week after John Rivers played “Welcome Home” the number of Adult Contemporary stations playing “Welcome Home” jumped.  Literally overnight, AC radio embraced me.  They wanted me to visit their stations, to record liners for them, to play at their festivals, to broadcast live from my shows and take me to lunch the next time I came through twon.  Before John Rivers threw his support behind it, “Welcome Home” was being played on less than ten stations, two of which only played an edited version they’d concocted themselves without our permission - a version without the bridge, which one music director said was too angry sounding. 

Before John’s support, one program director said I didn’t “look” AC enough to him.  Another said he didn’t like my voice.  Others said my song just wasn’t a good fit.  One said “Welcome Home” sounded like a demo.  They said all this until John Rivers essentially told them they were wrong - not with words, but by simply playing my song on his much-watched and powerful station.  Then none of the objections mattered - they played the song.

(Thank you, John and Matt.  You essentially gave me the career I’ve enjoyed for the last seven years.)

From then on the battle to get my first record played on AC and CHR radio was much easier to fight.  And what followed was a string of well-played songs, successful tours, and a slew of award nominations.

TESTING
Then, at the end of 2001, everything changed.  More and more stations stopped offering vague reasons for playing less of Rocketown‘s music and began offering the same reason again and again: It doesn’t test well.  By mid 2002 it seemed like every station I visited was testing songs and few were playing my label mates.  Selfishly, I wasn’t concerned.  I was out of singles and working on a new studio record I was sure radio would play as they did the first one.  I assumed things would be different when the first single from my next record went for adds.  How arrogant.

I was wrong.

Testing had been around for years in the mainstream.  Christian radio didn’t invent it.  I’d read about it in Billboard Magazine and R&R.  In 1996, they said, federal laws prohibiting corporations from owning more than a few stations were done away with.  Clear Channel and others began buying up hundreds of stations and creating large networks spanning from coast to coast.  Once a station was bought up or created by a large network it was shoehorned into one of very few successful formats.  It lost much of it’s local identity, and listeners lost any participation they may have had in programming decision making.  In plain english, a station in Dallas played the same music as a sister station in Dover and there was no DJ to take and play a request from a local wanting to hear something else.

These large networks were able to maximize their profits by dramatically decreasing the number of personnel being paid.  The first to go?  Music Directors.  Instead of a local guy deciding what his neighbors wanted to hear, a small number of guys (sometimes just one) hired consultants to test music.  The tests indicated what a certain narrowly defined demographic wanted to hear.  And what the test subjects wanted to hear - regardless of where they lived and listened - was then broadcast to all listeners through all stations in the network.  Dallas to Dover.

In time Christian radio stations adopted the same philosophy.  They did not eliminate music directors though.  What they reportedly did was put one man (or committee) in charge of selecting which songs were possible adds for the network.  Then that man (or committee) oversaw the testing of those songs on women of a set age range.  Whatever songs tested well were then given a “green light.” Music directors at the various stations within the network were then allowed to pick songs only from the green light list.  A certain number of “gold rotation” songs (songs that are no longer current) were required as well.

Just as smaller stations once copied John Rivers’ and Matt Austin’s decisions to play my music in 2001, in 2002 they began copying the mainstream’s testing practices: Test songs before they get played.

I haven’t had a single in the top ten since.  And a lot of other folks haven’t either.

I’ve released two albums since the great changes of 2001/2002.  Both have been reviewed very positively.  Reviewers, like Christianity Today, even wrote about the number of viable singles on the albums.  John still likes me as far as I know.  Matt was my bible study teacher until a couple years ago and I still call him friend and love his kids.  I still play free shows for radio stations - even the ones that don’t play me.  I’ve never once turned down an interview request from a station, an opportunity to visit or grab lunch or help them raise money for their broadcasts.  Again and again my friends in radio have told me things like: I love your new record, my kids love such and such song, my family and I really enjoyed your concert, I think you have a great ministry, (etc) but you just don’t test well. In other words, I haven’t changed, my music hasn’t gotten (that much) worse, and my relationship with all my friends in radio is as good as ever.  Testing took me off the radio, and nothing else.

UPBEAT AND POSITIVE
Well, that and “always upbeat and positive”.  See, my songs have had a hard time surviving long enough to get tested, I’m told. Stations get a stack of CDs in the mail every week and not every song will be a test subject.  That would be impossible.  There are numerous ways songs are chosen from the stack to be tested (more on that later) but one of them, at least at some stations, is determining it to be “upbeat and positive” - something my music apparently isn’t.

“Upbeat and positive” was coined by a large network and soon, once again, the rest of the industry copied, coming up with their own variations: “Always Positive and Encouraging,” “Positive Hits” etc.  And - this is important - came up with their own definitions for the slogan as well.

“Positive” on some AC stations, for example, means something very different than “positive” on the WAY-FM Network (CHR).  “Positive” means, literally, happy on some AC stations.  A station manager in the FISH Network I can’t find today told me once when I was co-hosting his morning show, that being positive is important to his target demographic because her life is full of enough negativity and unhappiness.  His station, according to him, plays music that helps people forget about their troubles and be happy while they listen.

WAY-FM, on the other hand, according to morning show guy and friend Brant Hansen, views “positive” music as that which is beneficial - and it’s obvious from WAY’s playlist that they are not unwilling to talk about unhappy subjects like suicide, divorce, anorexia, doubt, fear, cutting and sin in general.  The discussion of these subjects, as well as the celebration of all that’s right with the world, through the lens of the Christian faith, is beneficial to listeners.  Again, according to Brant, who explains their/his definition of “positive” much better than I can.

It would be a tremendous and unnecessarily divisive mistake to say that the use of the word “positive” to describe a radio station’s broadcasts is always something I disagree with.  I’ve learned, unfortunately after shooting my mouth off years ago without all the facts, that not all stations apply or define this slogan in the same way.  But defined a certain way, a pledge to be “always upbeat and positive” concerns me.  Not because it keeps my music off the air, but for deeper more important reasons.

More on that next time.