Early Country Radio

     In 1927 Ralph Peer of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) Victor record company began to record country music performers, most notably Jimmie Rogers and the Carter family, and a commercial industry was born. The western side of country music was popularized in cowboy films of the 1930s and 1940s by such stars as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. On the radio, western stars had regular programs: there were country music performances on live barn dances such as the National Barn Dance from Chicago; Town and Country Time from Washington, D.C.; and the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville.

     During World War II, soldiers from the South and West took their music all around the world. In the postwar era, Hank Williams made country songs popular, and he was followed by Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline. As Top 40 took over radio airplay, country music-in the 196os-emerged as an alternative genre centered in Nashville, with stars such as Johnny Cash, Jimmy Dean, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton.

     On radio, country music had long been confined to network programs (such as the National Barn Dance from Chicago and the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville), small-town stations, and the border radio stations in Mexico. With the decline of network programming and the rise of radio formats, non-net­ work-affiliated stations were playing a substantial amount of country music as early as the late 1940s. Top 40 led the way in terms of playing a selected playlist from one genre of music. Country-from Nashville-did the same as it evolved during the 1960s.

     The country music business realized the threat of rock and roll, and in the late 1950s the business reorganized what had been the annual country disc jockeys' convention into the Country Music Association to promote more country music on radio. Although the identity of the first country-formatted station will forever be debated, stations converted from the programming techniques of the network era to those of the format era. Stations such as WARL-AM (Arlington, Virginia); KXLA-AM (Pasadena, California); and KDAV-TV (Lubbock, Texas) played live and recorded country music almost all day by 1950.

     A generation later, more than 300 radio stations broadcast recorded country music on a full-time basis, and over 2,000 more programmed country for part of the day. The Country Music Association deserves much of the credit for promoting country as an alternative format, but it was certainly helped by the fracturing of rock music during the 1960s and the alienation of its older audience. During the 1950s and 1960s, country format radio moved from its small-town base in the South (as well as in cities such as Los Angeles, where thousands of southerners had moved during the Great Depression) to cities all across the United States.

Country as a Format

     By the mid-1960s, advertisers no longer thought of country radio stations as only being listened to by country folk. During the 1950s, it looked as though country would not survive the popularity of rock and Top 40 formatting, but the introduction of the "Nashville Sound"-typified by the now-classic recordings of Patsy Cline-proved that crossover hit making was possible. By the mid-1970s, country had its place in radio, with more than 1,000 stations playing country format. Country had become suburban-it had given a voice to adult problems, such as infidelity, boss hating, and the like, whereas pop music seemed stuck in teenaged concerns. Country radio listeners were therefore older and were nearly always white.

     By the 1990s, one survey determined that country stations were number one in 57 of the top 100 radio markets in the United States. Many surveys found country the most popular format on radio, with such megastars as Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, and Shania Twain. The country music format had surely reached a high point as the most popular radio music in the country.

     Even in the mid-1990s, however, some argued that radio was becoming too formulaic. Country radio aimed program­ming at adults aged 18 to 34 who listened on their way to and from work, were made up of more women than men, and lived in the suburbs rather than the cities. Artists who did not appeal to these listeners, including Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, were simply ignored. Pressed by advertisers seeking younger buyers, country radio ironically abandoned listeners over 49, the very fans who had helped build it into the nation's most popular format.

     During the 1990s, grown-up baby boomers embraced country, and so advertisers willingly anted up millions of dollars in advertising spending to reach them. Using Donnelley's Cluster Plus system, in 1990 the Arbitron ratings service found that 40 percent of the country fans fit into the system's most affluent groupings, compared with fewer than one-quarter of all Amer­icans aged 12 and older.

     The boom in country radio (and television) is well reflected in the career of Garth Brooks, a star who did not sell his first compact disc until 1989 and who by the close of the century was the best-selling popular music artist in history. American music has never seen a phenomenon like Brooks, who in 1996 at age 34 had reached number two-in just seven years. In the process, he eclipsed Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and the Beatles. During the early 1990s he sold an average of 8 million "units" per year. Radio stations featured Brooks' latest releases and captured millions of new listeners.

     New ways of determining hits helped as well. In 1992 Brooks became the year's top-selling artist based on Rapin' in the Wild, released late in 1991, because computers were used to determine what was sold in stores rather than relying on telephone surveys. Brooks became, because of SoundScan computer counting, the first country artist to top Billboard’s charts. Ropin' in the Wind became the first country album ever to top Billboard's year-end pop ,ilhum chart. Country radio programmers used SoundScan d,Ha (,1 music sales reporting service for subscribers that integrates weekly retail store reports on how many CDs have been sold, providing results for individual markets, regions, or the nation) to deter­ mine their playlists.

The 25 May 1991 Billboard chart was the first done on SoundScan, and suddenly 15 more country albums showed up in the Top 200 than had been there a week before. In 1984 the country category showed only 8 gold (500,000 sales), 4 platinum (1,000,000-plus sales), and 7 multiplatinum albums. By 1991 the numbers were 24 gold, 21 platinum, and 8 multi­ platinum.

At the beginning of the 21st century, rhe future of the country music format looked bright. The number of young people listening ro country music had increased almost 70 percent during the 1990s, and although its popularity was leveling off as the decade ended, no one predicted rhar country's core pop­ularity would decline any time soon. According ro the Simmons Study of Media and Markets, country music was the choice of one-fifth of the 18-to-24 population, with growth among those aged 25 to 34, 35 to 44, and 45 to 54, most of these being just the listeners most desired by radio advertisers.