R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
salemjedi54 said:
My point is made. It infiltrated and took over CCM in the 90's, to the point that it has become what most people think is CCM. It used to be a small part of CCM, and there used to be categories such as AC, hot-AC, CHR, and rock. PW took over AC, and devastated the others to the point that it almost took them down. The problem is that CCM, which used to be making serious inroads into secular radio among youth and young adults became completely irrelevant to both groups, with Christian teens and young professionals abandoning CCM completely in favor of secular radio. This business model has always seemed strange to me, because those are the very demographics coveted by secular stations - competition is fierce for their dollars.
I have never been a fan of focus groups - I let listener requests fill my playlist. Focus groups are too small to be a valid scientific sample, and are almost always formed with individuals who will support a pre-conceived outcome desired by station management. Therefore - invalid and irrelevant to where the audience (and in the case of Christian radio the Lord) is really headed. I didn't give a darn about what the Christian music execs in Nashville wanted me to play, what was being played on KSBJ, etc. I played what the audience requested - new music came directly from CDs we bought with our own money at the local Christian book store - in the Christian rock section. Our staff reviewed the tracks for scriptural integrity, radio worthiness, similarity of sound to secular artists, and similarity to songs the local audience had liked in the past. Perhaps you would call that a focus group of sorts, but we were generally pretty good in finding "hits". Enough so we were playing "Flood" eight months before it was picked up by secular stations, who discovered it in part because a local alternative station in our area heard the song on our show and liked it. My staff did a really good job - I couldn't have done it without them. They were teenagers, from 14 to 17, who also announced - so they knew the format and were faithful to it. And were so good they were getting job offers from other stations. Never underestimate a kid who loves God and is dedicated to the job at hand. We were a true Christian rock show, with ratings that eclipsed the local top-40 station in our time slot. My Christian radio equation has always been: Ratings = donations = potential salvations.
By the way, don't look too deeply into the roots of praise and worship music - Maranatha and groups like "Children of the Day" - you may not like what you discover. I preferred my artists to have walks that matched what they were singing.
