If the 2011 Country genre is trying to sound as cosmopolitan and Starbucks as the next A/C station, then their numbers should plummet after 6PM. It's an A/C rule. And if these concrete canyon businesspeople see themselves in the mirror as a listen-at-work station, complete with the whole 27 feet of glitzy separators and flanged agency sounders for traffic and the (rare) weather, then that means the weekends are as ripe a time as the weekday nighttimes for exploration.
But bold exploration of that frontier means, uh, *money*.
They'll just stick with what works.
It would be nice to hear some overnight C&W show, maybe even syndicated, of the old-time stuff. But that's just dreaming. I don't think enough 70 year old truckers would support it.
Yet, fwiw, a smallish daytimer that plays nothing but traditional C&W up this way (WWSM 1510) shows up as respectably as can expect in the occasional Harrisburg book -- one of SIX Country stations to do it. One would figure that Florida, with the exact median age as Pennsylvania (39.3 years), and with so many over-50 communities, would be a riper place for the traditional C&W. But as long as there's a big, one-size-fits-all Wal-Mart of a Country station in town, it becomes a matter of people settling for the nearest approximation. Sort of the way the Bloomingdale hippies flocked to the more obvious fast-food AoR stations in the mid-Seventies. Or the way WOGL Philly and WCBS-FM New York's listeners support these pre-fab Oldies stations.
Just some thoughts from a Pennsylvanian snowbird, hi.
