That's not what happened. The country music community was totally unaware of the comments made in England. What happened is a conservative talk radio host named Mike Gallagher read a newspaper account in The Guardian. That was the only news report from the concert. Mike read the story on the air and told his listeners to call their country radio stations and threaten to boycott the stations if they played any Dixie Chicks music. At the time, the Dixie Chicks had the #1 most played song on country radio. They had no intent on dropping their songs from airplay. But under threat from these conservative radio listeners, they felt they had no choice. As time went on, certain country artists then agreed with the conservative radio fans and spoke out against the Dixie Chicks. This was exactly the same thing as what you describe with a "woke community" putting pressure on radio stations. The "woke community" exists in all societies, and has the same results in all cases.
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Morgan Wallen Suspended From Label
- Thread starter TheBigA
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That's not what happened. The country music community was totally unaware of the comments made in England. What happened is a conservative talk radio host named Mike Gallagher read a newspaper account in The Guardian. That was the only news report from the concert. Mike read the story on the air and told his listeners to call their country radio stations and threaten to boycott the stations if they played any Dixie Chicks music. At the time, the Dixie Chicks had the #1 most played song on country radio. They had no intent on dropping their songs from airplay. But under threat from these conservative radio listeners, they felt they had no choice. As time went on, certain country artists then agreed with the conservative radio fans and spoke out against the Dixie Chicks. This was exactly the same thing as what you describe with a "woke community" putting pressure on radio stations. The "woke community" exists in all societies, and has the same results in all cases.
That is what I said. Listener reaction caused the stations to drop airplay; the largest group of protesters were core listeners who heard about it from other media and spread the word. The point is that the protests came from radio listeners, who reacted negatively. In this case, the talk listener and the country listener were likely the same cume base.
So conservative talk listeners shared with or actually were country listeners... who back then were almost totally of the same persuasion politically and rejected the comment.
There was no "woke community". Conservative talk listeners were, in many if not most cases, country listeners in much of the nation. They heard about the remarks and protested to their music station.
Stations I know realized they had a problem fairly quickly due to angry calls (some morning shows actually made a subject out of it) and began dropping airplay. Response took more time because in 2003 we did not have the immediacy of today's social media platforms and far fewer listeners were "connected". In fact, much of the reaction was by phone calls to stations and as the groundswell increased, the jocks told the PDs who checked with other PDs in the company or friends at other stations and realized they had an issue.
In this case, the listeners to country were not pleased by the remarks they found "anti-American" by their standards and did not want "their music station" playing the group.
In the current iteration of the situation, it's mostly non-listeners creating the uproar, with the core listeners not able to support something that at least looks bad if it does not feel bad. But the main reason the artist was dropped here was that the big groups also have urban stations and other ethnic formats and they did not want to seem like they supported the vile remark by continuing airplay. It had little to do with the core country listeners and everything to do with corporate sensitivity to the events of the last year or so.
Not in this case. The conservative talk listeners had no idea who the Dixie Chicks were. They would not have known they existed had Mike Gallagher not told them. Mike used the story to propel his career. This was driven by outsiders who didn't know current country. They're still angry. But classic country stations are now playing the old hits.
Wow, that's a really big leap from a person using one word (which most people agree is a bad word) to now you've determined he's a racist and a bigot? That's the whole problem with cancel culture thinking now days. Do we really know that he dislikes black people? I don't see anyway to know that from the evidence. I watched the video. It sounded like he was just being drunk, obnoxious, and cussing a lot. Do we even know if the people he was talking to were offended? Just because the general public was offended when it wasn't intended for them doesn't prove anything about how he personally feels about a certain race.
Now if there's other evidence that he's a racist and a bigot I'm happy to learn. But basing that on a single word is a huge stretch. That's just name calling because you don't like what he said.
Anyone who is not Black who uses the "N Word" is racist in their core. It's such a negative, racist term that anyone who uses it is pretty much self-incriminated.
Similarly, in my family, we know that anyone who refers to Hispanics by terms like "Spics" is not going to ever be trustworthy or a friend.
There is no excuse for using that kind of word.
The Gallagher incident was simply the spark that started the fire. Once the word go to conservative talk hosts and then jumped to country radio, the issue was totally removed from the original report. Think of that first revelation as being a catalyst... the spark that started a forest fire. Where the original discover came from is essentially insignificant compared with the grass-roots rejection by conservative country fans of the remarks.
The issue was driven by non-country listeners. There wasn't much interplay between talk radio and country radio at the time because of the age difference. Talk radio listeners didn't like contemporary country. They thought it was too pop. And you didn't hear politics discussed at country radio. Only one group, Cumulus, dropped their songs from their playlists. That was because conservative talk listeners in Shreveport called KRMD, threatening violent action against their hosts. When their next single came out a few years later, it received enough airplay to chart in the 30s even though it was critical of country radio. Sure there were some country fans in the deep south who agreed with the talk radio hosts. Some in towns with military bases. But the anti-Chick thing was primarily on talk radio. When Mike Gallagher hosted an anti-Chick rally in May, the music was provided by the Marshall Tucker Band, not a country act.
My point is cancel culture comes from both sides. It's not just a liberal thing.
I guess your world operates more simply than mine. I believe in things called nuance and context. Do I agree with his use of the word? No I don't, and I don't use that word, but am I also going to pass judgment on the whole of a person because they used a word while they were drunk, when I don't even know the context? No I'm not going to.
You can't even tell who the people are that he was talking to, other then friends I guess. Maybe he was just trying to be extra obnoxious. Maybe it's an inside joke that we don't know about because one of them was called that word. No way to tell and I don't see a reason to just call him names based on that video.
If he is a racist then I hope he gets help with that because it's not a good way to go through life, but I have no idea if he is.
How old is Donald Trump? Older than that..
Conservative talk, sports and oldies were the three most shared formats with country in that era. If you looked at Arbitron books in the early 2000's you can see cume duplication in very significant numbers in most places except the deep Northeast and some of the Pacific Coast in the 90's and up to the time the PPM arrived.
It was not uncommon to find diaries where country was the P1 format choice where the second and third choice stations were talk and/or sports and oldies (before it became Classic Hits).
So in much of the country, a large percentage of conservative talk listeners were also country listeners... and vice versa, of course. Like a virus, that was enough for the news to spread to the entire country music community.
Example: in San Antonio in the early 2000's, WOAI shared the most with KONO followed by the two country stations and KXTN. Anything the talk shows on 'OAI discussed would be known by as much as a third of the cumers or the other four almost instantly. And that analysis is based on actual diary review as well as what used to be called the "Mechanical Diary" which was a detail of each participant's radio usage. The average diarykeeper listened to 3 to 4 stations and now, in PPM, it is around 6 to 7.
Exclusive cume is almost unknown, and generally only seen with followers of a religious station.
How many of those markets carried the Mike Gallagher show? The story that day was promoted by Mike Gallagher. Not any other talk show host. It became a topic for them in the days after that. But the reason country radio stations reacted was because they received angry and hostile phone calls from listeners to Mike Gallagher.
If you look at the demographics of country in the late 1990's and early 2000's, they are about the same as they were in the late 80's to early 90's insofar as 35+ is concerned. But there was overall growth. In fact, what was happening is that country was widening to include more 18-34's but without losing the 35 and over listeners.
And the 35-54 country listeners were significant users of talk radio. They liked Strait, Chesney, Jackson, Keith, Worley, Diamond Rio, McBride and Urban and they also liked Limbaugh and the other talkers of that era. It does not matter that many did not hear Gallagher; the word was out and spread fairly rapidly in conservative circles.
As I said, it only took a percentage of country listeners who also shared with talk stations to create a contagion that influenced a portion of the country station cume.
Mostly they received calls from their listeners who also listened to Gallagher or who hear about it once it started getting reported on other talk shows and in other media.
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The reporting at the time quoted the person answering the phone at KRMD. This was at a time when there were people who answered the phone. They reported that the calls they received came from people who didn't know the Dixie Chicks or their music. They reported they were threatened by the callers. That's why they decided to stop playing their music.
Some people also remember that Biden delivered a eulogy in 2010 for a former organizer and member of the KKK. Not to mention he's made a number of comments that some people perceive as quite racist.
Just saying, if we're going down that path.
Who also happened to be the Senator of West Virginia. Barack Obama was there too.
Fact check: Robert Byrd, eulogized by Joe Biden at funeral, was not KKK Grand Wizard
Social media users have been sharing content online that claims Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden eulogized Robert Byrd, asserting he was the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). This claim is partly false. Though various prominent politicians eulogized Byrd at...
www.reuters.com
That doesn't make him a racist.
Okay let's compare. Here's a list going back to the 70's:
Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020
Trump has repeatedly claimed he’s “the least racist person.” His history suggests otherwise.
www.vox.com
I sure would not use Shreveport, market #146, as a sole source for any information from that era.
I was doing diary reviews and ratings analysis work for a number of stations in both the talk and related music formats back then and could see the extensive overlap of cume between talk and country stations.
My view on this is substantiated by this story from the era in Rolling Stone quoting a well known country radio consultant:
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That story was published very close to the actual beginning of radio protests... less than ten days after. The best is to look at Dixie Chicks concerts and music sales in the next year or so. Their collective career was essentially extinguished.My view on this is substantiated by this story from the era in Rolling Stone quoting a well known country radio consultant:
Yes I stated that in my first post on the subject, and why I maintain that this cancel culture came from outside the format. It took a while before it had any impact within the format. Part of that was the poor way the trio handled the bad publicity, and part of it was that the story grew (as these things do) within conservative talk radio. That's why I continue to compare this to the "woke community" language you used with Morgan Wallen. It's a very similar thing. If it was up to the core country fan, they still love Dixie Chicks music, and their old hits still get airplay today.
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