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  • Country Radio's Growing Pains in the Music Trades, 1967–1977
  • Kim Simpson (bio)

The late sixties and early seventies were a watershed in radio history. Seemingly countless new "formats"—each comprising a radio station's characteristic musical selections—were suddenly available. In the words of one historian, formats proliferated "like cereal brands on the grocery shelf." Why? Among the primary reasons were the surge in popularity of FM stations and the industry's increased reliance on audience measurement surveys and consultants, which led to more narrowly defined niche market segmentation. Country music formats, especially, came into their own during this era, gathering so much momentum that, according to a 1977 study by the radio research firm McGavren-Guild, the market share of country stations had gone up by 52.3 percent in only five years.1

This boom in their business made it necessary for more than a few early seventies country stations to hire new disc jockeys with experience in Top 40 programming—even if they had no genuine background or interest in country—and add them to their roster of veteran country DJs.2 Photographs like one in a 1971 Music City News advertisement promoting Florida country station WFSH were telling. The picture depicts five disc jockeys, four of whom were older gentlemen sporting flattops or neatly coiffed pompadours. Standing alongside them is a younger gentleman, long haired and suntanned. The short bio underneath the photograph bills this odd man out as a "converted rock and roller."3 The distinction, though, was hardly needed at a time when a young man's haircut invited certain assumptions, including what sort of music he preferred. Looking back on the era of "cross country" and "progressive country"—radio [End Page 500] industry terms for the new country/rock hybrid formats—it is safe to assume such "converted rock and rollers" may actually have been doing a bit of proselytizing of their own.

This new influx of rock 'n' roll disc jockeys into country radio was merely a symptom of big changes going on in country, an industry that had been managing to keep its sales and airplay charts relatively safe from "crossover" invasions from as far back as the late fifties.4 But by the late sixties and early seventies, a large-scale identity crisis had taken hold, and one can get a sense of its near stomach-churning effect on the country industry when reading the era's music "trades." The Nashville-based Music City News, focusing only on country, was one of these, as were the three most widely circulated periodicals—Billboard, Record World, and Cash Box.5 All four of these pricey, "insider only" publications contained music sales and airplay charts as well as coverage of key radio industry events, including editorials and interviews with key players. Billboard, especially, thanks to the valiant efforts of radio editor Claude Hall, stood out for its in-depth coverage, between 1968 and 1972, of the "Annual Radio Programming Forums" which the magazine had begun sponsoring in 1968.

Drawing from this official material, I present a "top down" overview of one of country radio history's more cataclysmic eras—the late sixties and early seventies, when the country format's survival was far from guaranteed. This approach, for a genre so tailor-made for "bottom up" social history, in which audience involvement qualifies as a defining feature, may seem out of step. But I do it for the following three reasons: The trades have been, and continue to be, a conspicuous nonpresence in country and pop music historiography; the trades, during this time in particular, provide a vivid look at radio programmers' formatting rationales, as well as their hand-wringing over audience and genre definitions; and they provide a useful opportunity to map out one angle, at least, of the rather messy business of cultural change. The story of country radio in the early seventies, ultimately, has to do with its role in integrating a once-isolated genre into the mainstream, and the official source material for that particular story may as well have its moment.

Until the emergence of "Top 40"–style format radio in the 1950s, "country radio" took...

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