FROM THE ROAD: GOING HOME, BUT FIRST...

After the Sugarland show the band and crew packed up and headed home to Nashville. I, on the other hand, stayed overnight with my in-laws and took a flight out in the morning to another city. I met up with a program director for a major radio network and one of our radio promoters for a lunch meeting, a chance to get to know each other and, honestly, give our single Bless the Lord a better shot at getting attention.

(NOTE: A radio promoter is a person hired by the label to bug and shmooze stations into playing songs from the label's artists. Those songs are called "singles.")

I told the network's programmer that I wasn't in town to ask him to play my single - that's the radio promoter's job. I was there to learn. I love to learn about this business and teach others what I discover because it quells cynicism and angst. Knowledge does that.

If a station doesn't play my music my human response it disappointment. If they don't play any music from my label for two years my human response is anger. I'm just immature that way - especially when other artist friends of mine tell me of how their label gives TVs, vacation packages and golf outings to programmers in exchange for radio play. Chaps my hide.

So I can stew and curse and throw an artist tantrum or I can learn why a network like this does what they do and how they do it. I can try to get to the heart of what they want to accomplish, what their, for lack of a less used word, "mission" is.

If I can walk away truly supportive of who they are and what they're out to do I'm less likely to be angry when I'm not part of what they're doing. I can honestly say when I hear my new single has been added to rotation, "Well, that makes. That song doesn't help them meet their goals. It won't get them what they want."

So I asked this programmer to explain what he's doing, how and why and was shocked by his honesty. In a nutshell, and I hope I don't misrepresent by simplifying more than two hours of conversation this way, his primary goal is to increase his audience size and therefore increase advertising revenue. He used the metaphor of a mountain regularly and this increase in ratings and revenue is the peak for his station and, he believes, every station.

He goes about reaching this peak by testing songs on people already listening to his station and those who sometimes listen. The goal then is to find new music that appeals to both old loyal listeners and potential loyal listeners. The station then sounds, not surprisingly, old. That's not to say it's bad. It just plays a great deal of "gold" music - old hits that are familiar to listeners and test well. And then sprinkles in new songs that sound like those old hits. Thing is these "new" songs aren't often all that new.

He proudly told me, for instance, that his station just added SHOULD I TELL THEM, a song of mine that went #1 three years ago, because it tested well for him.

There's more to the conversation you'd find interesting but here's what surprised me the most. After time talking about testing etc I moved beyond business goals and strategy to spiritual matters. I asked him what I want everyone in this business to be asked, regardless of their sector of the industry. Who is your audience? Christians? Non-Christians? Both? And why? What do you dream happens through you for them and in them? What's the spiritual goal of your station?

The answer floored me. I'll share that soon. Until then, what do you think you local Christian station's answers are to those important questions? WHat about your favorite artist or author or label? Have you asked? Maybe you should.

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