Any guesses yet on what was missing from KC’s June radio rankings?
Here’s a hint: Florida Georgia Line.
That’s right, country music radio. Because all three of the Cowtown’s vaunted country music stations whiffed at making it into KC’s Top 10, settling for second tier status.
Q104 FM came landed in the 11th slot with a 4.3 share and a cume of 332,900 listers; followed by KFKF FM with a 3.9 share and cume of 295,700 and WDAF FM (The Wolf) with a 3.8 share and cume of 307,300.
Put simply, that’s quite a fall for a trio of radio stations that used to vie for the top honors… for decades. Which is something of a head scratcher since we, uh, do live in the Midwest.
Glad to see Q up at top of the three stations with a Country sound. Hearne I agree this town loves that sound we see it in attendance at their concerts. Huge, Arrowhead. Yet it seems the three kinda split up the market. I agree it would seem KC would be huge listeners to these stations. Radio as know is down that’s part of it of course, but yeah the white audience is into these artists and next still rock like 98.9 and 101 plus oldies more rock.
this should read “Pop Country” radio. Cause that’s what it is. Today’s country “artists” have begged, borrowed, and outright stolen from pop, rock/heavy metal, music. If you want to listen to real country music, put on some Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson.
agreed with you guy…swift/blake (who’s free tonight at whiskey tangos)
and rest of country stars now playing pop country. Still good but though
nothing Waylon/willie and the boys!
an aberration…
country still rules in kc.
the dj’s are horrible after morning drive.
I love country music and its presentation has changed since mikeleft.
the only ones to be left thru end of year will be sports talk and news
talk. the only ones to survive will be those genres. People are so
tied into these elections.
People never argue or fight over which station isbest. This election will b
the main topic til after they are over…then people gt back to their real
lives.
TV too. Cable is killing networks with royals. Short period but networks have
not given us theentertainment we want. Rabbit ears are not the answer.
All will calm down after the election but the millenials will never go back to
networks. They’ve got their Netflix.sling etc.
World is changing.
And look for huge changes at fox news. Hannity and oreally are partners
with ailes inghe sex harassment problems at fox. What man wouldn’t want
to do megan/Carlson/ etc. It was all smoke and mirrors.
The world is changing….maybe too fast for 40 plus crowd. Tired/old/screaming/
news is going sideways.
Election is affecting all ratings.
Lets look what happen s after Hillary wins.
i was at a perkins restaurant in gladstone today (and that’s a whole other story by itself). before leaving, needed to use the facilities, wherein the music was turned up quite loud. i stood there contemplating as this “sound” penetrated my ears. (don’t get excited harley.) it was something that sounded like new country because the guy sang like they all do now – a mix of garth and alan and the van zant clan – but there was some odd production going on, almost counterpoint, boom-ish… couldn’t even tell what instrument it was, if any.
what i left with, aside from an empty bladder, was that it may have mimicked country, but it wasn’t. it was a production gimmick… something that was diff from a pedal steel or fiddle, that’s all. just a mimick gimmick.
i don’t pine so much for the past – waylon, willie and the boys – but good god can’t they do better than that?
I like to refer to it as the “Mutt Lange Effect”. Yes, the same Mutt Lange that produced the slick sounding, multi-layered, hooks for Def Leppard. Def Leppard was a solid band with good guitar riffs and hooks in their lyrics. Then Mutt Lange was hired to produce the “Pyromania”album, and the rest is music history. How does this related to today’s “pop country”? Mutt eventually married Shania Twain, and began producing her albums. Once Shania’s slick sounding, hooky choruses with hard rock sensibilities hit the airwaves, it was all over. Ever since then it’s been a parade of people trying to copy cat that sound and feel. It’s now sunk to the absolute garbage that’s on the air today.
Country music died a long time ago and it isn’t coming back. What you hear today isn’t true country music no matter who is trying to do it. Another point is, lack of artists, plain and simple there isn’t any really playing today’s so called country. Younger people don’t want the old stuff and older people don’t want the new stuff and there isn’t enough of either to keep it being on life support. Like jazz music, there will always be a nitch for country music, just not going to be huge and make anyone any money doing it on radio.
It’s about the best song playing right now, with time spent listening around an hour a day per station, the majority of consumers are looking for the song they can sing along with in their cars. Pushing buttons looking for the feel good song, whether country (really the new classic rock), hip hop, classic rock, top 40 or CHR the only goal is to find a favorite song. Station loyalty is almost non-exsistant, with the exception of public radio, news or music, and christian radio those listener’s seldom change, they are loyal.
Jason Isbell had a #1 country album with no country radio airplay.
It’s moving back to traditional country and these stations continue to play beach and bro country. Guys like Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson are gaining popularity because it’s more traditional. These things always cycle and country music seems to be moving back to it’s original influences.