First Listen
Clear Channel's National CHR

AS RADIO PROGRAMMING BECOMES INCREASINGLY NATIONAL in nature, I've said before that I have no truck with the concept of a national CHR station. How could anybody who grew up with WLS Chicago or CKLW Detroit not recognize the potential appeal of something that was, to paraphrase ZZ Top, both bad and nationwide? I like the concept of national CHR, but as a supplement to, not a replacement for, hundreds of unique local Top 40 stations.

That brings us to Clear Channel's Hit Nation. It's not Clear Channel's first nationally available CHR format. That has existed both in Sirius XM's "Kiss 21" channel and on the former Clear Channel Format Lab site. But Hit Nation, which you'll find by going to the recently revamped iHeart Radio portal or mobile app, is different because it is A) positioned as a national hit music channel and B) essentially the full-time feed of Clear Channel's "Premium Choice" CHR programming.

It was just over a month ago that Clear Channel rolled Premium Choice on to five of its medium-market CHR stations, resulting in those stations losing their chart reporter status. Hit Nation runs the syndicated Elvis Duran show in the morning. But when I've heard it in the afternoons, it runs the same music and breaks from WHTZ (Z100)'s J.J. Kincaid and KIIS L.A.'s JoJo that you can hear on WLKT (the Cat) Lexington, Ky., for instance.

There is definitely something different about hearing Premium Choice CHR packaged as a national format. Some local stations integrate Premium Choice better than others. On the national feed, there is less (but not none) of syndicated radio's "insert calls here" clunkiness. And there are stagers that position Hit Nation as the Top 40 station of iHeart Radio, giving it a little more bigness. On a national platform, there is no need for mixed emotions about Lexington or Dayton, Ohio, not having their own CHR formats. And there is never anything wrong with hearing J.J. Kincaid, whether it's on Z100, WLKT or here.

That said, Hit Nation's "all the hits" positioning and production has the familiar feel of many Clear Channel CHRs. There is still considerable untapped potential for the station that can be national without having to double as local radio as well — the station that can play this hour's No. 1 song for the entire country for example. (This hour's No. 1 song is more of a CBS and Radio-One trademark than Clear Channel, but you get the point.) The station that can break additional songs nationally. But that station will most likely come to exist because Hit Nation becomes enough of an entity that Clear Channel or one of its competitors is inspired to devote further resources to creating a true national CHR superstation.

K-Earth 101 Unveils Its New Oldies

WHEN WCBS RETURNED to the Oldies/Greatest Hits format two years ago, it showed up with a strong complement of '80s music in a format that had barely figured out what to do with the '70s. CBS-FM's initial success made other programmers feel like they had permission to delve into the '80s as well. Last week, I punched in CBS-FM and there was Tommy Tutone's "867-5309/Jenny." Yes, it's good time rock & roll. Yes, that song had a retro feel, even in 1982. But it's also a song that represents '80s ephemera to some. If you don't love the MTV-era '80s, only "Mickey" is more of a shot across the bow.

Some Greatest Hits stations play the '80s, but don't make a big deal about it. Some are happy to complete the sentence "the greatest hits of the '60s, '70s and...." Now, KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles has gone even further with its first "Today's Oldies Weekend," spotlighting songs from the early '80s (usually 1980-85) that were not described as such, but positioned as "the latest additions to our library." (PD Jhani Kaye also has a similar stager for those songs during the week.)

K-Earth's choices were often AC flavored (John Waite, "Missing You," for instance). They felt like the first steps that many Greatest Hits outlets take into the '80s — often songs connected to the format either by artist (Neil Diamond's "Heartlight") or their retro feel (Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl"). The closest it got to "Mickey" was Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me." And the pre-Beatles songs K-Earth plays — songs with multi-generational exposure like "Tequila" and the Isley Brothers' "Shout" - were still in evidence as well.

It's also worth noting that many of the songs spotlighted ("Let's Groove," "Billie Jean," "Lady [You Bring Me Up]") were the Jammin' Oldies titles that became the center lane of rival KMVN (Movin' 93.9) before its switch to Spanish a few months ago. If Movin' never entirely took hold, its departure still put a share or two of listening back into circulation. And since the last thing a 35-44-year-old gives the Oldies station credit for is the '80s, maybe you have to make this kind of statement to get their attention, rather than just letting "Every Breath You Take" or "Jack And Diane" just show up.

Regardless of whether a longtime K-Earth listener is willing to accept songs from the '80s as Oldies, there's increasing evidence that younger listeners are starting to view them that way. It's not so unusual now to see even "Jack and Diane" finally starting to lose its honorary recurrent status among the listeners under 45 who didn't grow up with it. On the AC side, some '70s and '80s staple artists (Elton John and Rod Stewart in particular) are increasingly lost on younger listeners.

Here's K-Earth's "Today's Oldies Weekend" as heard Saturday morning; songs that were staged as "Today's Oldies" are asterisked

Elton John, "Daniel"
Kool & the Gang, "Fresh"*
Turtles, "Happy Together"
Tierra, "Together"*
Doobie Brothers, "Black Water"
Rascals, "How Can I Be Sure"
Champs, "Tequila" (staged as a K-Earth Flashback)
Patrice Rushen, "Forget Me Nots"*
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Have You Ever Seen The Rain"
Mitch Ryder, "Devil With A Blue Dress On"
Billy Joel, "Uptown Girl"*
Louis Armstrong, "What A Wonderful World"
Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit In The Sky"
Kenny Loggins, "Footloose"

Speaking of Elton, Billy Joel, James Taylor and the other '70s singer/songwriters who populate Classic Hits and AC these days, Bill Withers was the equal of any of them. Standards like "Lean On Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine" are among the few early '70s R&B songs that you can play on a Triple-A or Classic Hits station, as they should be. And there are another half-dozen songs, including "Who Is He And What Is He To You," "Harlem," and "Grandma's Hands" that are long lost from even R&B Oldies radio but no less brilliant for it. Withers has been out of the spotlight for nearly 25 years, but on Sunday, the Washington Post used his appearance in two upcoming documentaries as an opportunity to catch up with him. It's the second great profile of a '70s R&B artist in the Post in recent weeks.

ROSS ON RECORDS
The "Don't You Want Me" Of Teen Punk

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, punk/pop acts have been an interesting case study for both Rock and Top 40 radio. Rock radio likes to play them early, then hand them off to Top 40. With a band like All-American Rejects, Alternative might be willing to acknowledge a song of the magnitude of "Gives You Hell" (No. 1 at Top 40, No. 21 at Alternative). But a newer band like Boys Like Girls or White Tie Affair can expect the bulk of its activity at Top 40, which, in turn, is way more likely to play them than, say, Silversun Pickups or Airborne Toxic Event or other acts that have bigger Alternative chart hits.

Most “teen punk" acts would trace their music back to the Ramones or Green Day. But you can really think of them as today's version of late '70s/early '80s "corporate rock," the melodic rock of Styx, Journey, and REO Speedwagon that women liked and guys eventually chafed at. And if this analogy doesn’t immediately resonate, listen to the last minute of Journey’s "Any Way You Want It" then listen to genre pioneers Blink-182 (soon to reform, with their Rock radio cred mostly intact) from a decade ago with the big finish of "What's My Age Again?"

But these days, pop/punk is starting to morph. For one thing, the sound that Blink began is now heard even among the pure teen acts that don't get played beyond Radio Disney. And 3Oh!3's "Don't Trust Me" - top 3 this week at Top 40 after hitting only No. 38 at Alternative — moves the genre forward by at least a couple of years, trading power guitar chords for galloping keyboards. And Cobra Starship's "Good Girls Go Bad" moves the genre even further in that direction; it's an almost perfect segue into Sean Kingston's "Fire Burning."

So think of "Don't Trust Me" as the "Don't You Want Me" of its genre — the song that officially sealed punk's early '80s evolution to the more keyboard-driven, R&B/disco influenced new wave and helped force "Tainted Love," "Hungry Like The Wolf" (which "Don't Trust Me" also resembles) and others through the floodgates in the U.S. Think of it also as part of the continued morphing of Pop, Rock, and R&B into that "One Nation Under A Groove" that can take in both Sean Kingston and Cobra Starship.

Please Look At Austin In The Springtime

THE CONVERGENCE OF POP, ROCK, AND R&B has been, most would acknowledge, a challenge for Urban and Rhythmic Top 40 stations. So it's worth calling your attention to the recent success of Emmis' KDHT (Hot 93.3) Austin, Texas. KDHT, positioned as "No. 1 for Non-Stop Hip-Hop" signed on in 2003 as a harder-edged rival to the then KQBT (104.3 the Beat). KQBT has had a convoluted history, but suffice it to say that its successor, KXBT, went to a Spanish CHR format last year. And in the first spring Arbitrend, KDHT was No. 3 12-plus in the market with a 5.6, up from a 3.2 last summer. Mainstream Top 40 KHFI was, by comparison, at a 4.6. And Hot 93.3's version of the format includes a lot of Texas and Southern Hip-Hop and doesn't include the pure pop that some Rhythmic and even Urban stations have felt the need to play lately. While the opportunity in every market is going to be different, Austin is further evidence that Urban and Rhythmic stations may not have a product problem as much as a fragmentation issue: it's hard to win with anything when 2-3 other stations in the market are pounding your hit songs as well. Meanwhile, if you're looking for a new place to find ratings info following the demise of R&R, click here.

The New Ross On Radio

WITH SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT TODAY, I've saved the update on Ross On Radio itself for the closing credits. The column that started at Billboard's Airplay Monitor, then moved to the Website of Edison Research nearly six years ago, expands this week to a twice-weekly newsletter through Radio-Info.com. Look for it on Tuesday and Thursdays. It was a chance for me to write more often about radio — a topic about which I've lost none of my enthusiasm despite its travails of recent years. It also lets me expand my horizons to write a little more critically about music.

This newsletter is the result of a unique arrangement. I'm now Executive Editor of music and programming for Radio-Info.com. And I'm still VP of music and programming for Edison Research. At a time when great jobs are scarce, I'm extremely lucky to be able to do two of the things I love. You can still find the last six years of Ross On Radio columns on the Edison website. And I'll still be making some contributions to Edison's Infinite Dial blog. But this will be your twice-weekly look at major trends in programming, music, and radio's expansion to new platforms. If you received this e-mail as a forward from a friend (instead of from me directly), please sign up here. (Be sure to forward this to a friend as well.) And this column will be a dialogue, not a monologue, because you can reach out to me here.

Have a great week. See you on Thursday.