After months of unpaid press agentry for Adele's "Rolling In The Deep," I had planned to give that song a rest for a while, particularly since it’s No. 1 this week. Then this e-mail arrived from Cleveland-based Envision Radio Networks director of affiliate relations Ethan Weiss:

“I loved ‘Rolling in the Deep’ when I had to listen hard to hear it. Several months ago, I had to stream WFUV New York to hear Darren DeVivo play it, because he was the only one I could find doing it.

“I know it’s part of the reality: song succeeds, gets popular, covered on ‘Glee,’ etc., but it seems misplaced to be meriting hourly play on Top 40. I now turn it off which hurts me!

“I think it already jumped the shark for ‘song of the summer,’ and sadly I blame CHR for making it less special for me. Am I too harsh?” he asks.

Weiss’ question has manifested itself for many and in many ways over the years, whether it’s the Alternative PDs who have spent 30 years trying to decide which crossover artists to hold on to (a discussion they’ve had both about INXS in 1988 and teen punk acts in 2008) or Country PDs, whose enthusiasm for Shania Twain went dormant for a few years, but seems to have been revived by her recent PR initiative.

A few years ago, there was a study introduced during the performance royalty debate alleging that massive airplay actually diminished record sales. And over the years, there have certainly been retroactive hits from the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” to Praz Michel’s “Geto Superstar” (or anything by Bob Marley) where not having been saturated on the radio seems to be part of the enduring appeal.

(DON’T FEAR) THE CROSSOVER

So can the sort of multi-format saturation airplay that Adele has picked up in recent weeks diminish a song? There are certainly lots of such records that have made it through the years with their cool unscathed, whether it’s “Satisfaction” or Green Day’s “Holiday.” It’s almost forgotten now by Classic Rock PDs that Top 40 once pounded “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” or “D’yer Maker” or “Walk This Way,” songs that many pop-leaning Oldies/Greatest Hits stations have relinquished custody of anyway.

But the alchemy of pop airplay seems to affect every record and artist differently. Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow have both, undeservedly, had their rock credibility long obscured by their journey from Alternative to Modern AC and Top 40 to, now, Mainstream AC. On the other hand, Tracy Chapman seems no less esoteric for having contributed two lasting songs to Soft AC over the years. And availability on the radio certainly seems to have helped Adele’s sales, not hurt them.

In the U.K., Eddy Grant was an artist with a half-dozen hits that spanned a 20-year-career with a group (the Equals) and as a solo act. “Electric Avenue” was a remarkable story—a song about British riots that was not only too big to deny as an international hit single, but even elbowed its way (along with Prince and Michael Jackson) onto rock radio at the time. “Electric Avenue” remains on the radio in the U.S., thanks to ’80s-based Adult Hits formats, but it is somehow clumped in PD estimation with “Putting On The Ritz” by Taco and its ilk.

HERE WE ARE AGAIN, ENTERTAIN US

CHR isn’t the only format that can wear the excitement off a record. Even “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had initial radio scarcity on its side. Most markets still didn’t have a significant Alternative station in 1991. Top 40 gave it only token airplay. The library-based Mainstream Rock stations of the era struggled with Nirvana too. But a decade of gold-based Alternative radio has led to high-burn and lessened enthusiasm for the song.

Pop/rock records that cross to CHR often have to deal with being the only representation of pop and rock on a rhythmic-leaning format for months at a time, or longer. Both the Spin Doctors and the Killers went from “too good for radio” to “oh, them again” in the course of about 18 months, partially for that reason. But it didn’t help that they had problems delivering a follow-up album that united as many diverse audiences as the first.

Then there’s the complicating factor of what happens when something which isn’t traditional guitar rock starts with the rock audience. In the mid-’90s, when CHR was rarely able to break a record by itself, labels often went to Alternative, which gave early airplay to everything from Ace of Base to Hanson to Hootie & the Blowfish. Again, disappointing follow-ups didn’t help. But the hipster retribution kept even Hootie out of even AC libraries for about a decade.

Now that Top 40 more easily breaks records and it’s Alternative that has a problem setting the agenda, there’s a different dynamic. With fewer Alternative stations, the PDs who aren’t bound to traditional guitar rock can drive a record further up the Modern Rock charts, often in conjunction with Triple-A. Between those two charts, there are a dozen potential hits every year—more pop than rock in timbre—that stay instead in the Hit List Protection Program. Adele, with the support of a major, was eventually undeniable at CHR, although some PDs tried. Fitz & the Tantrums’ “MoneyGrabber” was able to get as far as Hot AC. MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” never worked to CHR, was an international pop hit but is probably unfamiliar to most CHR PDs.

In other words, it frequently happens that not-so-esoteric records somehow become esoterica, just because of the vagaries of record promotion. When Top 40 really does play the biggest and best of everything, they shouldn’t sound out of place at all. MGMT, based on their follow-up album, which proved too “out there” for even their Alternative radio base, was clearly unwilling to trade their hipster cred for a pop hit just yet. But if it were my choice to make for them, it would have been much more exciting to have “Electric Feel” on pop radio here.

STILL ROLLING DEEP

As for Adele, I still leave “Rolling In The Deep” on the radio when it comes on, although I admit to being a little less pumped-up for it now that I’m used to hearing it regularly on Top 40. There is always that extra surge of excitement when an artist who has been around for an album or two (or more) comes forth for the first time with something that sounds like a hit record is supposed to sound like. Those hits rarely explode out-of-the-box at Top 40, but those songs are always the most phenomenal and most gratifying hit records out there when they do gain momentum. And no artist gets to have two of those.

No matter how much multi-format ubiquity “Rolling In The Deep” attains in the next few weeks, Adele has enough likely pop hits on the “21” album that it doesn’t really matter if Triple-A continues to view her as one of their own. That said, at this writing Triple-A continues to support her, and the track that they’re playing, “Rumor Has It,” is even more pop in its feel than “Rolling In The Deep.” The challenge in satisfying both new and old fans will come when she starts to write and record “23,” at which point the best strategy will probably be to focus on neither constituency.

COMMENTS

From Buzz Brindle: "For those of us who don't work in radio or the music industry on a daily basis, we're rarely exposed to a song more than a few times per week. When I was programming WGNA [Albany, N.Y.], my promotion director had previously been a jock but had been off-air for several years. The radio station was usually playing in the background in his office during most weekdays. I can recall conversations during which the regular on-air talent would be complaining about how glad they were that a song which had spent weeks in power was finally moving back to recurrent and his reaction would be that he thought it was a brand new song or that he'd never heard the song.

"My own radio listening tends to be sporadic in nature. I wake up listening to news radio. While driving my teenage daughter to school in the morning, we button push the CHR stations. After I drop her off, I'll either switch back to news, punch up a different music format (Rock, Hot AC, AC, Classic Hits, Variety) or listen to an audiobook CD. In the office, if the radio's on at all, I'll listen to music however I find myself more frequently turning off the radio and listening to recorded informational Webinar audio on my computer while I continue to work.

"Based on my experience as a 'civilian' listener, I don't have the sense that mega-airplay diminishes a hit song's value or appeal.

"PS- I don't recall ever hearing Adele's 'Rolling In The Deep' on the radio even though it's received approximately 1,000 spins in this market since January."

From Steve Burgess, TheMediaDash.com: "The song that comes to mind is Mungo Jerry's 'In the Summertime.' And, the truth is, for that song, at the right time, in the right place, nope! So, it's a function of the song itself....not even so much the artist."

From Scott Gilbert, The Radio Mall: Does mega-airplay make songs less special? Oh hell, yes! Now, every time I hear the song 'Layla,' I can't get to the dial quickly enough and I can't even listen to Lez Zep anymore.

From Lou Pickney, Nashville: "Great column as usual, Sean. It's interesting that 'Electric Feel' by MGMT hasn't had more of a breakthrough; it's a strong track. Part of the problem with some alternative stations morphing into an 'Everything That Rocks' type format is that songs like that one don't necessarily fit the ETR format like, say, a song from Avenged Sevenfold would. As for CHR play, it might be slightly too low-tempo for programmers, though I'd be inclined to give it spins if I was programming a CHR, at least dayparted at night if nothing else.

From Paul Cramer: "I remember vividly the day I was working at an Alternative station in Pittsburgh when Depeche Mode's 'Ultra' was released and the station refused to add it, only to use it as a giveaway. I knew that day that Alternative radio as I knew it was finished. The larger question of whether the originating format continues the support seems to have already been answered as artist after artist disappears from the originating format. Is there any bigger example than U2? And what station of any format is [consistently] playing any new material from them, while they still manage to nab the title of biggest rock band in the world? As a programmer, I have always stood by my artists no matter how big they become. When does an Alternative artist stop being Alternative? When they are accepted by the mainstream? I personally don't believe that artistry should be ignored due to popularity or unpopularity."

From Tim Anstaett, Producer/Host "Yesterday's Top Secrets," WCRS Columbus, Ohio: "As part of my show's introduction, I describe some of its music as being 'Oldies that aren't old, because they haven't been played to death on all the other stations.' During the course of the 256 episodes to date, listeners have heard over 3,500 different songs. I consider this to be the primary reason for the show's success, as when I ask others what their biggest complaint is about Rock radio today, they invariably respond that they are sick and tired of hearing the same few tunes being played over and over and over again."

From Java Joel, nights, WAKS Cleveland: "For years, people have been complaining that there isn't enough quality music on CHR. Then a song of relative substance like Adele's comes along and people complain that radio plays it too much. Ugh. We can't win! I'm guessing these are the same revisionists that love to romanticize radio's past."