August 25 will long be remembered as the day that Dolly Parton died. Parton was not only an iconic artist, but also an actress, business leader, media mogul, and philanthropist. She created a major amusement park. You would be hard-pressed to find someone with a bad word about Miss Parton, or someone who met her and wasn’t impressed.
Dolly Parton was very special. She not only attracted an audience to the Country music format, but she also introduced it well beyond radio with her many skills as a performer, writer, lyricist, and ability to make news with her mere presence. She’s the one artist who is in both The Country Music Hall of Fame and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Repeating: Dolly Parton was special.
Having had time to reflect on Dolly’s passing, it’s clear to me that her death is generating multiple emotions of loss and grief. It also exposes a major weakness of today’s radio.
Miss Parton’s passing was announced just before 2pm ET. That sent many stations’ content creators into scramble mode to get talent to a studio (whether it was from home or an actual studio) to log into music scheduling systems to recreate a music playlist, to start work on producing special imaging, to update websites, to send push notifications, and to post on social media.
Unfortunately, it didn’t send all radio stations, or the ones you expect, like Country and News, into that level of action and attention to detail. I camped out at my smart speaker and asked for Country station after Country station to hear what they were doing on-air. To say I was disappointed by what I didn’t hear would be an understatement. It was hours after the death announcement before I heard some stations even mention it.
It took several major market radio stations almost three hours before they promoted special audio tributes and began playing 100% Dolly Parton music as a way to honor the icon.
I am sure that there are exceptions to my belief that these perceived weaknesses are many. My perception is surely clouded by the failed expectations I experienced, and the notes received from talent telling me they’re embarrassed by how their station missed the moment, or the text from one Market Manager chiding a competitor in his market (a Country station) for not only not playing anything from Dolly, but also for not even mentioning her passing. Then there’s the major broadcast company whose websites groupwide continued to display the headline “Dolly Parton Shares Health Updates as She Continues Recovery” for more than a day after her passing.
Again, it wasn’t all bad. My spirit improved as I checked on my radio friends in California, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama. They were all over it. While checking well-known country stations, I asked my smart speaker to play WYCD in Detroit. That station was All Dolly and All Tribute to The Queen of Country Music. Among those I checked, they were the first and quickest to react to Dolly’s death.
I called with a compliment to Tim Roberts, WYCD Brand Manager and VP/Country at Audacy. He was in his car on the way to a local TV station to be interviewed about Dolly Parton. His reply to me: “That’s what the audience expects from us.”
Radio, and especially Country Radio, owns Dolly Parton. Some in the format missed the moment.
The first 15 minutes of Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News was devoted to Dolly Parton. Fox News had a parade of country stars weighing in on Parton’s impact. CNN featured video clips of Dolly and presented her legacy while identifying her as an American gift. Entertainment Tonight was focused only on Dolly Parton. Dolly’s impact is way beyond music. President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for a week.
Some country stations acted quickly. Others didn’t. What’s most disappointing is that some of those who failed to act quickly were handcuffed by a lack of staff, unmanned studios, a lack of remote equipment, absent cloud-based technology, and programming leadership operating as a skeleton crew. I’m sure in some cases, the multitasking of programmers across multiple formats and many markets served as a time bandit to prevent being prepared for situations of such magnitude.
It appears that in some situations, there was no one to make a decision to go 100% Dolly. When Michael Jackson died, WCBS in NY went 100% Michael. There was a spike in ratings. Why wouldn’t every country station scramble to immediately play a lot of Dolly’s music if not going 100% Dolly?
Repeating: some did go All-Dolly quickly. They weren’t necessarily the stations one would expect to lead the way. Being two and three hours late after the death of a cornerstone of a format should be unacceptable.
Does all this mean that in the time of a weather crisis, natural disaster, act of terrorism, or war, your station will be unable to react? Will you be ready to react to a situation and serve your community? Dolly’s death raises that greater question in my mind, and it should in yours. The technology exists today that enables stations to update voice tracks, allow talent to work from home (local or faraway), produce new imaging, reschedule music logs, add music tracks into the operating system, and deliver content through the cloud. Websites can be updated from anywhere at any time. Same for apps and social media.
The absence of physical beings in a brick-and-mortar building isn’t optimal, but it need not be the reason for the weaknesses of today’s media to be a hindrance to your performance. Not being prepared, little communication about having a system or plan in place, and the lack of a chain of command are what I point to as the cause of such failure.
We should be better than this. We have to be better than this. And I’d like to believe that we can be better than this.
