Radio Genres

I’m a contemporary music illiterate.  There I said it.

And I’m not unhappy about that –   I don’t have the skills or interest to properly classify music stations, but then again I’m not sure that is possible.  There are as many opinions about music genres as there are radio consultants selling their patented playlists to reach the target demos.

With that out of the way, I’m considering a fairly bold change to the directory, but I’m not sure I want to cross this line – there may be one or two people who read this “in the radio biz” who could assure me that it’s a good idea or a really bad idea.

The idea that I’m considering is removing “language” from the category of stations.   There is a moderately close symmetry between English language stations and Spanish language stations (and other languages to a lesser degree).   There is ESPN and ESPN Deportes….   There is English language Contemporary Hits and Spanish CHR…. there are some stations that mix hip hop, rap and Latino…. there is Spanish Religious and English Religious Political talk is available in a number of languages –  There is probably not an English language equivalent to   Regional Mexican Music, although in the border areas there is a lot of overlap with Country/Western…  Today I don’t have a station category called “Black News/Talk”, but it would be easy to segregate those stations, but I think that’s wrong on a pretty fundamental level.

So what I’m thinking is to totally pull race, ethnicity, and language out of station and show classification – and replace it with the ability to filter by those things if  YOU choose.    So “News/Talk” stations would include both English and Spanish language stations on one page  – if you wanted to only see English (or Black or Spanish) talk stations, you would choose that from a list box.    Gospel music is generally split by people who enjoy it between “Southern [white] Gospel] and “Black Gospel”, since apparently God probably has segregated parts of Heaven for Blacks and Whites.

Maybe do the same with political persuasion – put all political talk programs on a single page by default, and allow you to then filter that list based on Conservative, Progressive, Libertarian, or Crazy….

So what do you think of my idea?