Radio, promoter each blames other for cut in Chicks tour
[T]he Dixie Chicks’ Houston concert date was canceled. The promoter blames the radio stations. Initial reports cited slow ticket sales. But tickets for the Toyota Center show never went on sale. The country radio stations credit their listeners with the cancellation and blame the Chicks for a bad attitude.
Let’s face facts, shall we? Hate, ignorance, and reaction sells…and what sells better in Texas than hatred of Liberals who aren’t afraid to speak their mind? Back in 2003, Natalie Maines made disparaging comments about Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader during a concert in London. Maines’ outburst, while perhaps not the smartest thing she could have done, was simply one person voicing her dissent. It’s not as she was advocating violent insurrection. Oh, but there’s a war on, and if you question Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, well, then the terrorists will win. If you’re not with us, then you must be with the terrorists….
Country radio programming directors, always looking for an edge in a hypercompetitive marketplace, went after the Dixie Chicks as if they were pit bulls attacking a man wearing a pork chop suit. Before anyone really knew what was happening, anger, retribution, and foaming at the mouth had replaced reflection and sober thinking. Country radio ran with the hatred, recognizing a ratings bonanza when they saw one. They took an innocent expression of one person’s opinion and created an industry out of it. Can you blame the Dixie Chicks for being somewhat bitter about what was done to them? In their collective effort to chase ratings, country radio turned themselves over wholesale to the Republican Noise Machine, painting the Chicks as unpatriotic America-haters who, since they didn’t support Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader, obviously supported the terrorists.
There have been fewer larger victories for ignorance, propaganda and hatred in this country’s history. Those involved in country radio should be ashamed of what they created out of whole cloth. Instead, they’re painting themselves as merely responding to the demands of the marketplace. Never mind that it was they who wrapped an innocent statement in lies, hatred, and propaganda, and then used it to their advantage.
Hypocrisy never sleeps….
Louis Messina, president of the Messina Group, the Houston-based concert promoter that booked the Dixie Chicks’ Accidents and Accusations Tour says Houston’s country radio stations refused advertising dollars to promote the show.
Radio is still upset with the band’s loose-lipped members — singer Natalie Maines, fiddler Martie Maguire and banjoist Emily Robison — who publicly requested a divorce from the country format earlier this year.
The trouble started in London in 2003 when Maines made critical remarks about President Bush during a show.
The group’s music was banned from several mainstream country playlists, including local country stations KILT (100.3 FM) and KKBQ (92.9 FM). And the shoulder got colder this summer.
“Radio has chosen not only to not promote (the Dixie Chicks); they wouldn’t even accept our advertising money,” Messina says.
John Brejot, general sales manager at local country station KILT, confirmed that the station refused advertising for the show. KILT’s position was that it didn’t advertise bands that weren’t on its playlist.
And why weren’t the Dixie Chicks on KILT’s playlist? Because KILT helped to fan the flames of outrage, which serves the ends of their very Conservative owners and management. KILT then conducted a “poll” to determine what their listeners “thought”. Basically, they created the desired results through their pandering and demagoguery, and then used the result of their “poll” to justify their parent company’s own far-Right stance. In the end, it was simple partisanship designed to fit what the corporate office no doubt wanted.
WHAT Liberal Media??
Caroline Devine, the general manager at KKBQ, says that the Houston date was taken off the books before the station was approached about advertising it. Future advertising offers would be “addressed by request,” although she says the station still doesn’t play the Dixie Chicks.
Jeff Garrison, program director for KILT, blames the band for alienating fans. He says his listeners voted the group off the air.
The Dixie Chicks didn’t alienate their fans. What Natalie Maines did was make an honest, heartfelt statement (this IS still a free country, right??). If anything, she was guilty of being rather impolitic. Country radio, hardly a bastion of rampant Liberal thinking to begin with, used Maines’ words to whip up reactionary sentiment against the Dixie Chicks. Despite all protestations to the contrary, country radio created a controversy where none should have existed. By fanning the flames of controversy and reaction by blowing Maines’ comment out of all proportion, country radio programming directors got exactly the result they wanted- rabid listeners whipped into a frenzy of righteous indignation. This is a programming director’s wet dream, and it’s the sort of thing that drives ratings up.
Refusal to play the group is “not a station or (parent company) policy,” says Garrison. “It’s a direct dictum from the listeners.”
What a @!#$%^& hypocrite….
