In the early ‘00s, Mainstream Top 40 was a format dominated by one group and one way of programming. While there certainly may have been no intent to standardize the “fast-on-rhythm, slow-on-rock” paradigm of Clear Channel stations like WKFS (Kiss 107) Cincinnati across the format, it was an inevitability when Clear Channel had roughly 40% of the reporting panel, most of the CHRs in Top 10 markets, and more aggressive rotations that couldn’t help but influence the charts. While a few smaller-market stations that bordered on Hot AC remained part of the chart panel, only Sirius Hits 1 took a truly different, yet still aggressive, approach to the format.

Ultimately, it was another Clear Channel station that helped foster a “second way to do Top 40.” WHTZ (Z100) started adding in more mainstream pop product when that still meant “Bright Lights” by Matchbox Twenty. Shortly afterwards, Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” came along, followed by the “American Idol”-ization of Top 40, the success of pop product at the iTunes Music Store, the return of the mother/daughter coalition, and a perceived PPM boost for Top 40 (perhaps as much a coincidence of timing with all of the above as anything else).

The upshot is that the groups that had not engaged Clear Channel for control of Top 40 in a given market when there were fewer available shares are now more willing to do so. Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen separate silos raised by CBS (actually more rhythmic than Clear Channel, but often choosing different records) and Cumulus (still happy to play Rob Thomas at Mainstream Top 40 in some places and more recurrent driven). And, to the extent that one can generalize about so many stations, many Clear Channel Top 40s are still rhythmic in their overall feel—but it’s the rhythmic product with the rounded edges that dominates the format overall these days. It’s not Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money” in middays.

In other words, there is no longer only one way to do Mainstream CHR. That ought to be good news for the labels. And yet CHR record people describe the most frustrating format landscape in years—songs take longer to break and struggle through a mid-chart doldrums at stations that are more conservative than ever. As noted in Tuesday’s ROR, it’s not unlike the Country chart landscape of the last decade where a song can take 40 weeks to run its course, if it’s not one of the few superstar automatics.
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So how is it that a greater diversity of decision makers didn’t turn out to be a better thing for the format—at least from the label standpoint?

The most obvious answer is that we now have a wider variety of conservative decision makers. Clear Channel stations are, by many accounts, tighter these days. Cumulus has long been cheerfully recurrent-driven, something that label reps grapple with more as the chain’s CHR building boom continues.

It’s interesting that Cumulus and its perceived willingness to add a song across multiple stations – or hold out across the group—seems to rankle with labels in a way that Clear Channel in the early ‘00s did not. You certainly were not going to bring a song home without the support of the rhythmic-leaning Clear Channel outlets in that era, but there were multiple ways in. And if you kept your pop or rock record alive long enough to pick up Z100, WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston or KHKS (Kiss 106.1) Dallas, then you could count on spreading across the chain within a week or two: not because there were chain adds, but because these were influential stations.

And the number of other ways that a record might start has been reduced as well. Top 40 has been manufacturing its own R&B- and Alternative-flavored hits for a decade now, but those PDs who might have been inclined to actually look to another format to find a crossover are having a harder time. Alternative’s ranks have been thinned. Urban no longer provides a steady stream of songs that sell even in advance of pop airplay.

In the last five years, the PD who is both willing and influential enough to start a record that wasn’t on the menu of product being worked by the major labels has become a rarity. Video channels are even less in the music business than they were a decade ago. TV does create and bolster stories, but it can do so for only a few songs a year. The top downloads at the iTunes Music Store – a major indicator of a sea-change three years ago – now look increasingly like what Top 40 is already playing, despite an occasional Owl City or, this week, the CMA Awards-driven Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.”

And if the early ‘00s were rough on any label that didn’t have rhythmic-leaning product at Top 40 in a given week, there was still some comfort in consensus and knowing what to expect. Having a Rhythmic record that CBS PDs like and Clear Channel PDs don’t, or vice-versa, is a new and discomfiting twist. Labels now find themselves looking at a chart creature with three heads (CHR-berus?), but with fewer places to start a song, not a long tail.

The CHR-berus joke, by the way, is stolen from my Radio-Info colleague Tom Taylor. And your thoughts on the CHR landscape are encouraged.
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Fresh Listen
Washington, D.C.’s Hot 99.5

Washington, D.C., was one of those markets where Mainstream Top 40 fought for legitimacy for many years. So there’s some satisfaction in the 6.4 6-plus share that Clear Channel’s WIHT (Hot 99.5) posted in the October PPM. The station was as high as 6.6 in a pre-currency month. Either way, it’s the best number for the format in D.C. since winter ’85 when WRQX (Q107) had a 7.3 share. And Hot 99.5’s success probably had something to do with the decision to finally bring Mainstream Top 40 back to Baltimore at recently launched sister WZFT (Z104.3).

Hot 99.5 has a high-profile morning show in Kane. But it also has high-profile personality through the day in APD/p.m. driver Toby Knapp and middayer Sarah, who, as I write this, is doing a bit on why older men are the best partners. Musically, the station has evolved from its almost-Urban stance of its early ‘00s days to this very mainstream, heavily recurrent stretch from 10 a.m. yesterday morning.

Here’s Hot 99.5 at 10 a.m. yesterday morning:

• Cobra Starship, “Good Girls Go Bad”
• Owl City, “Fireflies”
• Lady Gaga, “Paparazzi”
• Miley Cyrus, “Party In The U.S.A.”
• Jay-Z, “Empire State of Mind”
• Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me”
• Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”
• Shakira, “She Wolf”
• Paula DeAnda, “Walk Away”
• Lady Gaga, “Lovegame”
• Kanye West, “Heartless”
• Jay Sean, “Down”
• Britney Spears, “3”

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From the Boards
When Good Songs Go Fast

Whenever CHR wars do erupt, you can generally count on the format’s longtime tactic of speeding up songs to surface as well. This week on the Radio-Info.com message boards, check out a thread about good-songs-gone-faster. As one reader writes about his local CHR: “It’s not so bad to speed up the tempo, but they speed up the pitch, too, and make the singer sound like a chipmunk or a meth head.”
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Have a great weekend. More Ross On Radio comes your way next Tuesday.

Sean Ross is Executive Editor of Music and Programming for Radio-Info.com. He is also a consultant to the radio and music industries, and VP of music and programming for Edison Research. He can be reached at 973.763.1306.