As Country Radio Seminar Turns 50, Terrestrial Radio Redefines Its Role

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://www.billboard.com/articles/...minar-crs-50-terrestrial-radio-redefines-role

Radio stations are still a major voice in the genre, but not the only one.
When broadcasters convene in Nashville for the 50th annual Country Radio Seminar (CRS) running Wednesday to Friday this week, they will find their industry in a much different position than it occupied during the first convention in 1970.

At that time, the U.S. boasted roughly 600 full-time country stations. They were mostly locally owned AM signals in smaller markets with the music presented between blocks of news, talk, farm reports and play-by-play sportscasts. Callout research, satellite radio and streaming platforms did not exist, so the country program director and music director were often the genre's lone tastemakers in a given market.

Now 2,000 stations program country full time, with corporate program directors sometimes making decisions for more than 100 stations, most of them FM signals with one or more country rivals in the market.

Here is one of the segments on how radio is changing though.