April 10, 2017, Issue 545
RAC Clark: Inside The ACMs
A conversation with 52nd ACM Awards Executive Producer RAC Clark: Let’s get right to the elephant: Ratings were down again. We had the insanity of the 50th where everything fell into place, and that’s a hard standard to hold to. I don’t know what the new normal is for country music awards shows in the spring, but we’re finding it out. And I really don’t know what else to do. We had great music, great participation from our stars – I’m stumped. Can we do something different with marketing, with production? We had stiff competition – baseball, Walking Dead and WrestleMania – but we always do. At the same time, it was Final RAC Clark Four weekend, which has always been good to us, and CBS had huge ratings. We’ll do an extensive debrief over the summer and get into all the different factors. The show was well-received in the room and our radio readers gave it high marks last week. I will happily say we were technically flawless. I haven’t heard any complaints and from where I sat, every team hit their marks. Having the Entertainer nominees open was so strong and such a simple concept. Why hasn’t that been done before? We’ve tried, but there’s usually one holdout. You can’t open with, “Here are four of the five Entertainer nominees!” This year, Carrie’s manager Ann Edelblute said, “We’re in. Why don’t you ask everybody else?” She gets producer credit on that one. Talking about following the energy of that, and with Chuck Berry’s untimely passing, we thought it was the right fit to put our hosts in their comfort zone as musicians. Then Joe Walsh was available and we did a two-minute version of “Johnny B. Goode” – verse, chorus, solo. How did it go with Luke and Dierks in their second time together hosting? They did great and put a lot of effort in. We brought in a new writer, Paul Greenberg, and they committed to starting earlier and really fine tuning the script. When we were discussing the mono(continued on page 7)
Road Warriors: Team Lauren takes their No. 1 celebration on the road to iHeartMedia/Nashville. Pictured (l-r) are Mercury’s Jack Christopher, iHeartCountry’s Rod Phillips, Mercury’s Damon Moberly, UMG/Nashville’s Donna Hughes, Lauren Alaina, UMGN’s Royce Risser, WSIX’s Gator Harrison, manager Trisha McClanahan and UMGN’s David Friedman.
CRS Revisited: Slicing & Dicing
One of CRS 2017’s best-received panels mixed original research from Stone Door Media Lab’s Jeff Green with commentary from top record and radio execs on the ever-changing factors that go into music decisions. Green’s research identified five reliable early indicators of song acceptance, while the panel offered valuable and at times cautionary perspective. Green started with those five proven predictors: 12 or more Shazams-per-spin in their second chart week, No. 1 Most Added, early Airborne status, 12 or more sales per spin in chart week two, and fast Pandora chart Jeff Green pacing. “Yes there are many exceptions,” says
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