Radio Radio

There are a lot of things everybody knows about radio and the music it plays. Such as, there are a few big stations that influence what everyone else plays. They play songs first and then other stations in smaller, less hip markets pick up the trail and start playing the same songs.

Also, that broadcasting conglomerates, especially like Clear Channel Communications, control what gets played on the radio. Clear Channel, in fact, was almost solely responsible for driving the Dixie Chicks off the airwaves after singer Natalie Maines snarked on then-President George W. Bush at a concert in London.

And that radio driven by ever-increasingly hyper-specialized formats stinks up the universe.

UCLA sociology professor Gabriel Rossman has something to say about the first two sets of common knowledge in his book Climbing the Charts. He may have something to say about the third, too, but he doesn't say it in this book. Rossman studied things like when songs began to be played on what radio stations, how quickly a song gained airplay and what pattern, if any, did the airplay starts follow among the different stations.

Among the things Rossman learned was that the idea of a few key stations leading the way for all the rest doesn't pan out when you study the numbers. He calls this the "opinion leadership hypothesis," and when he examines how the airplay of some popular songs spread when they were introduced  -- their "diffusion" -- the numbers don't add up. When graphed, diffusion by opinion leadership (everybody follows in the footsteps of a few key stations or one large conglomerate) would make a smooth "S"-shaped curve. But the actual diffusion stair-steps, which is a lot more like the shape that would show up if airplay was driven by an external factor, such as record company promotion.

As far as the Dixie Chicks shutdown, Rossman's study of when stations stopped playing their songs showed that the smaller broadcasting companies and more independent stations stopped first. The larger conglomerates lagged behind. Again, this is the kind of thing that shows more radio stations responding to outside forces -- in this case, listeners upset with Maines' comments -- than to some kind of top-down decision. It would also seem to make sense with the idea that local stations, which depend on local ads, would respond to pressure more quickly because they don't have any broadcast partners to help carry the load if they get in trouble with their listeners.

Since he's a sociology prof, Rossman's primary interest is in watching how changes spread through networks. That's the meaning of the subtitle phrase "diffusion of innovation."

Because the other meaning of innovation, which has to do with change and creativity, hasn't been very applicable to most of 21st century radio or the music it plays for quite some time now.