When WKAZ Charleston, W. Va., debuted its wide-variety party format called “Tailgate 107.3” nine years ago, one of the sweepers for the station declared, “No, they didn’t legalize marijuana in West Virginia. We’re doing this on purpose.”
In the hour I monitored at the time, Tailgate 107.3 went from Jason Derulo’s “The Other Side” to Miranda Lambert & Carrie Underwood’s “Something Bad” to T.I.’s “Bring ‘Em Out.” The thru-line was stadium/arena music, whether for a tailgate or the music heard between sets at a Country concert. It was also the time of Florida Georgia Line & Nelly’s “Cruise” and the Hip-Hop influenced music I was already calling “tailgate country” as a less-pejorative synonym for “bro country.”
Tailgate 107.3 came more than a decade after the Adult Hits likes of Bob- and Jack-FM had made wide variety a sign of programming daring, not a lack of discipline. But Adult Hits was gold-based, mostly based in older music, and prided itself on being “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Tailgate was playing to a younger, more splintered coalition, and trying to play current Country and Top 40 titles along with older gold.
Tailgate’s “Party Songs for Party People” format lasted for six years before WKAZ went to full-fledged Country. Recently, that frequency became the new home of Hip-Hop WRVZ (The Beat). But the party is on again following Tuesday’s launch of the similarly intentioned Tailgate Radio, the second collaboration between streaming aggregator TuneIn and Garth Brooks’s Sevens Radio Network, following the launch of The Big 615’s yesterday-and-today Country format in June.
Tailgate Radio is programmed by Jonathan Janosch and voiced by NBC Sports’ Maria Taylor, whose presence serves a comparable function to Storme Warren on The Big 615. (In one of her breaks, she promised, “You never know what’s going to come next.”) The station is positioned as “TuneIn’s Official Game Day Party Station”—a complement to their existing sports programming. There are also voicers from Brooks, one of which declares, “We go hard and fast 24/7 and 365 on Tailgate Radio. Try to keep up.”
Tailgate Radio is more gold-based than its predecessor, which softens the edges a little, but still spans hair bands to Hip-Hop with both new and classic Country in between. Will it work now? A national platform helps. So does having a decade for the concept to take hold. “Party songs” as a format always seemed inevitable. Even in 2014, we believed that listeners were less siloed than most mainstream radio formats. Now we know.
It would be different from what TuneIn’s Tailgate Radio is currently doing, but it seems likely that we’ll also get a current-based CHR or Adult CHR and Country hybrid at some point soon, given Country’s current pop chart stronghold. (Music Choice’s Pop & Country cable channel already does that nationally.)
In the nine years since WKAZ, the Hip-Hop/Country fusion has allegedly faded, first from overuse of the FGL/Nelly formula, and then because of the Zach Bryan/Jelly Roll infusion of new streaming-driven artists who offer something different. But Morgan Wallen, who helped turbocharge Country streaming four years ago, has been on the pop charts all summer with a song that sounds a lot like Post Malone. And, in any event, if the listeners who came to Country in 2013-15 are disenfranchised by mainstream Country, they now have somewhere to go.
Here’s Tailgate Radio on its first day, August 29, at 11:35 a.m.:
- Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”
- Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Proud Mary”
- Crazy Town, “Butterfly”
- Lainey Wilson, “Grease”
- Bon Jovi, “Bad Medicine”
- Pitbull, “Hotel Room Service”
- Miranda Lambert, “Kerosene”
- Salt-N-Pepa, “Shoop”
- Motley Crue, “Kickstart My Heart”
- Beyonce, “Break My Soul”
- Lenny Kravitz, “American Woman”
- Walker Hayes, “Fancy Like”
- 2pac, “California Love”
I didn’t write about The Big 615 immediately after its June launch, in part because its yesterday-and-today format was covered so extensively elsewhere. The early publicity around the station promised deeper gold and looser rotations, but also to spotlight new country, and that was still the case when I took a Fresh Listen last night. (A few songs after this monitor ends, I heard “Goodbye Earl,” a good example of the sort of gold not-heard-elsewhere that helps define The Big 615.)
Since its launch, the Big 615 has been positioning itself as the world’s Country channel. “From Music Row [and] around the planet … Country’s global station,” declares one sweeper. When I listened, there was also a promo from PD Bob Richards thanking listeners. “We are here because you chose to be.”
Here’s The Big 615 at 8 p.m., August 29:
- Conner Smith, “I Hate Alabama”
- Ingrid Andress, “More Hearts Than Mine”
- Florida Georgia Line, “Simple”
- Toby Keith, “My List”
- Dustin Lynch, “Stars Like Confetti”
- Scotty McCreery, “Damn Strait”
- Luke Bryan, “Sunrise Sunburn Sunset”
- Lainey Wilson, “Two Story House”
- Kassi Ashton, “Drive You Out of My Mind”
- Carly Pearce & Lee Brice, “I Hope You’re Happy Now”
- Kenny Chesney, “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”
