Were Today’s Beyhive Country Radio Attacks Warranted?

Over the course of a couple hours today, another radio station went viral for all the wrong reasons.

A Beyonce fan, @Jussatto tweeted this morning that his local Country station, 100.1 KYKC Byng OK refused his request to play her new single “Texas Hold ‘Em” because they were a Country station. The user immediately went online to accuse the station of “blatant racism and discrimination against Beyoncé” following the release of her new singles during the Super Bowl and engage fellow fans in outrage.

I requested Texas Hold ‘Em at my local country radio station (KYKC) and after requesting, i received an email from the radio station stating “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station. @BeyLegion pic.twitter.com/eQksQemk6m

— JUSTIN ★ (@jussatto) February 13, 2024

The first news story about the accusations came from Hip Hop “Hot 97” WQHT New York, before going viral across social media, the blogosphere, and legitimate news publications in mere hours. Yet none of them noted that the station in question was owned by The Chickasaw Nation’s SCORE Broadcasting.

TMZ became the voice of reason as they reached out to the original poster and the station. Jussatto showed additional correspondence in which the station noted it was unaware that she had released Country songs and told them that their CHR and Classic Hits stations both played Beyoncé. The station directly noted that they weren’t playing the songs because they hadn’t been serviced by the record label and did not yet have it.

KYKC General Manager Roger Harris would then tell the Oklahoman, “While Beyoncé has long been prominent on our playlists for SCORE radio stations KADA and KXFC, she has not been traditionally considered a country music artist. While we were briefly unaware of the rapid success of her recently released country music offerings, her new country music offerings were added to our KYKC playlist this morning.”

Lots of call coming in for Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s coming up in minutes pic.twitter.com/w9hZ24w4aw

— 100.1 KYKC (@1001KYKC) February 13, 2024

Not yet being serviced to radio may be a significant part of the issue here as “Texas Hold ‘Em” has received 362 spins across ten formats between its release and 7:00pm eastern time Tuesday according to Mediabase. Only 27 of those monitored plays came from Country stations, with only Cumulus’ 101.1 KRMD-FM Shreveport playing the song 5 times or more. A good share of the stations to play the song once did so on their morning shows on Monday following the release, with syndicated shows such as Elvis Duran, Elliot in the Morning, and The Breakfast Club accounting for many of the stations with only one play of the song. Even WQHT, the first place to pick up on the social media activity today, has only played the song once during its morning show on Monday.

Commercial radio’s purpose is still a mass-appeal driven medium. While there has been lots of streaming listenership to the song, it is still too new to find out if this will relate to the masses, especially in this case as the song is attempting to cross her into new genres. A hit in one format does not guarantee success at others. At Country she is simply just like any artist looking for her first breakthrough crossover hit. If she needs to ask another megastar how difficult of a process that can be, perhaps Chris Gaines can help answer that.

An is Country radio support even on Beyoncé’s radar? As the stations have not been serviced the song from her label does she even care and will she put in the work? I was shared a post this afternoon from Benztown’s Royce Stevenson that encapsulates the difficulties she may see, “I can’t think of a format where the artists interact and have a relationship with the fans and radio more than country. And I can’t think of an artist who has interacted less with fans and radio in the last 10 years than Beyonce. This will be interesting.”