Has The Country Format Swung Too Male?

“I worry … that maybe we’re letting the guys drive too much, sometimes.”

That was NuVoodoo Media’s Leigh Jacobs during their research presentation at last week’s Country Radio Seminar, held February 19-21 in Nashville. At Thursday’s presentation, Jacobs asked whether Country radio’s decision to include men as part of their research target, which he supported, had now swung things too far from the late, unlamented period of AC-leaning Country in the pre-Morgan Wallen era of the mid-to-late ’10s.

NuVoodoo’s sample was 1,500 Country fans honed from a larger 7,000-person study of music preference. In that sample, women were actually more likely to cite Country music as their favorite (24% vs. 20% of men). The 1,500-person sample ended up being 58% female. Women were less likely, however, to say that they listened to Country radio for at least 15 minutes a day (76% to 85%) or an hour a day (41% to 50%). Of the two-thirds of Country fans who were Country radio P1s, men (71%) also outscored women (62%).

Beyond that, NuVoodoo’s Carolyn Gilbert also pointed out that in the research her company does for Country radio, she has seen a reversal in recent years during the listener recruitment process. Male respondents used to be harder to recruit at Country. Now, the company usually fills its male research quotas well ahead of its female slots. 

Over the last week, I haven’t seen the gender-balance issue come up in other coverage of the CRS research presentation. Those stories have focused more on the inroads of streaming, respondents’ overall feeling that Country music is getting better, and listener awareness that their favorite hosts were being downsized. Gender balance wasn’t among the conclusions/recommendations either. There’s no sense that PDs came home from Nashville with “skew less male” on their to-do list.

Whether there is any musical issue to be addressed depends on how you feel about the state of Country radio. Viewed across the radio landscape, Country is still the envy of any other current-based format. Yet on a Wednesday panel about the radio/record relationship, Travis Daily of Cumulus cited the revolving door of No. 1 hits as a reason “why the format continues to decline.”

In the just-released January PPM ratings, there are great post-holiday rebounds at KYGO Denver, WUSN (US99) Chicago, and KKBQ (93Q) Houston, and markets such as St. Louis where Country rules like it did a decade ago. There are also still markets such as Atlanta, Phoenix, and Minneapolis/St. Paul where a once-dominant format remains mid-pack. (Again, in most of these markets, the format still handily outperforms its CHR rivals.)

Most programmers would agree that the format is more male-skewing now. Few have gone as far as too male. “The format definitely leans way more female from a programming standpoint,” wrote Idaho Falls PD Viktor Wilt when I brought the issue up on Facebook. “If the format wanted to target men, they would be pushing Zach Bryan as the biggest artist in the format … alongside Morgan Wallen.”

Wallen’s superstardom also has a lot to do with setting the tone at Country, particularly with his shattering of artist-separation norms. “I think we have a situation where many of the male singers sound similar, and in the case of Morgan Wallen … it sounds like you’re all Morgan all the time,” wrote format veteran James Owen.

Here are some thoughts on male/female balance at Country — and across the format spectrum — that might add some perspective to the question:

Nobody wants to go back to 2017. The pre-Wallen era dominated by AC-leaning “Boyfriend Country” ballads is over and unmourned for a reason. It was a moment of narrowly drawn stations battling to be “Number One for New Country” at a time when that franchise barely seemed worth fighting over. It wasn’t a time that made female listeners particularly happy either.

There is still a stylistic balance in Country radio, if we preserve it. Amidst the streaming-driven hits, there are still balance records driven largely by callout, such as Cole Swindell’s “Forever to Me,” one of the songs discussed at Wednesday’s chart panel that revealed itself as a real hit well after the initial streaming tapered off. In the pre-Morgan era, ballads that took 40 weeks to break were oppressive in part because there were so few other hits. Now they are part of preserving a stylistic balance.

The message of a lot of the CRS panels was that programmers should stop resisting streaming stories — if they indeed still are. From the perspective of somebody who watches other formats struggle with current product, Country is clearly benefiting at this moment from a mix of streaming and callout stories and must not hand over the music process to streaming entirely. The only question is how a “Forever to Me” might reveal itself as a callout hit and stand out from other similar titles in 22 weeks, rather than 40.

Women have more viable current music choices than men. If women have higher preference for Country music than men but lower usage, one possible explanation is that they still have Hot AC, Top 40, and, to a lesser extent, Adult Contemporary as places to hear current music. For men, as Country radio/label veteran Clay Hunnicutt noted, “Country has become the new rock format” thanks to Wallen, Luke Combs, and artists shared with rock radio such as Jelly Roll and Hardy. While I’m seeing a shift at Alternative radio to better and more varied music, it still remains a library-driven format and hasn’t yet made consistent ratings inroads.

Women have a voice at Top 40. Country, at this moment, doesn’t have a lot of incentive to follow Hot AC and Top 40, but the one positive thing that clearly happened last summer, during a period of ratings and musical optimism for CHR, was a confluence of hit artists with a strong female POV — Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish — as part of a great stylistic and gender balance overall. 

Country programmers have wearied of discussing the male/female artist balance on Country radio. I didn’t hear it discussed at CRS this year. But it’s not settled. At this writing, the highest title by a female lead act is at No. 14. And yet, two of the three “anatomy of a hit” panels at CRS this year were about female-driven hits: Ella Langley & Riley Green’s “You Look Like You Love Me” and Dasha’s “Austin.”

The last time we were willing to talk about female Country artists, the discussion often defaulted to research. That’s different now that we know research isn’t the only key metric. I also believe the myth of different usage: “women like strong female voices at CHR, but want only boyfriend Country,” has been demolished by now.

Langley is already off to a fast start with “Weren’t for the Wind,” which like “You Look … ” switches a familiar lyrical trope (“I love you, but I’ve got to wander”) to a female POV. So will Country PDs embrace more stories like this, or will they just plug Langley into the “one consistent female hitmaker” slot they were holding for Lainey Wilson, and Kelsea Ballerini before that?

Again, some of this comes down to whether you think it’s an issue. I listened to two very successful Country stations yesterday that played one female artist in an hour’s time, and Wallen with a 20–30-minute artist separation. But the lessons of format cycles are that any overindulged style becomes an issue eventually, genre balance is a strength, and that addressing any possible issue now is preferable to a 180-degree knee-jerk to something equally imbalanced.