Sexist 'tomato' barb launches country-radio food fight

NASHVILLE — A radio consultant cautioned country-music stations against playing back-to-back songs by women, and the backlash began as word began spreading on Music Row here.

In an interview with Country Aircheck Weekly, a website and newsletter that focuses on country radio, consultant Keith Hill of South Padre Island, Texas, also said stations shouldn't play too many songs by women.

"If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out," he told Country Aircheck. "The reason is mainstream country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70% to 75%, and women like male artists.

The expectation is we're principally a male format with a smaller female component. I've got about 40 music databases in front of me, and the percentage of females in the one with the most is 19%. Trust me, I play great female records, and we've got some right now. They're just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females.

For many, this is proof that female artists are being discriminated against in country radio. Only 20% — 10 of the Top 50 hits — are sung by female leads, whether solo or groups. Of the Top 50 songs that are 18 months or older, only 12 are sung by women, and three women sing nine of the 12 songs.

In response, singer-songwriter Jennifer Nettles, best known for being part of Sugarland, tweeted, "Don't worry babe. I see an opportunity here. (A) big ole vagina shaped opportunity."

Martina McBride also took to social media, asking followers their thoughts on the matter.

"I was taken aback by the comments in the article," McBride says. "I felt them to be sexist and condescending toward female artists. But putting all that aside, the response from my followers on Facebook and Twitter has been overwhelmingly full of comments that disagree wholeheartedly with what was said in the article and how they, as the core audience, feel misrepresented.

"I don't claim to know anything about the research process at radio ... the 'science' of it. I just feel like common sense needs to fit in somewhere, and when I brought up the fact that country music female fans were being represented in this way, there seemed to be a huge response from those who did not feel properly represented by these comments."

She applauded the decision of WQNZ-FM, Natchez, Miss., to devote an hour to female artists with a retweet and an "Awesome!" comment.

Another consultant, Jaye Albright of Albright, O'Malley and Brenner Country Radio Specialists in Bainbridge Island, Wash., said in a Facebook post that Hill was wrong.

"You could make a case that males sometimes don't relate to specific songs put out by women and that does cause more releases by men to do better on average what the typical female hit does, but I have never seen any evidence that women do not like songs by females!"

Tracy Gershon, a Rounder Records executive, called Hill's comments reckless and irresponsible, saying that a woman who listens to pop artist Katy Perry is just as likely to listen to Miranda Lambert.

"This posting is taking us 20 steps backwards. It's an insult to every female artist in the format," said Senior Vice President Leslie Fram of Country Music Television.

In an interview Thursday, Hill called himself a marketer, not a social engineer.

"Apparently, I am a black-and-white '60s politically incorrect guy by using the tomatoes analogy for females. I am not sure if it would have been better to use carrots or onions," he said. But "tossing the salad" in music is necessary because a station doesn't want to bunch up ballads, Americana or even male artists on its playlist.

When Country Aircheck Publisher Lon Helton edited the initial story, he didn't blink an eye because everyone in radio knows this, he said.

"Remember, since the 1960s, program directors have been telling people not to play two women back to back," Helton said. "It has nothing to do with sexism. It has to do with the fact that through the years, you have had very few hits by women, so you want to spread them out a little bit because there are fewer of them."

Generally, about 15% of songs on country radio are from women, he said. The 1990s, when women such as Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless and others dominated the airwaves, was an aberration.

He also denied the lack of women on country radio is sexist, noting that female radio programmers make the same choices as their male counterparts.

"They seem to prefer the music from male artists," Helton said of women listeners

McBride disagrees.

"I feel like the more these ideas and philosophies are allowed to perpetuate, the harder it is to keep them from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to labels investing in female acts, writers writing great songs for females, and radio giving them a fair shot," she said. "At the end of the day, hopefully it has started a healthy conversation that can really make a difference and push aside once and for all these archaic and out-of-touch ideas about what females want to hear on their radio stations."