Country Radio Still Cool on Dixie Chicks

Dixie Chicks at the 2007 Grammy Awards, photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com

February 14, 2007 — The Dixie Chicks dominated the Grammy awards this year, but don't expect country radio to start playing their songs anytime soon. Listeners are still too angry about their 2003 anti-war statements and subsequent remarks.

"Country radio is not going to be responsive to the Dixie Chicks' Grammy wins because Grammy voters are music industry professionals, who aren't reflective of the country radio audience," Ed Salamon, executive director of Country Radio Broadcasters, told The Tennessean.

"It's like a department store," Gerry House, morning man at WSIX in Nashville, told Brad Schmitt of WKRN. "You don't put something in the front window that would make people not come in the store."

Gerry says he feels the Chicks missed an opportunity for reconciliation, especially with lead singer Natalie Maines' "ha-ha!" taunt during one of the trio's acceptance speeches. "Any little olive branch, I think people would've gone, 'oh man, they're right and I'm sick of it,'" he said. "It's hard for people to reach out if people go 'ha ha, we showed you.'"

John Hart, president of Bullseye Marketing/Research, said his firm has polled country listeners to see if they'd be receptive to hearing the Chicks on the radio, and the response is almost always the same: "Fifty percent say they do, 50 percent say they don't," he told The Tennessean. The problem, he said, is that country radio can't afford to risk losing any of its audience. "Listeners don't tune out because of what you don't play — they tune out because of what you do play, and that's the key issue here. Country ratings are based on how long people listen to a station, so it's critical not to tune people out."

As for the Chicks, their publicist told Brad they feel like they were uninvited to the country radio party in 2003, and they're not sure what they can do to make it right.