What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Friday's (6/16) chain of events in Sacramento involving Lindsay Ell, KNCI, KBEB, and KNTY is another cautionary tale for radio programmers in competitive situations, and should be filed under the category of, "what could possibly go wrong?"

To recap, after previously setting up a station visit and performance with Ell and label mate Chase Bryant – both in town to open for Brad Paisley's "Weekend Warrior World Tour" stop in Sacramento – KNCI suddenly opted to uninvite Ell late Thursday/early Friday morning. As the Washington Post soon reported, the cancellation stemmed from Ell’s relationship with boyfriend Bobby Bones, whose syndicated morning show is carried by iHeartMedia crosstown Country KBEB. Friday morning, around 10:42 (PT), 12 minutes after her appearance at KNCI was originally set to begin, Ell tweeted, “Had a scheduled performance in Sacramento today for listeners. The radio station asked me not to come [because] of my personal life. Sorry guys.” Bones, never one to shy away from controversy – or a juicy Twitter dialogue – laid low on this one, tweeting, “I’ve stayed out of this. Not my fight, and frankly, [Lindsay] can handle herself. But this is funny.”

KBEB and recently installed PD B-Dub acted quickly, taking to social media and inviting Ell fans to the station for its originally scheduled noon performance, later upping the ante by declaring Friday “Lindsay Ell Day in Sacramento” while promising to play her latest single, “Waiting On You,” every hour until midnight on Friday. Entravision Country KNTY followed suit, inviting all fans to its 1:30p performance by Ell. Just to be clear, like the KNCI performance, both KBEB and KNTY appearances by Ell had been scheduled ahead of time.

KNCI issued an apology late Friday afternoon, saying, “Lindsay is an amazingly talented up-and-coming artist, and today, we regrettably made a bad decision to cancel her show. We only hope that she – and our listeners – will forgive us, and her team will allow us to reschedule the show.”

Fans of Ell were beating up KNCI pretty good on Twitter and Instagram, even after that apology, which many felt came too late and was only issued to try and defuse a situation spiraling out of control.

The decision to cancel Ell's station visit raises the obvious questions, like, didn't KNCI already know Ell and Bones have been a thing before Thursday evening? And, if so, and that was an issue for them, why even schedule – then heavily promote – her appearance in the first place? But most importantly, what does one have to do with the other? Bones and Ell have been mostly discreet about their relationship (if that's at all possible when one half of the couple is an outspoken, nationally syndicated radio personality), and who Ell dates should, in theory, have absolutely nothing to do with programmers’ decisions about playing her current single or station involvement with her.

We can't answer those questions right now, and after reaching out to KNCI PD Chad Rufer and CBS VP/Country Programming Tim Roberts, I received this reply from CBS Radio Head of Communications Jaime M. Saberito, who said, “At this point, the only on-the-record comment we have is the statement we issued on Friday. Thanks.”

As for KBEB PD B-Dub's line of thinking, after he saw Ell's tweet on Friday, his team automatically replied to her, saying, “Your fans are always welcome at The Bull. We’ll see you at noon.” Added B-Dub, “I also went on the air with it at 11:06a (PT), which would have been about the time that the other performance would have been getting over. We wanted to address it on the air, because I think that’s an important thing to do, to get behind an artist on a song that we were already playing. We went from the all-inclusive angle that everyone is welcome here. Penalizing an artist because of something in their personal life would be like Pittsburgh radio pulling every Carrie Underwood song because they were playing the Predators in the Finals. That didn’t happen.”

Aside from the obvious competitive gamesmanship at play here, B-Dub also said mobilizing fans and putting Ell's song in hourly rotation was "The right thing to do. It’s kinda that thing where you have to get in front of the parade. For one, we were already playing the song and supporting the artist; people are obviously caring about and talking about it. Let’s be at the front of it.” But, B-Dub was also cognizant of doing the right thing, and treating an artist, “the way she should be treated. I didn’t want her perspective of this market be in any negative light,” B-Dub continued. “There are a lot of great Country fans – who obviously love Lindsay – in this market. We had 20,000 people sing along to her song when she played it with Brad Paisley on Friday night.” And, on a larger level, B-Dub told me his objective with KBEB is this: “We hope to change the landscape of what the conversation is when they talk about the Country radio station listened to in Sacramento.”

In the aftermath, some thoughts. Bones' Friday tweet about “staying out of it,” and “Not my fight” turned into a conversation about the incident on today's (6/19) show, with a healthy dash of “I told you so” from Bones, saying that he warned Ell there may be some backlash to their personal relationship. He alluded to having a list of names of those punishing Ell by restricting airplay, and – whether joking or not – threatened to name names. Somewhere in that conversation was Bones proclaiming to be “The sheriff of this format,” which many would bristle at, but after four years of listening to Bobby, I guess I'm just desensitized to that self-assessment and chalk it up to his usual hyperbole. In other words – Bobby being Bobby. That said, Bobby, if you actually do have a list of names, exposing even one of them would be a dangerous and vindictive use of your platform, which makes me evoke the words of Ben Parker, who once told his nephew Peter (a.k.a. Spiderman), “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Additionally, we saw Washington politico Kurt Bardella, whose recent side hustle is a consumer-faced info sheet called “Morning Hangover,” issuing his “official statement” on Friday's events via Facebook, declaring KNCI's decision “blatant sexism,” while adding his unsolicited HR recommendation: “It's not enough that KNCI calls this a 'bad decision,’ someone needs to be held accountable and fired … The only question now is will CBS and KNCI do the right thing and hold the person responsible for this decision accountable.”

Let me say first that I'm not a huge fan of lynch mobs, or a “Fire-Aim-Ready” approach to problem-solving. Second, let me add with all due respect to Mr. Bardella, who has never worked in radio, making such an instantaneous, blanket suggestion without really knowing any background information – other than what he read in the Washington Post moments earlier – is both unfair and irresponsible. We can only hope CBS Radio will do its diligence, investigate the station's motives, and have a productive, constructive discussion about all of this.

But many programmers and radio pros who chimed in on this via socials were equally tough on KNCI. CMT's Leslie Fram, who has long championed female artists, offered this reminder that most programmers who “get it” adhere to: “Dear Gatekeepers – Your decision to support an artist should be based solely on the artist and their music and nothing else.”

On the other hand, recently retired Country Radio Hall Of Fame programmer Mike Kennedy of KBEQ/Kansas City emailed me today with this perspective, calling KNCI's abrupt cancellation, “Bush league.” That being said, continued Kennedy, “Show me one – just one programmer or music director – that has not let some personal experience or interaction affect airplay or artist exposure in their career…These holier than thou PDs weighing in are full of it. I love the marketing move on Lindsay by the station; however, what if you were a general fly-by listener and had no idea who she was or what the brouhaha was about? Would you spend the time going to Facebook or Twitter to find out? OR just flip to the next station and get a song you knew and liked. Being a radio guy, I liked the move for radio, but was it effective? Who knows.”

Who knows, indeed. But finally, this: I hate this kind of thing, because on the surface, the headlines make radio look so bad and so petty – and Lord knows we can be. On the other hand, what KBEB and KNTY did is what local radio can and should be all about. This is a great example of how radio has an advantage of acting instantly. Pandora couldn't do that; neither could Spotify. And, in this case, local radio acted with the right spirit in mind. “Above everything else, I did it just because it was fun,” said B-Dub. “Put all the attention aside, put aside the national press and all the trade quotes. I did it because above all, it sounded like something fun that we could put on the air. That’s why we’re in radio, man! That’s why we do what we do.”