Most of you don't know but, last week, while I was the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville for our annual broadcsat from there, a specific incident occurred involving Billy Ray Cyrus and one of the other radio stations at the broadcast. As most of us may have heard, Billy Ray and his wife announced that they were divorcing several weeks ago and, then, it surfaced that his wife had been unfaithful to him and had been involved with an ex-rock star. The broadcasts at the CMA awards are very much artists being, literally, herded through a maze of radio station broadcast areas to spend a maximum of 5 minutes with each participating station mostly talking about the awards, their music and, maybe, a few other fun things. The reason Bily Ray Cyrus was being paraded through the area was that he had released an updated version of his 90's hit "Some Gave All" in time for Veterans' Day later that week. Well, this one, particular radio station decided to, right out of the chute, ask Billy about the divorce. Of course, his reaction was less than positive.
Since that time, people in our industry have been debating whether or not the question should have been asked and, more importantly, whether or not we should treat artists with "kid gloves". I mean LOTS of debate.
Here's my bottom line: Do listeners want to hear an artist try to "squirm" out of a situation or would they rather learn something they didn't know about that particular artist? I suggest the latter. There are enough tabloid shows to deal with that. (I will tell you I get embarrassed for my profession every time I see someone go too far even on one of these shows). We are, for the most part, radio DJ's and not even close to the stature of Mike Wallace or anyone else on "60 Minutes" so let's act accordingly. Let's give the listener something new about this person. Let's make them feel close to the artist rather than uncomfortable.
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