Friday, January 27, 2017

"Tuning in Madonna? Not gonna. In Texarkana, we banna."



MEDIA RELEASE
January 24th 2017 
TEXARKANA RADIO STATION BANS MADONNA 
Texarkana’s Classic Hits station – HITS 105 is taking all Madonna songs off the air in the station’s local programming indefinitely following the singer’s comments over the weekend.  
In addition to ‘F-bombs’ in her speech, Madonna talked about how upset the election results had made her including her now infamous, "Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House," comments. 
General Manager of HITS 105, Terry Thomas, says “banning all Madonna songs at HITS 105 is not a matter of politics, it’s a matter of patriotism. It just feels wrong to us to be playing Madonna songs and paying her royalties when the artist has shown un-American sentiments. If all stations playing Madonna took their lead from us, that would send a powerful economic message to Madonna.” 
#nomoremadonna


Anikwa Jones i here this radio station is only going to play conway twitty songs

Linda Butler who cares. we don't chose your station anyway. splat......we want good radio and you ain't it.

Eugenio Girón Well, I guess your publicity tricks are working. Now I know this radio station exists. Thank Madonna for that.👍🏼

HITS 105fm Thank you, Eugenio, for your light hearted answer. This was not an easy decision and we are glad to see a different opinion than the ones we have been hearing in support of the ban.

Lane Audirsch You are to be commended for your actions. Now if all the other radio stations would step up and do the same thing. I love it when ignorant people don't know how to shut their mouth and let the public know they're real feelings. It truly helps in making business decisions. 
You need to change your name to 
105 ROCKS!!!

HITS 105fm Now THERE's an idea ... 105 ROCKS, we like like it - thanks :)



From America's heartland, people are saying, "Enough, HITS105fm. Ban the bitch!"

Terry Thomas, HITS105's manager, heard the cry of the populace in the United States' 254th-largest radio market and banned Madonna from the airways in its Texas-Arkansas border bailiwick of backwardness.

With a reach of about 112,000 listeners in a metro area of 143,000, HITS105's audience is 22% of that for Madonna's comments in Washington last weekend.

Madonna, Thomas says, was unpatriotic when she mouthed off at a Women's March rally and said she'd thought about blowing up the White House.

The handful of responders among HITS105's 1548 Facebook likes cited that comment as Exhibit A in their loathing of free speech and the rightness of Ms. Thomas' defense of their values. Equally unsurprisingly, they revealed their utter ignorance of the difference between the ravings of a 57-year-old pop star and a credible threat as defined by the Department of Homeland Security.

HITS105 also, if inexplicably, bans the uber-patriotic Ted Nugent, whose career goes back over forty years, almost a decade longer than Madge's.

Nor can one easily divine why its Facebook page features a homosexual activist, a louche African-American drug addict, a one-man bubblegum pop song factory who did a benefit concert for #DamnObama with Bruce Springsteen in 2008, and a Scottish woman activist, but there they are: Elton John, Prince, Billy Joel and Annie Lennox.

KCMC/KTTY, as the FCC knows HITS105, makes looking backward its raison d'etre. Since going on the air four years ago, it has billed itself, without any sense of irony or the need to update, as "Texarkana's newest radio station! Welcome to the official facebook page of the brand new HITS 105 ... playing the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s ... and the beat goes on!"

"And the beat goes on," of course, is the title of a song Sonny & Cher made their trademark.

In 1967.

Though Rolling Stone reported, "According to Billboard, HITS 105 is not monitored by Nielsen Soundscan, so it's unclear if Madonna was played regularly on the station before Tuesday's announcement," HITS105 claimed "we were so!" in a Facebook comment:
[W]e played her right up until this decision was made. The last song we played was Holiday.
Even in Texarkana, listeners may be counting their blessings. As Wikipedia notes of Madonna's 1983 hit single,
Author Rikky Rooksby in his book The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna commented that "'Holiday' was as infectious as the plague. One listen and you could not get the damn hook out of your mind." Jim Farber of Entertainment Weekly commented that "Holiday" satisfied the musical ear of both the sides of the Atlantic. While reviewing The Immaculate Collection album, David Browne from Entertainment Weekly commented that "Holiday" was a "spunky dance-beat trifle". He also complimented the song's expert production.
Mary Cross in her biography of Madonna, described "Holiday" as "a simple song with a fresh appeal and a good mood. Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine described the song as airy. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic called it effervescent and one of the great songs of the Madonna album. While reviewing The Immaculate Collection, he called it one of her greatest hits. Don Shewey of Rolling Stone commented that the simple lyrics of the song sound clever.
HITS105's goal, as Ms Thomas states, is to rally a boycott juggernaut to bring Madonna to her knees financially ("If all stations playing Madonna took their lead from us, that would send a powerful economic message to Madonna").

Never mind that the station's ban only applies to the four albums and 27 singles Madonna released in the 1980s, after which time stops for HITS105. Never mind that in that period Madonna wrote almost none of her own songs. That's a useful fact, given that airplay royalties go to songwriters, not singers.

Singers, after all, have other revenue sources to tap. Madonna is one of the highest-paid concert tour artists in the world, earning a million dollars a show in 2014.

Her radio airplay, and album sales, has been declining forever as age has inexorably pushed her out of the demographic sweet spot of radio advertising. Someone has been trying to ban Madonna over something, somewhere, pretty much all of her 35-year career, so even if all the 6600 FM commercial stations in America heeded Terry Thomas' call to cast off Madonna and all her works, it wouldn't dent the personal fortune Forbes estimated to be $560 million in 2016.

The Material Girl has been just that as an investor. Besides her tours, which sell out even at Rolling Stones-level ticket prices, she has invested shrewdly in the New York City property markets and Old Master art. She rakes in royalties from endorsements more than than songs; since she took up writing her songs herself in the 1990s, she has scored fewer hits, ever-smaler sales, and generally garbed her music in the same raiments of awfulness that blights her film career (a Madonna movie binge would be one endless cringe: Shanghai Surprise; Who's That Girl; Bloodhounds of Broadway; Goose and Tom-Tom; Dick Tracy; Swept Away; The Next Best Thing; and the talent vacuum that is Body of Evidence).

There are three radio stations in Texarkana. Famous sons include Bonanza star Dan Blocker, billionaire eccentric Ross Perot, and serial presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who called Ted Nugent "“an outspoken rocker, a political commentator, a patriot, and a friend.”

Curiously, Madonna was once a darling of the Right. As Right Wing Watch reported six years ago,

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network believes that Pence’s energetic support from both the Religious Right and pro-corporate conservatives may turn him “into the ‘Madonna’ of 2012” and predicts that “Evangelicals who don’t know about him may soon fall in love." [Brody wrote:]
Mike Pence could become the “Madonna” of 2012. Remember the 1980s movie “Desperately Seeking Susan?” starring the pop icon? (Oy, I may be dating myself.) Well, there is a political movement out there that we might want to start calling, “Desperately Seeking Pence”

[W]e should know in the next couple of weeks what Pence plans to do. If he runs, he becomes a legitimate dark horse with a huge upside to surprise a lot of people. He may be the Mike Huckabee of 2012. Evangelicals who know Pence love him. Evangelicals who don’t know about him may soon fall in love.

No comments:

Post a Comment