Bill Bennett Crossovers

It’s not something you really attempt. Historically, and in my experience, if you start out to crossover, then you kind of lose where you should be starting from, in a weird way. In the country market traditionally it’s very proprietary. The country stations, and to some extent the country infrastructure has not been really kind to crossovers. You don’t hear a lot of nice things about Shania Twain, or Faith to an extent had a backlash because she had a huge flop album. If it appears that you’re pandering it’s a big mistake. Since I’ve been here we have never attempted, in fact we’ve never even really discussed a crossover. We’ve even gone to attempts to protect ourselves from a crossover unless it organically happens. It really does have to be organic. If it appears there’s a market outside of it, and it can be dealt with, there’s some dignity to it, and there’s some integrity to the project, then it’s okay. The upside to that stuff can sometimes far outweigh the future prospects of that project. It’s an intuitive, collaborative, discussed, much maligned process. With Faith Hill particularly, this new album of hers, which came out it August, she distinctly went in there to regain her credibility in the country marketplace. She made a brilliant country record, one of the best country albums I’ve ever heard. We have gone to some lengths to protect that. We said to the pop stations, “look, if you want to play it that’s your business, but we’re not giving it to you, we’re not asking you to play it.” I think, Keith Urban’s going through this right now, Keith Urban has a two or three-year-old single on HotAC right now that I don’t think Keith encourages, supports, embraces. Crossover is not that big a deal to us anymore and I think the term “crossover,” which is a radio term, becomes less and less important in the future when you can go to Yahoo! or take the Pipe to Germany and have an international hit, which is where I hope online marketing really makes a difference and gives us the opportunity because country artists don’t tour Europe. They don’t travel overseas. It appears there’s no culture to support, Japan? No. Australia and Canada. There’s obviously a rural, agrarian, society that could support it. But I’ve always thought that you could have country music in Germany, France, Italy and England, or any country if you just got a chance to expose it. But there’s no country radio is any other countries. My mission this year is to somehow break one of our artists overseas. Not two or three.