If you feel so inclined, you can watch four hours of country music videos on the channel CMT any day, from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. And until recently, if you’re the type who keeps score, you would have realized that a majority of the singers featured were male. No more.
Now, the channel will dedicate equal airtime to the talents of both male and female country artists during those hours. According to CMT, the previous breakdown was something like 60/40 in favor of men. The channel is going out of its way to create an “equal playing field,” as Leslie Fram, CMT’s senior vice president of music strategy, put it.
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Women have gotten a minority of the country music airtime, Fram admitted, and she has the statistics to prove it. A recent study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that only 16% of the top country songs from 2014 to 2018 were from female artists. When it comes to radio airtime, male artists outplay females 9.7 to 1, according to the Nashville-based woman advocacy group WOMAN.
So, the next question: Is the airtime gap a problem that requires quotas as a remedy? CMT thinks so, but most of its female audience disagrees. For years, female listeners have admitted they prefer their favorite male artist over a similar female singer. And it’s not that they have anything against women. Brad Paisley’s voice is just hard to beat.
