Editorials

The Answer To Our Problems

For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for my opinion on what's wrong with Southern Gospel Music, your wait is over. As I said last month, our genre does have it's share of problems. There has to be some logical reason behind the lack of attendance at our concerts. I'm sure that many of the die hard traditional guys aren't going to agree with everything I say, but if I thought they were right, I wouldn't be writing this article.

There are some very obvious reasons that we will look at first, and let me state right now that there is no one reason why our crowds are poor, but a myriad of reasons. We will try to look at a few of them now. Some of the obvious reasons, we can't do much about, but we need to know that they are there.

One obvious problem is that there is much more competition for the entertainment dollar. In the good ole days, when Gospel Music would fill an auditorium in any city at any time, there were not malls staying open until 9 or 10PM on weekends. There were not 5 or 6 theatres in every city, and if there was a theatre in the town the Baptist and Pentecostals, and even the Methodists back then, didn't frequent them. There weren't fine restaurants serving food until 10 or 11PM on weekends either. All of this takes away from the time and the dollars of Gospel concerts. These things are pretty obvious and there is not much that we can do about it.

Now, let's look at a few other things. Sure, there are a few people in the industry who will record anybody to make a few bucks. Is it ethical, I'm not sure. If someone really wants to record a project, they are going to record a project. If someone in Gospel Music doesn't do it, then they will go into the secular market to get recorded and get taken by scoundrels who make our guys look like angels. So labels recording bad singers is NOT one of the problems in our genre. Trust me, there are bad recordings being done every day in country, rock, and even Christian Contemporary labels. And...... there are radio stations playing that bad music. If you want to have fun on a trip, just scan your radio dial for the bad music being played. You'll find a lot more than just bad Gospel music being played.

So, recording labels may be a problem, but they are not a major problem. Many times when I was still painting houses, I would be called to give an estimate on a room that I thought didn't need painting, but the lady of the house saw little things that bothered her, or she just wanted to change the color. Should I have told her that I wouldn't paint her room? If I had told her no, your room doesn't need painting, she would have thrown me out of her house and then called someone else to do the job who would have charged her a lot more that I would. I gave her as good a job as I could, I worked with what I had to work with, and that's what most labels in the industry do.

We do have a major problem though. Somehow, we have let some very important things slip right through our fingers. Do you remember when we were filling auditoriums? We were on major television stations. How did we lose that foothold. Don't tell me that it can't be done, because Bill Gaither is doing it rather successfully. People will run across three towns to see someone in person that they just saw on television. Country music does it. Black Gospel does it. Rock music does it. Spanish music does it. Why aren't we doing it? We can't do it just making videos of us singing in churches. We need to hire some real professional video producers and listen to their ideas, and then follow through. We also can't do this on a $50.00 budget. Maybe we should sell the bus and invest that money in other areas of our careers.

Another problem is radio. We have some great stations and we have some really bad ones too. Nothing disturbs me more than listening to some really poor Gospel music right after the hog reports. I wish I was kidding, but it really does happen. Like I said, the good ones are really good and the bad ones are really bad, We need some professionalism in our radio stations. Our commercials need to compete with the big secular stations. I remember several years ago at GMA Week, the Gospel Music Guild would put on radio seminars for Southern Gospel radio stations. I was amazed at what I heard these big radio and advertising guys telling the radio guys. It was good stuff. Stuff that could be used in any genre of radio. Talk radio. Rock radio, Country radio, even Gospel radio could use the training that these guys were giving. The fact is that only four or five radio stations were represented every year. The radio stations said that they would rather spend their money at NQC, because that 's where they could get the interviews and liners from. NQC is great. I set up a booth every year. I make a lot of contacts there. But guys..... you're running a business and it has to make money to keep going. No amount of interviews or liners will help you if you have had to close the doors because you weren't making any money.

You say "but this is a ministry". That's fine, but if a church or any other ministry is not treated like a business, it will fall apart and cease being because it couldn't afford to keep the lights on. We need radio stations that are concerned about professionalism and keeping the station in the black by making a profit. The best way to do that is to hire someone to help you with marketing, and then hire some DJs who will attract listeners to your station. Of course there is the issue of playing bad music. Someone at the station has to be responsible for quality control. Sometimes you just have to say no. I don't care if it's Gold City or the Goldenaires, if it's bad music, don't play it. You, the radio station management are responsible for quality control. Not all compilation discs are equal, just because you get a disc in, doesn't mean you have to play everything on it.

OK, I've stirred up enough doodoo for one month, we'll pick this up again next month.