U.S. Radio Hangs Up On Madonna

July 21, 2006, 3:35 PM ET

Michael Paoletta, N.Y.

Madonna is in the midst of a sold-out North American trek that may end up being the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist. But this on-the-road success is not carrying over to American radio airwaves. In the United States, the three singles from Madonna's latest Warner Bros. album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," have not been embraced by mainstream top 40 radio.

"Hung Up" got middling airplay, "Sorry" was barely played, and "Get Together" has been all but ignored by pop stations. Naturally, this state of affairs has left executives at her Warner Bros. label -- and more than a few fans -- wondering, what gives?

More than 3,300 fans have signed an appeal at petitiononline.com. The "End the Madonna on U.S. Radio Boycott" petition is addressed to Clear Channel Communications CEO Mark P. Mays. Message boards at Entertainment Weekly and VH1, among others, are rife with everything from support for Madonna to conspiracy theories about why she can't crack the radio dial.

Warner Bros. was aware that the songs on "Confessions" could present challenges at mainstream top 40 radio, acknowledges Tom Biery, senior VP of promotions at Warner Bros. "Top 40 radio is so hip-hop-driven," he says. "We were coming in with a global pop star who made a dance record."

Guy Zapoleon, president of radio consulting firm Zapoleon Media Strategies, calls it an "interesting dilemma for the woman who certainly held the 'Queen of Pop' title for almost 15 years." Madonna's ability to redefine herself is well-documented, and Zapoleon says that this has helped her keep a "leading edge" to the new group of pop music fans that comes along every three to five years.

CM8ShowAd("Middle");But this time, Madonna may have turned left while the pop climate was turning right. Other pop chameleons such as Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey reinvented themselves with recent rhythmic/hip-hop-leaning singles. Madonna opted instead to return to her dance-pop roots.

According to Dom Theodore, regional VP of programming for Clear Channel and PD of top 40 WKQI Detroit, today's programmers consider each Madonna song on a case-by-case basis to determine if it fits mainstream top 40, adult top 40 or both. Or neither.

For Theodore, the sound of "Confessions on a Dance Floor" skews more retro-adult top 40 than mainstream top 40, while recent club tracks like Rihanna's "SOS" have "more hip-hop credibility." The Rihanna track may reference an early-'80s dance hit (Soft Cell's "Tainted Love") but Theodore believes it does not have the same "retro '70s feel" as the Madonna tracks.

Madonna has had no such airplay problems internationally. Since its release last November, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" has topped the charts in 29 countries and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, according to Warner Bros. For the week ending July 15, the album's third single, "Get Together," had a radio audience of fewer than 1 million listeners in the United States (aggregate, based on market size and station share). Conversely, in the United Kingdom, where all three singles have been A-listed by BBC Radio 1, the single had 38.4 million listeners.

Except for dance radio outlets like KNGY San Francisco, KNRJ Phoenix and KNHC Seattle, Madonna is missing from the terrestrial radio landscape in the United States. John Peake, PD at KNGY, believes that mainstream top 40 radio programmers have completely missed the boat on this project. "When 'Hung Up' didn't get instant callout, the stations gave up on it," he says. "If they had given it more time, the callout would've come home."

"Confessions" has been healthy at retail: It has moved 1.5 million copies, already double that of its predecessor, 2003's "American Life," which has sold 666,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. File-sharing stats from BigChampagne and support from MTV's "TRL" are also solid. But, Biery says, "Radio still looks at callout research."

As Warner Bros. gears up for the release of the album's fourth single, "Jump," Biery remains optimistic, especially since the song was heard in TV and radio spots for the film "The Devil Wears Prada." The label will take a different strategy with this single, Biery says. "We'll begin with AC and hot AC formats," he notes. "Our goal is to have a true hit record with callout and then bring it back to the mainstream top 40 world."

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YEAH I NOTICED z100 was like all hiphop when my friends wrere lisytening to it the other day
it usuallu used to be a mixture of all diff music

heh.

here you cant go like an hour without hearing sorry or hung up (i dont think get together has had its radio debut yet), well at least thats how it was a few weeks ago/around the time both got released.

and yay for jump being the 4th single!

So this is why the radio has been so good recently.

it should have been the second single.

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i think the two first singles are the weakests songs on the album.

id rather have had jump, let it will be, push or like it or not as the first singles.

and holy crap, three green dots!

eh, 'confessions' is what it is... fun meaningless music. not my absolute fave by her, but its a guilty pleasure.

and as if US radio is a meaure of quality. radio sucks in general. airplay is completely paid for and doesnt necessarily equal what the general public wants.

radio. pfft. she's always been a video star. she needs to have better music videos, me thinks then the radio will follow.

They may need more than 3,300 names. Internet petitions are not worth the paper they aren't written on.

But I thought the music was very radio friendly. I guess times change though, and I have never heard US top 40 radio (though I can guess that it isn't necessarily pleasant).

she ain't nobody's ho but her own...
:P
as a Madonna fan I really don't like this kind of forcefeeding american radio to play Madge... its kind of tacky. If dumbasses are eating the mundane redundant "r&b" crap up, let them. Who ever said us, Americans had good taste in the first place.

Bummer...I read the thread title and thought some smarty pants DJ hung up on her Madgesty during a radio interview!!

LOL....shame that didn't happen!

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Sorry 'bout the fire
Sorry 'bout the torch
Sorry i had to have my revenge

Two million years of human evolution and that's the best idea you can come up with?

maybe it's just me, but i didn't think her new album was as accessible to mainstream radio. it was almost straight up disco. the whole way through. like you were supposed to be dancing in a club somewhere. her vocals weren't really the centerpiece of the songs. the beats were. sure, it's not like she hasn't sampled house stuff before, but this album really put it front-stage. when i was listening to it i was thinking that just about anyone could be doing her vocals and it would sound the same. top 40 radio doesn't buy into music this transient. it's gotta be in your face or not there at all.

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"Confessions" brought me back to ole Madge, even though I own most of her CDs, I hadn't loved one since "erotica" (Tho I like alot of "Ray of Light")....It's sad it isn't played on the radio in places, but she's all over Lake Havasu radio, and we're a shit hole town in Az. Whats up with that ?

-MSNBC

It's just you...Europe is playing Get Together 16458337 times a day and Hung Up was I believe the single most played tune on the radio in 2005 in scandinavia. On the other hand, we don't care shit for hip hop over here so it's more of a matter of priority rather than accessibility.

once again, madonna sells better per capita in canada than the USA but does not tour here properly.

she's still getting lots of airplay here considering the new stuff is quite shit.

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A couple of months ago I couldn't get away from all of those songs. They were EVERYWHEREEPOIUQ)(U#)(*)*@)(. Then I come to the States and nothing...relief. Relief.

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Madonna should just abandon the Us and move to Panama.

I think it's so retarded. The US has been invaded by ghetto homophobic and mysoginistic music a la Eminem and 50 cent and they don't wanna know about Madonna but she's HUGE everywhere else. Madonna is huge in europe, one album is bigger than the next, she's huge in latin america, I mean she's huge everywhere but she only tours the US and Europe. Most of the dates in the curretn tour are American.

I think she should do like she did with the Girlie Show, have like 3 dates in America and tour the rest of the world and punish those fuckers!!!!!!!!!!!

that's the reason right there. Nelly Furtado and Mariah are sell outs who jump on bandwagons and don't really make anything different. They just go with the flow and they have commercial success. Madonna is the opposite. She's one step ahead of the pack always, everyone is into hip hop right now and Madonna choses to do something different and goes disco. But next year everyone will be coming out with their own little confessions on a dance floor record and it'll be the new fad. Just like Green Day made their anti Bush album one year after American Life when Madonna and Dixie Chicks took all the heat, and it was then safe for Green Day to be political.

Would they have the balls to be first??? of course not. Only Madonna has them.