Today marks the first of a two-week series, “Countdown To CRS.” For the next eight days, I will highlight Country Radio Program Directors and Industry leaders to discuss what the Country Radio Seminar means to them, their best memories, and takeaways.
To begin the series, I talked to RJ Curtis, CRB Executive Director, who said he is proud that CRS continues to flourish while several other industry seminars have folded or significantly scaled back.
“I’m really proud of that. It’s a wonderful compliment that people pay us. I don’t say that to be self-congratulatory, but I do hear that a lot and that makes my team, our board, and our whole organization really, really proud. I would attribute that, Jeff, to the care and feeding we put into the event. We have always put a premium on the educational aspect of CRS.”
“That was sort of the foundation of the whole idea of it. The educational process of bringing disparate parts of the industry together to better understand what each other does with the goal of making the genre rise, all boats rise. And that has been since I’ve been involved with CRS as an agenda person starting in 1997 and even before that, coming to CRS starting in 1985 and helping the agenda committee with room counts and things like that.”
For Curtis and his team, education and actionable ideas that attendees can take back to their radio stations are mission-critical.
“The constant message is the educational part; the things that we can bring to attendees that they can take back to the radio station are critical, and the planning and the preparation and strategy behind each session is such that it’s useful and it’s applicable almost immediately. The other thing is it’s a format exclusive event. We know that Country radio, the labels, and the artists have a close family-like relationship.”
“I will say, you’ve seen this at CRS. I am proud of the fact that it is for a week-long event, and then I think the afterglow continues for a couple of months after that. There is a strong enthusiasm and a renewed belief that the things that people are doing in their day-to-day jobs are working and, meaningful, and important. I think that’s what we provide to the industry, and we put a lot of work into that.”
Describe what a first-time attendee might expect to experience.
“Well, over the past six years in my role as Executive Director, a lot of people have come to CRS for the first time, and then they follow it up and send me emails, and I’ll call them later on. I think that their mind is blown.”
“For people who’ve been going to CRS for a long time, it’s like they know the rhythm of it, right? But for first-timers, there’s just so much going on. There’s so much education.”
“There are so many opportunities to see new music, to see music from artists that they’re familiar with, and to meet people that they only read about in the trades or heard about, such as industry superstars. I don’t mean the artists; I mean the people who are programmers and executives and things like that. That’s what they’re going to see.”
“They’re going to see it all; it is a lot to take in. It is a firehose of stimuli coming at them. And you know, if they can get their arms around just a small part of that, I think they’ll have a really rewarding experience.”
And you can’t discount the knowledge and ideas you can pick up just by chatting with people in the halls.
“To your point, the socialization and the getting together and having fun and having drinks is certainly there, but when you meet people, you tend to look at one subject at CRS, right? That’s Country music and what we all do; you’re just going to hear new ideas. You’re going to share some and hear some, and then in addition to the sessions, you can take that home, and that happens in the hallways, too.”
“You probably know that you can have the conversation of the year with someone in a hallway that is just as mind-blowing as anything else you’d see at CRS. I think that’s a really important organic component of CRS. We can’t plan those types of things. That’s just part of the culture and experience that people can have at CRS.”
I have always admired the blending of established radio and music people and their willingness to accommodate young programmers just starting out.
“I’m proud of that, too, and I think all of our attendees have that same feeling about CRS, whether they’re Mike McVay or Cindy Mabe or whoever. They’re willing to talk to anybody. I always encourage new attendees at CRS to go up to people they’ve read about or famous industry executives and say hi. I think that that’ll be the experience that they wanted it to be. That they imagined it to be.”
Curtis is especially excited about this year’s agenda.
“We’re super excited about the agenda. Just the overall educational stuff that we’ve talked about, Jeff, and then some of the special things that we’re working on, like the artist interview. I’m excited about a couple of things on the artist level: the non-performing side, the cycle of a song.”
“I think people will find that to be really interesting. It’s a complete journey from the time that the artist wrote that song, the arc of it landing and then becoming a mainstream hit or a streaming success.”
“Eric Church is going to interview Jelly Roll. That’ll turn into a conversation between two artists. And I like the way we’ve pivoted that artist interview into two artists talking to one another. When you get two artists together, the rest of us are just a fly on the wall. Right?
CRS 2025 is February 19-21 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in downtown Nashville. Online registration is closed, but walk-up registration is available at $799 starting on February 19.
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Jeff Lynn serves as Editor of Barrett Media’s Music Radio coverage. Prior to joining Barrett Media, Jeff spent time programming in Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Madison for multiple radio groups, including iHeartMedia, Townsquare Media, NRG Media, and Entercom (now Audacy). He also worked as a Country Format Editor for All Access until the outlet shut down in August 2023.
To get in touch with Jeff by email, reach him at Jeff@BarrettMedia.com.
