IGEN: COLDPLAY AND THE MODERN ROCK AIRPLAY DILEMMA

As I have been traveling around America this past month visiting radio friends and having some great meetings, Coldplay went #1 at Modern Rock! It's the first #1 for the supergroup at the format. Major kudos to the Capitol staff and, of course, to the gunslingers Bill Carroll and Howard P! So why hasn't it ever happened before? Historically, the band hasn't been able to get airplay with the rock-based reporting stations of the format. They did it this time, without those stations, but thankfully had what turned out to be strong callout, a huge up tempo song and a monstrous iTunes campaign.

Interestingly enough, Coldplay went #1 at Modern with 77% of the panel playing it. Yes, that leaves an astounding 23% who didn't play a #1 single. I took a look at the other formats and wanted to see when a song goes #1, how many don't play it?

At Top 40:The #1 song had 100% of the panel on
At Active Rock: The #1 song had 100% of the panel on
At Triple A: The #1 song had 93% of the panel on
At Urban: The #1 song had 99% of the panel on
At Rhythmic: The #1 song had 95% of the panel on
At Country: The #1 song had 100% of the panel on

How about that? If you pay attention to the audience numbers, Coldplay is an easy #1. This week at Mediabase, it had 9.4 million. The Foo Fighters at #2 had 8.4 million. So wait a second here. Can Coldplay go #1 without 23% of the panel playing it, and yet still be #1 in audience by a wide margin? At Modern Rock, the answer is yes. Why? Just take a look at the next #1 at Modern. More than likely that will be Staind's new single "Believe,” which isn’t being played by about 20% of the panel. It's the difference of the markets that makes the difference here. The stations Coldplay doesn't have are, for the most part, in Secondary markets, whereas Staind is missing a bunch of major market reporting stations with 6.2 million in audience.

Every once in awhile, a song will take off in major markets and have a distorted audience to detection number. This week, a couple of songs stand way out in that regards. The M.I.A. record is a whopping #6 in audience, while it’s only #15 on the chart with spins. The other record that stands out is Airborne Toxic Event, whose first single "Sometime Around Midnight" is #36 in spins, but moves way up in audience at #27 due to its impressive major-market airplay.

The Modern Rock chart, for the most part, rewards more of the active-sounding records of the format. It is odd that a reporting panel can be so different. Some of my best friends in radio keep telling me, "Who cares about a chart in 2008?” A bunch of stations tell me they look at the chart for the songs they are not playing. So, in the end, it is what it is. But it’s still pretty damn cool Coldplay went #1!!