Consultant Keith Hill Receiving Death Threats

Keith Hill

Country consultant Keith Hill sparked a controversy on Music Row this week with his advice that radio stations not play female songs back-to-back has resulted in death threats and name-calling via social media.

Earlier this week, the industry publication Country Aircheck ran an interview with Hill, who said, "If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out. The reason is mainstream country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70 to 75 percent, and women like male artists.

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"The expectation is we're principally a male format with a smaller female component. I've got about 40 music databases in front of me and the percentage of females in the one with the most is 19 percent. Trust me, I play great female records and we've got some right now; they're just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females."

On Thursday, he said in an interview with The Tennessean, "I am a marketer. I am not a social engineer."

"What has happened is that this social media thing is driven by emotion, not logic, and I understand that. I am for equality of all things. I am not trying to solve racial issues, geopolitical issues or certainly not the issues between genders.

Country radio stations' libraries typically are composed of 15 percent to 20 percent of female songs. "Even if women were 50 percent of a country music database, I wouldn't play them back to back. I would play them every other record. If they were 25 percent of the database, I would play them every fourth record," he said.

"You can argue all you want. I don't like it. I personally like ballads or females or males or Americana, but it is tossing the salad."

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