By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Monday, October 5, 2015
On Thursday night, I attended the National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Awards in downtown Atlanta as part of their annual Radio Show for radio executives. As luck will have it, Scott Borchetta was there with The Band Perry.
I was able to snag the "American Idol" mentor and Big Machine/Taylor Swift overseer for a eight minutes after the dinner.
On Nick Fradiani, last year's winner: "The first single went top 25 on Hot AC. ["Beautiful Life."] He's in the studio now. And there's a chance we'll get a single out before the end of the year. There's a lot of excitement. We will be working on things we can't announce yet. A lot of great writers and producers are writing with him. It will be a big deal as far as the next single. We are not rushing the album out [like season 13 winner Caleb Johnson with Interscope, who got an album from him within two months of his win, then dropped him this past spring.]. The music has to be right. That's one thing that has been improperly done in the past. Okay, we have to take advantage of the attention. No. The best thing we can do for Nick is make sure we have a great record."
Do records still matter? "Absolutely. We still call them records. They're still recordings."
The vinyl comeback: "I heard a stat that the income from vinyl was more than all of streaming combined last year."
Streaming: "It needs to scale. We expect streaming to scale real quickly. If you look at other services. Sirius and XM went on air in 2001. It's taken 14 years for that to be a real business. It took them combining to be a real business. We expect Spotify and Apple Music to be robust businesses immediately. It takes time. The premium services are the way to go. Free will never go away. The mission is to make the premium services so robust, you convert. The same way Sirius/XM has been successful. Sample our product. If you like it, buy it. If not, don't.
Coming back to "Idol": I wanted to make sure they were focused on finding one more great American Idol. If it's going to be as how about nostalgia then I wasn't interested. I wanted to make sure the show was focused on the contestants and the mission. I'll be joining them next weekend in San Francisco for the auditions.
Competition with 'The Voice" "The competition is for talent. The talent pool is only so deep. They haven't had anybody break with big success. If it's a country artist on "The Voice," we have right of first refusal. We've signed Danielle Bradbury and Cassadee Pope and they've had moderate success. You look at the Voice, it's a great television show. These shows aren't such an outlier anymore. My approach starting last year: let's use this as an artist development deal. Look at the development of Cassadee Pope. We have a new single 'I Am Invincible' that is doing well... I don't think these shows can anoint you a career but they are capable of anointing you an opportunity. That's how I've approached it."
Seeing Nick in three to five years: "I could see Nick in that Maroon 5 vein. He has the chops. He's a great-looking kid. He has great blue-collar feel, a hardworking guy. Nick has all it takes."
Favoritism? Yes. "I'm signing the winner. So I'm looking for someone if you look at the show's biggest success it's been pop and country... If you don't understand that coming in, if you're a super alternative act, if you're coming to American Idol, you know what the show is."
Runner-up Clark Beckham (who clearly frustrated Borchetta on the show by his obsession with 1960s/70s soul): "Clark is very talented. But he's a guy without a format. I think ultimately America chose Nick. We want to hear him on the radio. With the music Clark likes to do, there's not a format for him unfortunately."
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Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Pete Davidson, the youngest "Saturday Night Live" cast member, did a monologue this past Saturday night where he compared Donald Trump to... Sanjaya Malakar of season six fame.
We haven't heard much from that guy in ages, the man who turned the faux-hawk into a massive joke and was the reason Vote for the Worst took off, along with Howard Stern. His Twitter following is a mere 5,660. Instagram? 821. He became briefly popular before these platforms existed and he isn't terribly active on either. He still lives in Seattle, according to his public Facebook page (followers: 191), and identifies his music as R&B and fusion. But that page hasn't been updated in... five years.
So it's hilarious that Davidson brought up a popular punchline when the show was the biggest thing on TV in 2007.
His point: Sanjaya doing so well on the show was funny at first but then not so much.
"America has to stop doing things cos it's funny," Davidson said. "That's what makes me so mad about Trump. Now that he's winning, I now actually have to go out and vote... You know who this reminds me of? Sanjaya of 'American Idol.' You know, the one with weird hair and sang like garbage?"
"It'd be funny to get people to vote of him cos it was funny. The first few times, it was funny. 'Sanjaya, you are safe!' 'Uh.. That's not supposed to happen.' Then one by one, everybody's favorites starting getting eliminated. Then it got to the final our. 'What the hell is Sanjaya doing there? Now we have to go vote!' "
[Sanjaya finished in sixth place but we get your point and thank you for the eight-year-old reference!]
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Carrie Underwood credits her CMA Awards host Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly for inspiring her to start a family.
She has an infant song Isaiah with
Mike Fisher
, the NHL player.
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