Longtime WATZ-WRGZ/Alpena, MI Music Director and CountryBreakout Reporter of the Year winner Susie Martin is retiring from the station after 18 years. Her last day is April 27, and after that she can be reached at susie-martin@charter.net. WATZ newsman Phil Wenzel will take over Martin’s MD role with the company. Congratulate him at pgwenz@gmail.com.

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Lee Brice’s new album Hard 2 Love hit stores today (4/24), and Premiere Radio Networks’ Big D and Bubba are among the recording credits. Brice invited the popular radio hosts to introduce the song “Parking Lot Party” on Hard 2 Love, marking the first time Big D and Bubba have appeared on a music album.

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WGSQ/Cookeville morning co-host Mary Mac has been included on Country Weekly’s “Country’s Hottest Bachelorette” contest, the first time anyone other than an artist has made a list. Mary Mac’s co-host Styckman hatched the idea to write-in Mary’s name on the ballot, and listeners made the idea a reality. “We always say we have the best listeners in the world, and for me this proves it,” said Mary Mac. “I’m so overwhelmed and humbled at their amazing response to our show.”

Kudos to the Big Machine Records promotion team and all its agents on earning a second week at No. 1 on MusicRow’s CountryBreakout Chart with Rascal Flatts’ “Banjo.” Doesn’t it kind of make you want to get out of the office and into the great outdoors? If you’re stuck behind a desk right now, then maybe watching the song’s video will hold you over until it’s quittin’ time. Check it out:

If you are a big box retailer (and how many of you are?) a new term sends chills through your business blood: Showrooming. Argh! Like the Best Buy CEO (make that Ex-CEO) doesn’t have enough problems on his hands.

The term refers to shoppers who “browse” at brick and mortar stores, treating these stores like catalogs, then go online and buy their product choice at a retailer like Amazon.

Many of these shoppers stand in the store, right in front of the products (like TVs, refrigerators and other big ticket products), use their smart phones to compare prices, maybe even ordering from one of the sites while a sales person stands by watching a potential commission going into the ether.

No one can blame the shopper. Often there is no tax involved in online shopping. Even my 10 year old daughter hates paying tax on purchases, and she is spending my money. Many of the online sites are offering free shipping when the price is significant enough.

Most retailers have opened online sites to compete with Amazon but in “most” cases Amazon still is able to undercut the price. Additionally in many cases the B&M retailer has a cheaper price online than in their stores.

What these retailers are discovering is that their battle is moving online and they need to build loyalty with their customers. This may end up costing them some money and it may begin the demise of their B&M facilities.

Look what happened to Borders. Just last week the federal government stepped in and chastised the online bookseller for price fixing. These are guys who have only licensing as an overhead for selling books to e-readers and they are protecting their position by over-charging for new books. I understand that they have denied this charge but, DUH! If you can buy a REAL book for $15.00 (hardcover, shipping, inventory costs, personnel costs) why should you pay $14.99 to have one e-mailed to your e-reader?

Okay, Bucky, what does any of this have to do with radio and records? Many of you already see the connection.

Is radio becoming the brick and mortar of the music business? Is the CD, under attack by Walmart for taking up too much floor space and The Big Three for taking up too much dashboard space, going the same way?

A study this week reported that 42% of the US population is listening to Internet Radio. Without getting into too many numbers, because my brain starts to swell, 65% of these IR fans also listen to terrestrial radio (though not so much in the 18-24 demo).

I wonder which group is showrooming? Those getting new music on TR or those getting new music on IR? And will one or the other aggressively try to claim the new music crown?

I have four radios in my office: a WiFi radio, an HD radio, a pick up “what ever I can” radio, and one on a disposable phone I bought when I lost my phone last month that has an FM tuner and allows me to walk around listening to radio.

At home I have a radio in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. Of course I have one in the car.

The bad news for those radio manufacturers, and at some point for terrestrial radio, is that I can do everything above on my smartphone.

For record companies it is still too easy to transfer music from friend to friend and I suspect that services like Amazon Cloud Drive and iCloud allow multiple users access to the same account seamlessly.

I know that my wife, daughter and I share one Netflix account across their TV in Los Angeles, mine in Morgantown and their iPads, Kindles, iPhones and my Droid.

Looking at my phone, I get every Major League Baseball game every day and my choice of the feed for $15 a year from MLB.com. I have 20 station apps, iHeartRadio, Rdio, DAR.fm, Pandora, Spotify, Scanner Radio (which is kind of fun), and Stitcher.

I also have Hulu Plus, Netflix, TV.com, Blockbuster, two e-reader programs and a half a dozen newspapers.

I also have an unlimited data package (at this point) and if I can find an electrical outlet when my battery dies, I can be connected without owning a real radio, CD player, TV or a newspaper subscription. (For you younger readers people used to actually deliver a physical newspaper to your home or office. You  would subscribe to the newspaper, sending in real money, and in the middle of the night an elf would come by and drop it off at your door. I know, how unbelievable is that? )

I hope that you didn’t read this far hoping for a revelation on how to solve this online issue. Because if I had one I would be selling my ideas to some rich guy for a billion dollars and the article would have ended much before this sentence.

I just point these things out and try to tie in everyone’s woes so we keep in mind that, while there is not going to be thousands of empty retail outlets and radio is not going to stop using towers to communicate with the almost 300 million Americans that listen each week, we do need to have plan B ready.

Many people are lazy. We went from getting up and changing channels (oh man, the younger readers are going to need therapy if I keep this up) to remotes to everything you need in your pocket. The easier it becomes for the consumer, the harder it becomes for us to feed their desires and still make a profit.

Once upon a time, the sound of a banjo in the woods was linked with terror and nightmares, thanks to its inclusion in the 1972 film Deliverance and numerous parodies. A few notes of that memorable “Dueling Banjos” sequence and that was one’s cue to get out of town post-haste.

Well, Big Machine’s Rascal Flatts is aiming to set the record straight with CountryBreakout No. 1 song “Banjo,” penned by Tony Martin, Wendell Mobley, and Neil Thrasher. The uptempo single makes the deep woods sound like a place of fantastic escape and respite, built on a bed of chugging guitars and mixed with some incredibly deft banjo pickin’. The superstar trio recently played the song on the ACM Awards stage with comic legend and banjo aficionado Steve Martin.

This No. 1 accolade is well-timed, of course. Rascal Flatts’ eighth studio album Changed just hit stores on April 3, debuting at No. 1 with over 130k units sold. The group went for a unique and high-visibility approach for the release, offering a one-night-only movie theater concert experience which aired on more than 650 screens nationwide.

After each TV awards show we get information about sales increases because of the TV exposure. I’ve been wondering if programmers were as tuned in with the TV performances and then translated that to their rotations.

Obviously Clear Channel had a huge impact on the chart position of the new Kenny Chesney/Tim McGraw song, as they played it every hour on their Country stations.

I am NOT taking any credit for this but weeks ago I suggested, in this space, that stations use this particular song as a way to promote the TV show and take credit for owning the song. First off, Clay Hunnicut is much smarter than me so he isn’t using my ideas and Clear Channel did something similar with the Madonna single around the Super Bowl months ago.

Certainly this song will perform better than the Madonna single that died a fiery death shortly after this stunt.

I do believe though that there is no media that responds like radio can, if programmers make the effort. How many stations were playing the winner’s songs on their evening shows? The program ended at 11 PM (or 10 PM CST) local time and stations could have done an ACM recap for the rest of the evening. That is, if they had live programming in the evening.

How many stations played the new music from the program the next morning? The Kenny and Tim song was available at midnight on Play MPE but unless the morning show is hosted by the programmer or music director, it is unlikely the song was available for airplay until later in the day.

So I looked at CD sales after the show and quite frankly I am not seeing the normal bounce. The big winner was the Zac Brown Band who saw a jump of 5000 CDs from week to week and a jump of 13 spots on the sales chart. Jason Aldean saw an increase of about 3000 from week to week with My Kinda Party.  It jumped nine slots on the CD sales chart but the sales increase was not all that spectacular. It deserved more.

Other significant jumps were seen for Taylor and Lady A. Overall this was a poor CD sales week. The number one seller was, wait for it, Adele. 21 sold 88,000 CDs last week. Come on. Are there even 88,000 people who still don’t own this CD?

So let’s look and see if the performances had any impact on programmers and what they scheduled.

Only four songs had 400 plus spins: the aforementioned Kenny-Tim duet (which doesn’t count, because it wasn’t played at all the week before), Jason, Miranda and the Band Perry. All three had big performances on the show and two of them carted off trophies.

Looking at just Monday (4/2), the biggest spin increases were from Jason, ZBB, Miranda, Luke Bryan and Eric Church.

Some of the other memorable performances on the show went without sales or spin increases. The Rascal Flatts performance was fabulous. Spins were up but more in line with the growth of the record.

I have written that I think Luke Bryan is the next big guy and his performance was less hip shaking than the CMA appearance (read: that’s good) but it was not reflected in sales. Spins were up about 300, but the two previous weeks spins were up 500 each.

Sara Evans, who I thought hit a home run on the ACM show (versus losing attention to a near naked lady flying over the CMA Awards audience), had a steady sales week but does not have a current single on the chart to measure. Maybe that speaks more strongly for the show’s performance.

The Band Perry really was a double winner: up over 400 spins (with “Postcard From Paris”) and up 18 spots on the sales chart, albeit with only a 1500 increase in sales from week to week.

Toby had a big increase with “Beers Ago” even though “Red Solo Cup” was his show performance. Certainly there are enough Toby Fans that associate Beer and Red Solo Cups. I do not see an increase in digital or single sales on the song though. Apparently we already all have it on our phones and iPods.

We know that radio is the number one source for introducing and ultimately selling more Country music than anything else but TV must have something to say. Blake Shelton’s “Honey Bee” sold 138,544 digital downloads last week. He was on TV more than any other performer with the ACM hosting duties and The Voice.

With the incredible success of the ACM awards show, and the fact that this was one of the best-produced shows in memory, I would have liked Country radio to be more aggressive in taking advantage of this huge tune in.