You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Just in case you didn't know, Beyonce's Texas Holdham song which led off her Cowboy Carter country album, and you know that Beyonce's country offering was controversial for a number of reasons.
I'm not sure why.
It was controversial for some because those who were in the country music genre, some expressed resistance that they didn't think it was a real country album, or that Beyonce wasn't a real country artist. They call that gatekeeping, and there was resistance from some within the country music genre. It received a lot of country music airplay. I'll get
to that in a moment. But the reason why I'm discussing it or mentioning it is because the news is that Beyonce's Cowboy Carter received zero CMA's nominations Country Music Awards zero. This to me is not surprising at all, and to a person who doesn't know how the music industry works, it may surprise them.
They may say, well, that's so unfair, or did you see how.
Much radio airplay issues it was number one on all these country stations. Well, let me just disabuse you of that notion and tell you how it works. Even today, when a song goes number one on your favorite station, it's usually because the record company behind the song is providing a lot of incentives, let me put it that way, putting a lot of support behind the record. It's not
you calling the radio station. It's about the record company doing special prize giveaways with radio stations and prize flyaways, you know, being the twentieth caller will fly you and a guest.
To see Beyonce and Las Vegas.
YadA, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, where you do these types of com tests with the radio station, or you promise a Beyonce interview, and then the radio station will play the Beyonce song a whole hell of a lot in promotion of the contest, the flyway, the giveaway, and so the radio station gets something out of playing it, and the artist gets something out of the radio station playing it, which means it's not organic, That's what I'm
getting at. And so all this radio airplay of this Cowboy Carter album when it comes to terrestrial music radio station, so I'm not talking about streaming.
It had to do with that.
Not those who were country music listeners in the respective markets calling in and wanting to hear it. I mentioned that because when you have an actual award show like the CMAS, the people who vote on them are the actual country artists, the music piers is not unlike the Grammys, if I'm not mistaken, And so if you don't have the support of the actual industry, the country industry, you are not going to be recognized by the CMAS. And I say this as someone who worked for the Grammys
many years ago. But some things have not changed in the intervening years, and sometimes people forget maybe not you, but sometimes people forget that the nominations, I should say, most of these award shows are about the record companies throwing their weight around. The record companies usually get to decide who is going to be. When I say the record companies, you have these voting members who are they
have allegiances, they have connections to record companies. Like when I was working at the Grammys, you'd have people who vote for everyone who is on the same label as him or her, or they vote for all of their friends. It's not necessarily a recognition of the best music or the most popular art or the most sales. It was all about relationships and allegiances and things of that nature. When I was working at the Grammys, we'd have people nominated every single year, whether they had a BS album
or not. Like, for example, if Mariah Carey came out with something, she automatically was going to be nominated in any category they put her in.
There were times where she.
Was nominated for music that hadn't even hit the radio airwaves. It was released in stores and so eligible to be nominated, but people just automatically voted for it the academy members because of relationships and allegiances, and we were working the Grammar's like that song no one's even heard it yet, hasn't even played on the radio. We're talking about pre internet, so the only way that you could hear music back then was on the radio. That's how these awards shows
likely work. Like for example, the CMA Awards, the nominees and winners are determined by more than six thousand industry professional members of the Country Music Association. These are voting members within the Country Music Association. Their relationships, their allegiances, and they don't for the most part, include Beyonce, she is an outsider musically. It's not saying that her music
is bad. It's not saying that whether we're going to have this conversation about whether it was country enough, is that she is a country music outsider.
It may not be fair, but it's a fact.
And you can say, well, what about all the artists who go from pop to rap and they end up with with nominations or Grammy Awards. Yeah, it does happen in that time. Sometimes you have pop artists and they'll do a hip hop song and they'll end up with nomination or even a Grammy Award because hip hop doesn't gatekeep like that. Country music historically has been very much about keeping outsiders out. This did not surprise me at all, but it's somehow controversial.
It's interesting because the very first thing that I saw that I said to shake my head at is the cries of racism and that they were hating on her because she was black. And I'm like, if you all knew how the award and eligibility process worked, you would know for a fact that that's further than the truth, and that is how you know, Like the song Tipsy and I cannot remember the young man's name, but he
is a black artist. His song is eligible because his song is an actual country record by an artist who professes himself to be a country artist off the gate and his record is in there. So that right there says well, that argument now falls flat on its face. So that's the thing that I think threw me the most this morning.
I think a lot of times it's easier to reach for those things. Some things are racist, not all things are racist. This is one of those things which is definitely not racist. This is one of those things where it's not about race. You just have to have a wider understanding of how country music works.
Now.
I'm not disregarding the racist history of country music.
That should not be pushed aside.
But as far as Beyonce expecting as a musical outsider to be a CMA nominee or winner when she hasn't had any time or history in the genre, I don't care if she's from Texas and grew up loving country music. Musically, she is an outsider that it's not reasonable to expect that she's going to be embraced by the country music professionals and industry insiders who actually vote. Yeah, And I've
seen it with other artists and different genres. And I would think that if people took the time to actually learn how these award shows are voted on, then they'll better understand. Like for example, Little nas X he won at the CMAS, so it's not about excluding someone of them being black. But Lil naz X, I think was
more available and did country music interviews. He did a country music remix, and it was one of those things where it wasn't like the label was trying to force everything Little nas X on the country music industry.
It's just one song.
Well, when he came out, his entry into the music game was through a country collab with That's right.
I forgot about the race. Sorry, that's right.
So that was his introduction and everyone thought, how is this guy a contrust And he is the one that came out later and said, this was just a form of music that I grew up with and I appreciate, but I am an artist of all music. And I think he called backlash because people wrongly believed him to be a country artist, when in fact he said, no, I am a pop artist and that is something that's true to my heart.
And also I forgot the whole Billy Ray Cyrus connection made that acceptance a little bit easier. I know people had some a bad taste in her mouth about the way Beyonce went about it is it was almost a gimmick. So she could get Album of the Year, and she still may get Album of the Year when the Grammys roll around. But as far as the Cmas go, if you know how country music works, they're not into gimmicks like that. You're not going to get industry love like that.
So I was not surprised in the least.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I can't speak for Twilets Sharp, I can't speak for Mark Ronner, who are my contemporaries in age. But I was a kid who grew up on Johnny Carson. I grew up on late night television, and honestly, when people talk about David Letterman, no disrespect. I was a Johnny Carson kid, the great Karnak. That to me was the golden age of late night television. That time is gone. Late night television as we once knew it is not as popular. Some may say it got too political in its monologues.
Maybe maybe not.
I don't subscribe to that, but that's what people want to often attribute it to. I think it's just an evolution of how we consume entertainment, and the idea of appointment watching a late night variety show or a comedic bit show at eleven o'clock eleven thirty is not what people do anymore. I mentioned that because NBC is scaling back on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. They're cutting it from five nights to four nights a week, and then they're going to air reruns on Friday nights. What
does that tell you? Friday night number one is not a big TV night. It used to be not anymore. Late night television used to be a really really big thing. It used to be not anymore. It used to be where late night television would destroy cable. Late night television
not anymore. It's Great Gutfeld, who has a larger viewership than most, if not all, I think of the late night television host When I say late night, I'm talking about ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS is The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show. But all of those shows that I just told you about. They're also only taping four shows per week. Late Night with Seth Myers has only been airing four original episodes weekly,
so they're all contracting. It's not I wouldn't say it's not necessarily in economics, saying, yes, it's economics within studio budgets, but it's not economics because of the economy. I just think there's a dwindling market and audience for this type of entertainment. And again, I talk about Twala and Mark, how we are age contemporaries. When we were grown up, Once upon a time, it used to be the variety show.
Flip Wilson had a variety show laughing. You know, there was so many, so many people who had variety shows. That was a big thing in the nineteen seventies until it wasn't a thing. And you could say, well, the Tonight Show has been on for decades and decades. Yes, yes, but things are cyclical and things ebb and flow. There was a time in which game shows were a huge deal in the nineteen seventies. They weren't so much in the eighties and nineties, and now they're kind of coming back,
but not exactly the same way. And this is how I think late night television is going through one of those evolutions. I don't know if we'll have late night TV as we once knew it by the end of this decade.
I'm not trying to be fatalistic.
I'm just saying you should be able to read the handwriting on the walls.
The space is not growing, it's actually contracting.
I think after Johnny Carson retired, we all kind of followed Leno for a while, and it took us a minute to get on board with Leno. But when Leno went off the air, for me, that was the end of my need or reason to watch late night television me too.
That was it.
And I'm sorry, no no hit on anyone, but it was just and I loved our Sinio, but there was something about the Tonight Show and the legacy that he even passed along and sang sin and blessed Lino to carry on. And I thought what Lino did was new and vibrant, and he carried it as long as people were. But when he signed off, I'm like, there's no because I used to look at interviews that he would have on guests and say, now I want to go see that movie this weekend or I want to see the show.
It kind of was the temperature gauge on entertainment for me. And after he signed off, I was like, I'm okay, okay, that.
Was ten years ago that Jay Lintel left, and he might be listening right now, longtime CAFI listener. He's actually been on the show before, and Arsenio listens to KFI a lot, and he may be listening as well. But Arcinio, his first foray into late night television was a good thirty years ago, and he changed the game back then.
But I think the game has changed since then.
And the whole idea of doing a late night television show in the vein of the nineteen's, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, I don't know if it has a place today because people aren't watching broadcast television. That's number one, late night broadcast television number two, and I think it's a very niche type of television.
You're going to say, Mark, Well, I don't think anybody could ever replace Johnny Carson. First of all, everybody our age kind of wished Johnny was our dad, right, But the thing about Johnny was that he was a funny, genuinely a funny, skilled comedian, but also cool enough to stand up against not just anybody in the rat pack, but the whole rat pack. He was the whole pack, and you're not going to find that again. So you guys are talking about Letterman, who is also, I believe,
a skilled comedian who had really honed his craft. But a lot of people, including me, went to Letterman. I still religiously watch Colbert and Myers and Jimmy Kimmel at least they're monologues every single night when I go home from work, because whether or not you like or dislike any of them particularly, they're absolutely a barometer for pop culture and current events.
They are.
But also going back to watching broadcast television, the most I've watched of Jimmy Fallon is on YouTube, where they'll do these music pieces where they'll bring in the whole band and they'll use a kazoo.
I forgot what it's called. Yeah, And I will admit that I'm not a Fallon watcher. Of the major talk show hosts. He seems to be like the least edgy one, and I've heard people who have worked with him say, well, he wants everybody to love him, and that's you can't be that in late night televion. No, Johnny didn't care about that.
Yeah, but again, it is a different world in many respects how we consume media entertainment, what actually works in broadcast television, which I think is a declining industry. We look at who's winning Emmys, you know, Immy's just passed you looking at the proliferation of streaming services and how they've dominated television as we know it. It's not late night television what we used to watch decades ago.
It used to be much more like a cocktail party. And if you go back and watch any of these old Tonight shows, which I'll admit that I do from time to time, there's a lot on YouTube. They were very unplanned, they were very spontaneous. They had awkward moments. Everything now moves right along. There've been pre interviews, everything is agreed on beforehand, and it was a whole different scene altogether, in addition to how fragmented all the media is today.
But that was our.
Reality TV of the day. Because it was unscripted, it was much more edgy. You had different types of conversations that you wouldn't have in daytime TV or regular broadcast TV. It's not edgy anymore because it's just broadcast TV and you're competing with streaming.
Oh yeah, and don't leave Dick Cavit out of that either. Here that's not at all unbelievable interviews and some immortal moments on his show. But you're not going to get a show now on late night where say, Shelley Winters pours a drink over all over Reed's head, or they give Uri Geller a chance to bend a spoon and he can't do it under the pressure.
You know, But remember late night television, those couch interviews.
You got to see your stars in a very relaxed setting, oftentimes highly lubricated. Oh yeah, and you've got a sense of their real personalities. That doesn't mean anything now because you can get on social media. You see, we're overexposed to these individuals, so we kind of know what their real personalities are. It's not a window into people like it used to be. It's just not special anymore. It's definitely not this. But there's still some good stuff on there.
And I even if I am not the biggest fan of whose fallon, there are two Jimmy's I was trying to get the right Jimmy. A lot of people like him, and when I did work at NBC Universal, he had a huge number of fans there in the building.
I'm quite sure he does.
I just don't watch any of them anymore, not to be disrespectful. When we come back, we're going to say goodbye to one of the greatest songwriters of all time. And you may not know his name, but you damn sure know his music. Will Jennings, that's next.
You're listening to later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
And being in the music industry, sometimes we lose sight of the songwriters. I should say being in the music industry, you're very much more sensitive to knowing who the songwriters are, not just the artists who may perform songs. You may wrongly assume that because someone sings a song, they also wrote the song, and more times than not, that's not the case. Will Jennings passed away today at the age
of eighty. He was an Oscar winner for My Heart will go on Celine Dion's song obviously from Titanic and if you know the movie, an officer and a Gentleman. The song of Where We Belong which was sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warns that also won an Oscar And you think about some of these timeless hits that will transcend time. You may remember the people who sung the song, but you may not know who wrote the song. And these are songs which were written by Will Jennings.
He won those two Academy Awards, and did you know for example, he wrote Tears in Heaven performed by Eric Clapton, which.
Was used in the movie Rush.
He won also a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, as well as Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
He won three Grammy Awards.
And you may think of great vocalists like Celine Dion or even Whitney Houston. Well it was Will Jennings who wrote Whitney Houston's number one song, Didn't We Almost Have It All?
And Barry Manilow's Looks Like We Made It. These are anthems.
These are great songs which will be remembered for all time pop classic music. Will Jennings was inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame in two thousand and six, and he was a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And I always say that music is the closest thing we'll ever have to a time machine, because music, especially the songs we love, will take us back, at least emotionally, to exactly who we were, where we were, and when we were. Think about a favorite song. Think about the
song My Heart Will go On from Titanic. You probably will remember where you were when you first heard the song. You probably will remember hearing it as part of Titanic soundtrack. You probably will remember the emotions you had at time. Maybe you were dating someone, maybe you were going through a breakup.
You know.
But music is always very closely tied to who we were at the time in which we remember that song. So I thought it would be appropriate to at least say a few words in support of Will Jennings, someone that you may not know if you weren't really connected to music, but I knew, and anyone who was really connected to the music industry knew because of all the many hits that he had written for some of our favorite artists, you and me. You also had major hits
with Steve Wynwood. Obviously, we played that in coming out of the Break, Dion Warwick, Tim McGraw, so many people. And also you may remember a few weeks ago we had a discussion about artists selling their music catalog and how artists, songwriters and also performers they want to be
able to cash out while they're still here. And Jennings sold his music last year, and it's even though the terms of the deal weren't disclosed publicly, it was estimated that it was around anywhere between seventy and eighty million, and you could tell just by the hits that I listed that it could easily be worth that and more so. Unfortunately, Will Jennings has gone now at the age of eighty, but his music that we all know and love will be with us for the rest of our lives and more.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
And before we get out of here, you look, it's hard to measure up to Johnny Carson. I don't think anyone can measure up to John Carson, but I think it's fair to acknowledge that the industry as a whole, I don't think you can support as many late night shows as we have right now, and I don't know if he can support I don't know if people growing up now or coming of age now, or coming into the own as adults and entertainment consumers are looking for
traditional late night television. And I think that's the difference between now and let's say twenty fourteen when Jay Lennel left, Because even you Mark Ronner, you may get home and you say that you catch all the monologues, but you're not watching it for the interviews and the whole show, are you.
Well, they all do the interviews differently, and so if it's somebody I'm interested in, yes I will, But I don't watch all three shows from start to finish it.
Who could do that? Well? When I was in college, we watched.
Lino and depending on the person who I control the TV, Letterman just about every night from beginning to end.
Yeah, I couldn't do that with Letterman. After the famous Bill Hicks routine, you know what I'm talking about. I don't know Bill. Well, you know who Bill Hicks was. He died very young, if I believe pancreatic cancer was. He was kind of positioned to be the next George Carlin, or at least an heir to George Carlin, and he did an immortal Jay Leno routine that Leno must be familiar with.
It's about Jay Leno.
Selling his soul hawkin' doritos and asking Joey Lawrence, so, so you got a car?
Can you drive? Can you drive?
And at the end of the bit, Leno loses his mind and goes on a murder spree. It's hilarious and it's worth looking up. You can find it on YouTube.
And that turns you off of Letterman.
Turned me off of Leno because I was already much more of a fan of Letterman's more offbeat, sarcastic humor.
Okay, okay, yeah, for me, I used to watch it beginning to end one because look, you know what I do.
I love the interview style.
I love the conversational style of Johnny Carson or a Jay linno interview. That's something where I always loved what was special about late night And it didn't matter the guest. I felt that it was someone I would want to know about because they were on late night television.
It used to be a thing.
And it was also this you would see the next great comedian on late night television.
Oh yeah, but the thing is you want to see how Johnny interacts with anybody, whether it's rak Kela Welch or a guy with a big twine ball from Nebraska or something like that. That was what was great about Johnny. But it's not the same now. It's I mean, I like Colbert and I like John Oliver too, but it's a whole different ball of axe.
It's different, and I think it comes down to the fact that the shows today are more about the show and less about the host. The Tonight's show is bigger than Jimmy Fallon.
Yeah, and one.
Thing that you haven't mentioned because it was before both our times was Jack Parr. But if you go back and look at his old shows, I mean, he may not have been the very first late night host. I think it was Steve Allen, but he was incredible. But you want to watch it because of Jack park You don't know what he's going to say, because he's sort of a volatile guy and a little bit of an egomaniac, but also tremendously witty, and the whole show is about how he responds to things and people.
And there's something else we talked about growing up late night television was near the end of the programming schedule for TV. If you're not old enough to know this, TV went off back in the day. As far as programming, it would sign off you get static until you got the star spangled banner some five in the morning.
Yeah, and that sign that says do you know where your children are?
Right? Or you get the test pattern.
And for late night television back in the day, it was the only thing.
There was nothing competing against it.
There was not like you could go home and say, well, let me see what's on Netflix or let me see what's stored up in my DVR that I want to watch.
No, it was late night television or bust. It was.
And people at this point may not understand how famous and how powerful and how enormously rich Johnny was. As a result of that, he was the only game in town for late night TV for a very long time.
Well not only that, think of how many careers that he made, I don't want to say destroyed, but short circuited just by appearances on his show.
Oh yeah, if he called a comedian over to the couch after their set, they were made. If he iced you out because he got mad at you for anything at all and anything. And I've read recently the book by his old lawyer Bushkin. If you got on his bad side and you never knew what it was going to be, you were done.
In Hollywood, not even well put his away, not even done as far as coming on the Tonight Show. You because there were fewer places that you could land or be seen or be discovered. And that's why it was so coveted to have time on the Tonight Show for anyone. I mean, even if you were an established actor and you were promoting something, you had to go see Johnny or hopefully you get the chance to go see Johnny.
Wielded his power very capriciously, and I gotta say I love Joan Rivers, but she didn't do herself any favors by going against him and getting agreeing to do her own show without talking to him. You kind of he was sort of the king, and you go to him for his blessing.
He was, and then you hear stories about how he let Harry Belafonte sit in for him for a week and how that shames the whole perception of Late Night and how it opened the doors for a lot of people. He could be very generous and he could be very cantankerous.
I didn't know about the Belafonte thing. Yeah, yep, it's later with Mo Kelly. We'll see tomorrow.
KFI AM six forty We are alive everywhere in the iHeartRadio app free.
Range, non genetically modified, handcrafted, artisanal groute and freeze emulating.
Talk K S I M K O S T HD two
Los Angeles, Orange County loves Everywhere on the radio.