I’m not an avid listener of the radio. Typically, I only listen to the radio when I’m in the car and have somehow forgotten my MP3 player. Even so, I have not been able to avoid hearing the radio ads voiced by Radio One founder and Board Chairperson Cathy Hughes.

The radio industry is coordinating to fight a so-called performance tax that would require radio to pay record labels for the music it plays. On the effort’s web site, No Performance Tax, there are ads available for broadcasters to download. However, Hughes has recorded her own ads in an effort to personally appeal to listeners. As we all know, mainstream radio is a dying industry and a performance tax could be the final nail in the coffin if radio doesn’t make drastic changes to its format and business model. Nevertheless, Hughes’s ads are problematic.

For those of you who haven’t heard the ads, there are at least 3 different ones. In the ads, Hughes uses an indignant and professorial tone. The ads incorporate samples of music from the group New Edition and also clips from a Michael Jackson interview on the recording industry, among other sound bites. One of the ads even features the chorus from Ludacris’s “How Low Can You Go.” The sound bites aim to help Hughes prove that the recording industry isn’t kind to your favorite artists and radio is yet another victim of their greed. In the ads, she mentions specific members of Congress who support the performance tax and asks listeners to consider this information when they go to the polls.

Putting Hughes’ condescending tone aside, the ads make the mistake of assuming listeners are satisfied with radio as it stands. If listeners support Hughes’ attempt to beat the performance tax then that means that radio will almost certainly remain the same. And how many urban listeners would say there’s nothing about radio they would change?

Listen to Cathy Hughes talk about the performance tax:

Radio Needs to be Improved

The fact is radio needs to be improved. Up until the recording industry started to lose money to file sharing services, radio had a very cozy relationship with radio. Though it’s illegal for record labels to pay radio stations to play music, certainly even when the rules aren’t broken labels can provide radio DJs and other employees with perks to get artists on the radio.

Not only does this practice prevent up and coming artists from being played, it also means that many of the same artists (and many of the same songs) are played repeatedly thereby decreasing the listener’s enjoyment of radio. I think it can be assumed that this is one of the many practices that has contributed to radio’s decline. And now that there are all sorts of music services and file sharing sites listeners are even more hyperaware of how much music radio stations DON’T play.

The Performance Tax Doesn’t Sound That Bad On Its Face

To Hughes’s point about how artists are treated, there are very few artists actually played regularly on mainstream radio. Therefore, if radio no longer existed, due to its reliance on relatively few artists, only those artists would be truly impacted. In thinking about how that could play out (possibly a sort of leveling out of the playing field), on the SURFACE** level, it’s hard to justify NOT supporting the performance tax unless you are viciously anti-music label. The average listener probably doesn’t feel a sense of urgency around this issue.

The Ads Are Insensitive

As we sit in the midst of a war, a recession, a major debate about health care, and now, an oil spill that is becoming more disastrous by the second, asking listeners to vote based on the future of radio is out of touch. It’s hard to imagine people basing a vote on radio given it’s relative insignificance to most people.

What Hughes SHOULD Do

Use Real Artists NOT Soundbites

If Hughes must continue recording personal ads, she should perhaps find some independent artists who will say something to the effect of I can’t afford to pay radio to play my music (which is basically what independent artists have been saying for years). But of course then she’d actually have to play the music of non-major artists.

Focus on Regular People

Also, she should actually explain how the performance tax would impact people rather than how they would affect artists. Remember, Cathy Hughes’s audience is urban. Urban listeners are bombarded with music in which artists brag about having material goods. It’s really difficult to get the average listener to feel sorry for how the performance tax would cheat Beyonce and Jay-Z.

Hughes would be better off explaining how the tax would impact regular people. If radio is dismantled there’s an impact beyond what music the listener hears. For many, in particular in minority communities, radio is a source of important information about local events and businesses as well as how to obtain available public resources.

Show That Radio Wants to Be Better Not Stay The Same

Finally, Hughes should make mention of any improvements that radio is attempting to make that would be stifled by the tax. Once again, it’s very hard to make a case for why people should be satisfied with radio in its current state.

**MediaSTRUT is a web site devoted to media tips and analysis. Media strategies are critiqued based on how the target audience would receive them. The full implications of the related policies are not necessarily considered. For those interested, the Obama administration appears to support the performance tax.