24 ALL-AROUND FOR "RIDGE"

This week, Dierks Bentley's "Up on the Ridge" moved up to #24 on both Mediabase and Billboard, which was a move of 4 spots and 1 spot, respectively. It's still experiencing positive growth on both charts, with 9 new stations adding it, slightly more than 300 more spins than last week, and audience growth that is very, very close to 2 million new listeners. This next week, it will be feeling heat from new singles from Lady A and Billy Currington which are rising very, very quickly, so I'm not anticipating very much movement, in spite of continuous growth.

The Billboard Country Update includes information from Callout America, which is a survey similar to Rate the Music. Perhaps not surprisingly, "Up on the Ridge" is currently the most polarized song on the radio -- people pretty much either love it or hate it! It's only in its 2nd week showing on the Callout chart, so I'm hopeful that as more stations play it, and people hear it more, that some of the "hate it" will at least move to neutral. But it's very interesting to see how well the song is doing despite a rather ... tepid ... public opinion. To me, that says that the folks at radio are the ones that are pushing this song, and we should do everything we can do to encourage that. Thank them for playing it every chance you get! Call, email, tweet, or thank them on Yes.com.

Keep up the great work, Congress. I still believe there is plenty of room on Country radio for a little bluegrass-ish influence!

~ Carrie S. (DBC Rep/Chart Reporter - NC)