I think many artists are basically interchangeable and pretty easily replaced. There are only a few core artists that are really all that important. Program directors should treat the artists who are interchangeable as just that. Seriously, I liked Jo Dee and Terri Clark, but five years of them was enough. They are good entertainers, but just as it is time to cancel a tv show sometimes, it is also sometimes time to get rid of the artists who have grown stale. Sometimes you gotta say “out with the old and in with the new.”

Terri Clark is a brand, a personality, just like Holiday Inn is a brand. And yes, Holiday Inn is pigeonholed by its image (Holiday Inn might fail miserably if it tried to open a 5 star hotel under that brand name) but that image also makes its success possible.

I think there is an upside and a downside. Terri got to be the “fun, uptempo female” and that helped bring her a very nice career for many years. It also gave fans of “fun, uptempo female” music an easy place to look in the CD store when trying to find music. But, of course being the “fun, uptempo female” meant she couldn’t be anything else. But now that her run on radio is over, perhaps she will have the chance to build a new persona and appeal to a new (probably smaller) audience.