>That's the difference between WGAR in Cleveland and a station
>in let's say Henry County Ohio.
That's pretty recent though and the result of calculated market making. I used to see promos in San Francisco that had Ernest Tubb being literally pushed off the tv screen while the voice over said something like 'we don't play that old stuff anymore'. Before that hardcore country had had an urban base for decades.
The Velvet Underground's drummer Mo Tucker says the stuff on mtv is not music, it's dancing. The same thing has happened in country. It's all about doing the two-step with vacuous lyrics thrown in as an afterthought. Forget writing about heartbreak, alcoholism, and all that negative stuff.