The Infinite Dial

If you've been following any of our coverage of the way that R&B radio treated the election vs. other music formats, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that most of the musical acknowledgements of President-Elect Obama when the election was called at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday night took place on Urban AC radio. A spot check of Mediabase station monitors for 11 p.m. shows that roughly 50-60% of Urban AC played some song that would have had post-election resonance, compared to only a handful of Urbans and only one other station in any other format.

For most Urban ACs, including those carrying ABC's syndicated Michael Baisden, the song of choice was Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was the #4 played Oldie at Urban AC this week. Others included McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" (actually the most played gold title overall at Urban AC, based on play during the week), Marvin Gaye's version of "The Star Spangled Banner," Maze's "We Are One" Ray Charles' "America the Beautiful," the Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child," Marvin Sapp's "Never Would Have Made It," the Impressions' "People Get Ready," and Incognito's "Change."

Had they been eligible to make the charts again, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" would have been in the top 30 at Urban AC and "A Change Is Gonna Come" would have been in the top 40.

A few Urban ACs such as WHUR Washington, D.C., and WKJS Richmond, Va., did longer election themed sets at 11 p.m. WHUR followed Cooke with Maze's "Happy Feelings," the Voices of East Harlem's "Giving Love," Earth Wind & Fire's "All About Love," the Emotions' "On and On," Quincy Jones & Tevin Campbell's "Tomorrow (A Better You, A Better Me)," finally ending several songs later with Donny Hathaway's "Young, Gifted and Black."

Only a handful of Urban stations seem to have broken format to acknowledge the election, with WPWX (Power 92) Chicago and WPGC Washington, D.C., among those who played Jim Jones' "Pop Champagne" at 11 p.m. WQHT (Hot 97) New York played Young Jeezy's "My President."

By contrast, none of our spot checks of Oldies/Classic Hits, Triple-A or Top 40 turned up any obvious acknowledgement of the announcement. Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)," a campaign staple, was up slightly in spins this week at Classic Hits, but we didn't find anybody who played it at 11 p.m. The sole apparent acknowledgement of the election news we came across at a general-market station was Classic Hits WMXJ Miami, which played the Ray Charles song shortly after 11 p.m.