COUNTRY RADIO, LABELS FEUDING OVER POP-HEAVY PLAYLISTS.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

At the 27th annual Country Radio Seminar Town Meeting, held Saturday afternoon in the Opryland Hotel, the future of country music seemed uncertain.

While record label executives were crying for rule-breaking changes in country radio's tight playlists, programmers and disc jockeys complained that too much of today's country music isn't country enough.

As country listeners get younger, record labels sign hipper, pop- and rock-oriented acts they hope will attract youthful demographics. But then radio has to play all these newcomers, leaving less space for songs by established artists.

"It is a hit-driven business right now," said panelist Tony Brown, president of MCA Nashville. "Most of the artists having hit records can't even fill a club. We used to create artists that ended up in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Seventy-five percent of the artists having hits now will never be considered for the Country Music Hall of Fame."

Since the country boom began in the late '80s, mass-appeal singers have saturated the airwaves and sold millions of records: Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus, John Michael Montgomery, Tim McGraw and Shania Twain are prime examples.

"If I were to create as a record producer based on what radio is playing, I would have never signed George Jones because he is considered too old for the format," said Brown.

The legends - Jones, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette - no longer get much airplay. But when the current hit-makers turn out songs that aren't country enough, radio balks. Several programmers in the audience cited Reba McEntire's pop ballad "On My Own" and Garth Brooks' rocker "The Fever" as songs by bona fide stars they did not play.

"We've got a lot of watered-down product out there," said one radio executive. "Today, we are looking for one great song and one great artist. Even the great artists can't bring in a great song lately."

But nobody offered any explanation for Twain's success. The Canadian singer's music is empty pop-rock with fiddles. Her big hits - "Any Man of Mine" and "If You're Not in It for Love (I'm Outta Here)" - sound like country-laced Queen or Def Leppard. Brad Chambers, vice president of promotions for Nashville-based independent label Imprint Records and former program director for Dallas' KPLX-FM, thinks labels have to stop pandering to radio.

"The challenge is breaking the rules about the first single being a throwaway, about the first single not being a ballad," said Chambers. "We need to concentrate on putting out great music that will touch the listeners. The format has gotten too compressed. It needs to loosen up."

Love lines: Courtney Love plays a coffee-shop waitress in the upcoming Keanu Reeves film, "Feeling Minnesota."

"She's got a small part, but she's very good," Baigelman said. "So good that on two occasions when people were seeing footage, they said, 'Hey, that actress looks a lot like Courtney Love.' It's a huge compliment to her because she never draws attention to herself as Courtney Love, the rock star or 'the widow of' or anything like that."

"Feeling Minnesota" is Love's first film role in years. She also will star in Milos Forman's film biography of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.