Beyoncé has a country hit. How will country radio handle that?

As the country radio programmers settled into their seats bright and early on a recent Friday morning for a presentation in a hotel ballroom at the annual Country Radio Seminar, they were met with a warning. “I want to preface this with: The data really won’t be easy to digest. It’s not a pretty picture, right now, of representation,” said Jada Watson, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa whose research focuses on country music.