October 6, 2004

‘Three Wooden Crosses’ Hails One Million Spins

The Country Music Association's 2003 Song of the Year "Three Wooden Crosses" recently hit another milestone -- one million broadcast performances. BMI's Joyce Rice presented Million-Air certificates to songwriter Doug Johnson, his publishing company Sweet Radical Music, and co-publisher Mike Curb Music.

Pictured are songwriter Doug Johnson, BMI's Joyce Rice and Mike Curb Music's Drew Alexander photo: Brian Tipton

The song is from Randy Travis's Word Records album Rise and Shine and made history as the first release from a Christian label to top Billboard's Country Singles chart. Johnson's other hits include BMI Country Award winners and Million-Air-certified "Lucky Moon" (The Oak Ridge Boys), "Love Is Stronger Than Pride" (Ricochet) and "I Want My Goodbye Back" (Ty Herndon). Based on an average length of three minutes, one million airplays is the equivalent of 50,000 hours or 5.7 years of continuous airplay.

BMI represents more than 500,000 songwriters, composers, and publishers with more than 7.5 million works.