Not sure why we are singling out UK radio play, when obviously the primary radio play issue is in the US. Adam is being played in Europe, if the hit fits the local sentiments and tastes like GT did, he is played in AU/NZ if the music fits in, and in parts of Asia too. But the two most competitive markets, the US and the UK have been difficult for him.
ok, what follows is a personal opinion, but it is what I see happening at Radio in the US these days, and it defines, in my opinion, what happens with Adam specifically:
In the US, I think that the radio market is heavily leaning conservative already, and the present political climate does not help. While there have been a few isolated exceptions, for the most part, the moment someone is proudly out, they are usually off the air, especially on all the conservatively leaning stations, which are by far the majority in the US. For stations that are doing something different, it is getting lonesome out there.
I-heart used to be a bit different, for example, but it it is being financially sucked dry as we speak, and apparently nobody in the US seems to either care, or get it, or see what is happening with all the consolidation.There are other examples. All kind of schemes are found. Hostile takeovers, buy-outs, bankruptcy bailouts against ownership transfers, all kinds of crap like that.
All the public attention in the US is on the media diversity in TV and now recently on the role the internet/social media is playing, but nobody seems to care that the majority of mainland America who often listens to radio during work hours or during their usually long drives is more and more served up a radio landscape that is a choice between a few Christian stations, two or three country stations, and one or two pop stations that are purposely reduced to empty social drivel, rather than off-setting the constant conservative messages playing on the other side. So you drive through fly-over country, and you hear 10 channels with conservative indoctrination, and you hear 2-3 stations that talk about the Kardashians or something useless, and that is then seen as ' liberal'. It is not liberal, this is void of message. There is a difference.
All the conservative stations are flush with money, how strange, many of them are either directly owned by major US corporations, or some other form of manipulated media institution, and everybody who does not "belong" is either being bought out or merged into one of the major ones, or otherwise disappears from the market. It is happening at rapid rates, and America does not protest or even discuss this, or see this as a problem, apparently.
Music now plays the backdrop or background tune to this overall cultural development in the States. And guess what, radio directors who do not fit with the present agenda and leadership do not go anywhere. They are not specifically hostile to gay artists, they just don't bend over backwards for them, and that is what they would have to do to get them on the air in the world they live in. So, even if they like what Adam writes, they are not going to spend their precious energy and fight for him. They are fighting just to stay on the air.
Adam needs to have an overwhelmingly successful hit online, then it will cross over to radio, because radio stations do not want to give the appearance to be out of touch. They are followers right now, not leaders. But they are still multipliers and megaphones in the market, and as such, they have a secondary importance.
If Adam can get himself massively played online with a song, then he can break through that wall in the US, and that will automatically, imo, fix his problem in the UK too.
If he wants to break in, his method of success will be more comparable to how Disturbed did it with 'The Sound of Silence'. The outsider breaking through, where genre or band name or any of the usual criteria just doesn't matter anymore.
That is a tall order, but that is how imo the radio world looks right now.
At the same time, having said all this, there is the opportunity to produce the one hit, make it successful online and then cross over. The market can be penetrated that way, it has been done quite a few times. But the straight down label sponsorship path that used to be the traditional pop music model of propagation, I think, that path may be one that is less open to Adam and many others like him, than ever before.
Again, just my opinion, for whatever its worth.
Oh, and I think that using Adam's good looks in the UK market to keep his name in the news, seems to make quite a bit of sense to me. Whether it has success to cross over into any musical success depends imo more on the individual hit and the overall US situation than anything else. Now if any US publication could do a photo-shoot along the same lines with Adam too, that would be great, thank you very much. We shall see.