Greetings!
Another one bites the dust, again! Smooth Jazz 105.3 in Jacksonville FL. is no more. What's left to say? Seems like Internet radio stations and non-traditional marketing options are definitely the wave of the future.
If you're business is jazz, don't get caught in the "Smooth Jazz Shuffle".......send an email to candidjazzads@yahoo.com and find out how we're marketing and promoting national and Indy artist, jazz festivals & events etc. to our 35,000 + all jazz industry jazz consumer database. Also, ask about our non- traditional marketing options. The question still remains, who or what do you think is to blame for the downfall of Smooth Jazz? If you want to sound off on this topic, post it on the blog.
Denise Jordan Walker
4 comments:
All I can say is I'm grateful we're a smooth jazz station supported by our university and our listeners. We don't have to compromise on music to stay alive.
Anyone who has lost their local smooth jazz station is welcome to visit us!
http://www.samford.edu/groups/wvsu/
Smooth Jazz had a good run...I had the honor of producing the first local jazz show in Jacksonville.. Jax Jazz on WIVY-FM. I had a lot of freedom to pick what artists and songs were heard. I tried to gve listeners a good mix of what is now known as smooth jazz, traditional jazz and some artists most had never heard of such as Jim Pepper, a talented Native American Musician.
Over the years radio has constantly gone downhill, thanks to the bean counters and speculators taking over from the broadcasters after de-regulation, and now it looks like Smooth Jazz has gone down the same path. I know I stopped listening to the station here in Dallas a long time ago and switched to the University of North Texas Station because I couldn't take the pablum that the "Smooth Jazz" stations were spewing out courtesy of the so called expert consultants.
I regret to see it passing, but these days its all about the bottom line and screw the listeners.
Makes me glad sometimes I got out of the business.
Commercial Smooth Jazz was killng the Jazz audience. Thank God that they're may be some room for real jazz now!
I've talked with DJ's from my local station and many of them candidly state that they cannot stand what they have been told to play. Even the Program Directors state that they don't seem to have any control anymore and are at the beck of the consulting company.
The argument was that Smooth Jazz was a niche market, and that Adult Contemporary was bigger. These consultants told the Smooth Jazz Stations, (Which had a very loyal and appreciative listenership) that if they threw in some AC vocal music, that someone scanning the dials would hear that song, stay a while and increase their market share.
It has done the opposite. First of all it is intuitively wrong. I don't scan the dial unless I am in a strange city and I am looking for a particular type of music. However, when I turn to my Smooth Jazz station to listen to Jazz and I hear something else, I turn it off. Why? If I want to listen to AC, I'll go there, but when I want Jazz, I WANT JAZZ!
As a result these stations that listen to this are alienating their core listeners and they are flocking to XM, Sirius and the Internet.
Hopefully they will get the message, return to good Contemporary Jazz like the likes of Lorber, Sanborn, Albright, Whalum, etc, and leave AC to those stations.
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