If Jazz won’t work in Detroit, where will it? Another Smooth Jazz station bites the dust – WVMV in Detroit is moving on…. the jazz will remain on the HD2 channel and the web site. The PPM kills another station nobody really listened to – will the NPR stations that play jazz get the message?
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Smooth jazz has been dying for years. I’m not sure the same dynamics for the NPR-backed traditional jazz stations operate under the same dynamics. They’re not even the same format, really, other than the use of the word “jazz” in the name: traditionalists hate the smooth jazz format. Smooth Jazz has always been pretty much an elevator music/background of the Weather Channel format. (Even the Weather Channel has been moving more toward more popular music lately, though.) It doesn’t really work well for a personality-based commercial radio format.
NPR jazz stations, I’ve noticed, tend to play more eclectic selections in addition to straight jazz. WBFO Buffalo, for instance, plays jazz weeknights and middays, contemporary blues on weekends, and several syndicated programs ranging from Celtic music to African pop. Since they are driven by donations, catering to niche audiences (especially those with $$$), pays off.
But that’s the problem – as NPR has been pushing people to listen over the internet, largely from their web site, donations are drying up at the local stations, especially if they don’t do a lot of local programming to retain a local audience. There is a war of a kind going on between NPR and its affiliates. NPR is holding the $200 million that Ray Kroc’s widow left to NPR, and it has lots of strings to make sure the money doesn’t get taken to absorb the expenses of local station operations. The guy who talked Mrs Kroc into giving NPR the money was given the bum’s rush out the door for pushing too hard for the internet streaming to be national rather than locallly focused and relying on podcasts. If a show isn’t truly live and has no direct interaction with the listeners, there is no reason to not listen to it on a podcast rather than your local NPR affiliate. Very few NPR programs fit that model (Click and Clack does, Pairie Home Companion is live (I think), but no listener interaction unless you’re in the theatre…. BBC has a program called “Have your Say” that’s a call in show on current topics…. most of the rest are people just talking at the audience and most of them are not necessarily tied to current events – so you can listen to them any time and get the same benefit.