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Is Smooth Jazz 'JJZ still on the air?
- Thread starter Wimmmex
- Start date
Yes- it's airing on the HD2 sub-channel of 106.1 FM WISX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISX
You can listen online here:
https://wjjz.iheart.com
You couldn't just look this up yourself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISX
You can listen online here:
https://wjjz.iheart.com
You couldn't just look this up yourself?
Nope! Got you to do the digging for me. ;-) Thanks!
Is the AM still on the air with the Jazz format? Was is 1480AM?
Wasn't Smooth Jazz JJZ on a full-powered FM in previous years?
I recall they had DJ's doing the intro's etc.....instead of the pandora feed Smooth Jazz which sounds kinda lifeless.
I would think Phila would be a good city (better than most) for this format. Any life to Smooth Jazz in Philly?
Perhaps reading the research someone presented would be beneficial.
Any life to it? Being on a sub channel....very little life.
1480 AM is now teamed with 105.3-HD2 and a translator in Center City on 102.5FM. It airs "Breakthrough Radio." A sort of Adult Hits format partnered with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. (Listen here: https://www.iheart.com/live/breakthrough-radio-3405/)
JJZ was on 106.1 for 13 or so years... from 1993 to 2006. After iHeartMedia dropped the format... Greater Media (now Beasley) picked it up on the newly-moved into Philly 97.5. It was there for about 2 years before being dumped again.
As for life to Smooth Jazz? No. Two operators in the market dumped it due to lack of ratings/revenue. Doubt anyone is really jumping to get on that wagon. Nationally it has shown to be a dead format now.
It was the switch from ratings diaries to PPMs which killed Smooth Jazz:
https://www.radioinsights.com/2015/04/can-ppm-kill-formats.html
Maybe one day Urban One could try it one of their local flounderers for cross-selling purposes. Then a couple years later, they could swap it with another of their frequencies. And a couple years after that, they could swap them back. Stranger things have happened.
Perhaps reading the research someone presented would be beneficial.
It's a discussion board. ...ergo, discussion.
Smooth Jazz was on the decline before the PPM, with the audience aging very rapidly... faster than the natural aging of the population.
Smooth jazz was dying in the non-PPM markets, too. It was becoming too old for advertisers to be interested in; it wasn't the encoding process... it was just a format in decline no matter what the measurement method.
However, the PPM sped things along. Smooth Jazz was not a high cuming format that looked "good" due to extremely high TSL. So when a more modern measurement system revealed that the long TSL was actually a bunch of short listening spans that did not add up to the all day listening shown in the diary, the stations collapsed.
In other words, Smooth Jazz failed definitively when it was seen that the smaller number of cumers did not listen anywhere nearly as long each day as they wrote in the diary.
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There happens to be a fairly long thread of recent comments on the Smooth Jazz page titled "How Smooth Jazz Took Over 90s Radio." Several posters give their comments as David did above on why Smooth Jazz suffered such a rapid death. It went from being a top performer in many markets to no where in a matter of several years.
Philadelphia was a rare market that still had a Smooth Jazz station up till about a year ago, but only on AM, 1480 WDAS-AM. It was likely a labor of love from someone in iHeart's Philadelphia operations, since few people, even Smooth Jazz fans, are going to listen to it on AM. Even when it was identifying itself as "WJJZ" on the air, iHeart didn't even spend the $200 to get the FCC to really change the call letters to WJJZ.
When the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was willing to lease the station, iHeart said "Yes!" and that was the end of Smooth Jazz on conventional radio. And the acquisition of an FM translator at 102.5 sealed the deal. But as stated above, the HD channel lives on, at 106.1 HD2.
Philadelphia was a rare market that still had a Smooth Jazz station up till about a year ago, but only on AM, 1480 WDAS-AM. It was likely a labor of love from someone in iHeart's Philadelphia operations, since few people, even Smooth Jazz fans, are going to listen to it on AM. Even when it was identifying itself as "WJJZ" on the air, iHeart didn't even spend the $200 to get the FCC to really change the call letters to WJJZ.
When the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was willing to lease the station, iHeart said "Yes!" and that was the end of Smooth Jazz on conventional radio. And the acquisition of an FM translator at 102.5 sealed the deal. But as stated above, the HD channel lives on, at 106.1 HD2.
Smooth jazz had its moment of mass popularity years ago, but now it's a fairly large niche format. A lot of people still listen to smooth jazz, but mostly on pandora, spotify or some internet station. Even perhaps an HD2. But as a main FM signal format, it's very rare. It's probably mostly used as a placeholder format during a station format flip.
JJZ didn't debut on 1480 until 2013. The WJJZ call letters were assigned to an FM in far northern Vermont in August 2012. So either iHeart didn't ask WJJZ to use the call letters on the AM side on 1480, or were denied.
But in a PPM market, unless you're like KYW or WMMR and your call letters are your brand... then... it really doesn't matter outside of the 2 seconds the calls are said per hour.
Speaking of radio station formats I’m surprised Pittsburgh does not have an active rock radio station
They did until WDVE went to classic rock. For a time, DVE played some currents, but most of what could be called active rock is being played on their co-owned alternative station. The X plays a lot of current active rock. It gets pretty good ratings for what it does.
Yes it does. I also think Radio 104.5 is a little unique for an alternative station
Probably because there are so many rock stations in Philly. This one has that niche all to itself.
In Pittsburgh, iHeart owns the rock format with DVE and The X. A lot of that comes from the heritage, in the way MMR has heritage.
WDVE is to Pittsburgh as WMMR is Philadelphia. Both stations have a long heritage.
Sussex NJ also dosent have an active rock station
Sussex NJ also dosent have an active rock station
Smooth jazz is still a very alive genre of music. I know someone who operates a small-powered radio station that programs smooth jazz during certain dayparts. They receive an abundance of new music from artists. Watercolors on Sirius/XM is one of the top channels. "Smooth Jazz Internet Radio" is a top-searched term on Google. Berks Jazz Fest in Reading sells out almost all their concerts every year. You're catching my drift. The genre is alive and well and not really an aging problem. Go to Berks Jazz Fest and you'll see as many 20-somethings as 60-somethings. It's just not a profitable format on terrestrial radio anymore for various reasons. Saying that smooth jazz is dead is like saying that metal is dead or dance is dead. They're not. They just don't work on FM radio.
In what way? Do you have some usage figures?
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