The "Greatest" Generation who were the main base of elevator music listeners aged out of radio's favored demographics during the 80's.
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Are there any big AM music stations anymore?
- Thread starter radiogal
- Start date
Smooth Jazz seemed to die out pretty quickly by the early 2000's.
It depends a lot on which stations you were listening to. Some rode it until the wheels fell off and then made a cold-turkey switch to AC or some other format, while others gradually kept adding more vocals and current pop hits and playing fewer instrumentals, to try to attract younger listeners without alienating older ones.
"Smooth Jazz" died out because it was essentially a "fake genre". If you replace the vocalist with a saxophone in a soft rock/pop band, you have so called "Smooth Jazz". This was nonsense. It may be smooth but it is not Jazz.
Don't you mean urban AC?
As David will tell you, the name was based on a listener suggestion of what the music sounded like to her. It was a format meant to please listeners, not music critics. Kenny G sold 75 million records, even though "real" Jazz fans hated him.
I think the name is no less meaningless and contradictory than "Soft Rock".
I don't find it "smooth" in many cases. Most of the smooth jazz I like was recorded in the 70s or early 80s. I mostly find Kenny G annoying. However, I somehow found a video of some of his band members and what they were playing was real jazz.
And some of it isn't soft either.
I liked Muzak's City Lights, which used to play in one of the nursing homes where some members of my church lived for a while.
Traditional jazz is not a genre of music that appeals to the masses. People that like traditional jazz are really, really passionate about the music. So it's not surprising that they would be offended by any other use of the word jazz. I have tried many times over the years to get into it but it just doesn't appeal to me. I went to college back in the 90's and would often turn on "CD 101.9" as background music while I was studying. If nothing else, it was at least relaxing.
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I have mixed feelings about traditional jazz. Some is good and some is too intellectual.
Unless your a follower of someone such as the late, great, and brilliant, musical intellectual Arnold Schoenberg, generally music is created to be enjoyed not understood. Let it speak to you...
That's not true. It died out because the demos that it attracted did not appeal to advertisers (too old).
You're no doubt right,on that point. I've always thought that so-called Smooth Jazz primarily appealed to 30s to 50s white females, who perhaps eventually aged out. And for some reason a new generation didn't take their place...
Some of the cheerleaders for Smooth Jazz in the radio trades were way over enthusiastic about its potential. Especially in the late 1980s when it was still called NAC, you’d see these quotes from program consultants about how this is going to be the adult format of the 1990s and this music is going to dominate.
I was never a believer because I thought the music was just not mainstream enough. One PD told me this format is the new AOR and I said I think it is the new beautiful music.
At the same time, I also thought that classic rock would have a limited life. How long can you play basically the same 300 songs before the audience is burned out? But 37 years later, classic rock is in every market and does just as good in 2023 as in 1987.
I was never a believer because I thought the music was just not mainstream enough. One PD told me this format is the new AOR and I said I think it is the new beautiful music.
At the same time, I also thought that classic rock would have a limited life. How long can you play basically the same 300 songs before the audience is burned out? But 37 years later, classic rock is in every market and does just as good in 2023 as in 1987.
There is no reason to think that advertisers focus on different age groups in Australia.
Regardless, the ratings for 4BH and Cruise 1323 are impressive for music AM stations in 2023. Brisbane also has dance music AM station - Switch 1197, but it is a not-for-profit community licensed station.
Toowoomba, about an hour and half west of Brisbane (population roughly 100,000), has two music AMs. 1242 4AK - Hot AC and 864 4GR "Triple M Darling Downs" - Rock. I don't think they are especially well rated but if memory serves at late as about 2004 there were no pop music FMs in the area. It was odd that "recently" to hear AM music stations playing in public places like stores.
For some reason, music on AM radio seems to be holding on a bit longer down under. Great for radio geeks.
Regardless, the ratings for 4BH and Cruise 1323 are impressive for music AM stations in 2023. Brisbane also has dance music AM station - Switch 1197, but it is a not-for-profit community licensed station.
Toowoomba, about an hour and half west of Brisbane (population roughly 100,000), has two music AMs. 1242 4AK - Hot AC and 864 4GR "Triple M Darling Downs" - Rock. I don't think they are especially well rated but if memory serves at late as about 2004 there were no pop music FMs in the area. It was odd that "recently" to hear AM music stations playing in public places like stores.
For some reason, music on AM radio seems to be holding on a bit longer down under. Great for radio geeks.
The format actually did not die just due to its music strength... it was killed by the PPM. What the meter did was pick up secondary listening that often did not get registered in the diary, where "favorite" stations got all the mentions.
Most formats had lots of P3 and P4 listening, but it did not show in the diary. In the PPM, all that was picked up. But Smooth Jazz stations did not have much, if any, secondary listening. So while other stations showed much higher cumes and added quarter hour listening, Smooth Jazz did not. Either it was one of your favorite stations or you did not listen at all.
So Smooth Jazz stations in the "top 50" markets where the PPM rolled out starting in 2008 suffered. Already an aging format, it suddenly became a deadly one in the new system. And it rather rapidly went away.
Classic Rock might be here to stay for a while...Although the core audience is aging...I know, through my 30 year old daughter that lots of people in her generation, both younger and older, frequently listen to this music, and know it very well. They don't consider those tunes to be "oldies", they simply represent the basis of much of the music they listen to, and in the case of my musician daughter, what they play today. CR is not "dated". There is tremendous respect for the singer/songwriters of the 60s, 70s, and 80s and beyond.
A large factor is there are a lot fewer options on the Australian radio dial.
Sydney (with a population equivalent to that of Atlanta or DC) has 10 commercial stations (4 AM, 6 FM).
Brisbane has 3 AM and 4 FM. (Plus the government operates 3 AM and 3 FM stations in each major market.)
Fewer stations to share the pie equals larger ratings for all (eg. In Perth, 3 of the 4 FM stations have double digit shares.)
A friend's daughter has been playing Classic Rock guitar all her life, and at 20, has been playing on stage since she was about 16
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