Chill comes to WEJZ

[John FL]

The syndicated “Chill” with famed contemporary jazz performer, Chris Botti is now on WEJZ Sunday mornings.

This is another wise move for WEJZ. The addition of this program helps, at least in my thinking, the station sound less small market and that has been a major problem for them. There are a number of good AC stations that have jazz overtones (smooth vocals) or at least carry a Sunday morning Jazz program. On my way back to Jax after being out of town for the holidays, I managed to listen to them for well over an hour and I liked what I heard.

Overall, the station is sounding more upbeat and has a better pace than the norm. I think they are positioning themselves well for 2007 – especially if a competitor joins the mix.

Hope you all have a happy and healthy 2007!

John

 

[AnotherCat]

Botti's show has been on EJZ since early '06, possibly longer. On one hand Botti is quite the poster boy, on the other hand chill music is hard to listen to for any length of time because it doesn't have a structured melody or hooks. It was the "big thing" in smooth jazz about a year ago because an infleuntial consultant/label exec saw that it was popular in Europe but a few stations experimented with it early in 06 and it didn't go over. WJCT's Electro Lounge (T-Sat 9-11pm) plays a lot of chill and he seems to be finding more "real songs" that don't just drone on and on over a repetitious loop. In mass appeal terms chill works better to spice up a music mix than be the main course.

Jacksonville has a smooth jazz station that is just dreadful, especially at night and on Sunday morning when they play old time traditional jazz and the DJ has trouble pronouncing words and speaking clearly. Their ratings are horrible and they have very few female listeners or males under 45 but their presence in the market keeps other stations from being willing to try a more mass appeal, younger skewing brunch show.
I would love to know if Electro Lounge has higher ratings than Smooth Jazz 105's night show, which ya pretty much have to be really old school to relate to.