was talking to a friend the other day who is friends of a friend (one of those friends of a friends of a friends deals) of a manager/adviser of a college radio station. i'll respect the station and won't mention where they're located in case they don't want people knowing yet, but this station is on the outer fringe area of a city with a smooth jazz station doing bad in the ratings and probably will flip within the coming months to year. well anyway, this college station does variety format of sorts during the day, and standard college block programming at night. with smooth jazz dying so fast, this station is considering making the daytime variety format into smooth jazz or some sort of traditional/contemporary jazz hybrid format. i think its a good idea. my point is, if this format keeps sinking faster the the Titanic, is there a market for it on non-profit college, community, NPR, LPFM, etc. stations? would people pay to underwrite their business on a non-profit smooth jazz college, NPR, or community station? would people pledge money to an NPR smooth jazz station? May be an interesting way to save the format. thoughts?