Smooth Jazz & Soft AC don't mix.

[TroyG]

That's what happened when CBS flipped Smooth Jazz to Top 40 Overnight. And right now, they're feeling guilty about this move that left workday listeners angry & behind. Don't let it Happen. Someday, Your Station might do the same thing. It's pretty much more business than popularity. Hot 95-7's target is to steal the kids who are listening to 104, which also happens to be popular with adults over 30. Nowadays, Top 40 happens to be trash music. And most of the people who listens to The Wave-well There's Smooth Jazz online 24-7. By the way, My favorite Jazz Station is KOAS in Las Vegas. (105.7-The Oasis)

 

[pbf1]

Soft ACs did Smooth Jazz specialty shows for years, until SJ stations started popping up with the format fulltime.

Oh, and your favorite station recently fired its PD and put a sister station's PD in charge of both. Could be yet another one going buh=bye (though Vegas is a bit over-radioed anyway; might not be a format to flip to).

Every generation thinks the next generation's music is trash. It happened when Elvis came out, then the Beatles, etc etc etc. You're sounding like a bitter OLD person!

BTW, Sara Bareillrs's song is definitely NOT trash.

 

[TroyG]

I really do love Top 40, but lately we've been hearing such songs like "Low", "Sensual Seduction", and other R-Rated Songs that I can't think of. I really do love Sara Barelles; and I like that song "Keep Bleeding" By Leona Lewis-Who has the voice of Jennifer Lopez trapped in The body of Vanessa Williams. This girl is so stunning!

 

[sdh483]

I agree with a lot of top 40 being trash music. Though trash music has been around, the earlier stuff was laced with innuendos that children precieved differently until they got older and realized what the song was talking about. Today's trash music is pretty blunt in sexuality and violence, even with the constant *bleeps.* That song "Sensual Seduction" is actually called "Sexual Eruption". Thank God we have artists like Miley Cyrus and other Disney Channel pre teen groups the youth can look up to. People like Brittney Spears and Snoop aren't great role models for kids.

 

[TroyG]

Thank God we have artists like Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, and other Disney Channel pre teen groups the youth can look up to. People like Brittney Spears and Snoop aren't great role models for kids.

I think kids are now looking up to Miley & The Jonases, as they make up the new faces of Top 40. Sorry to tell you a lot of listeners are staying away from Snoop & Britney as far away as possible.

This happens to be an actual playlist from an actual Jazz Station:

Chris Botti, "Indian Summer"
George Benson, "On Broadway"
Mindi Abair, "Lucy's"
The Doobie Brothers, "What A Fool Believes"
Hiroshima, "One Wish"
Fourplay, "Monterrey"
Anita Baker, "Sweet Love"
Praful, "Sigh"
David Sanborn, "Maputo"
Phil Collins, "In The Air Tonight"
Pat Metheny, "Here to Stay"
Paul Hardcastle, "Rainforest"
Steely Dan, "Hey 19"
Chuck Mangione, "Give it all You Got"
Lee Ritenour, "Night Rythyms"
Vanessa Williams & Brian McKnight, "Love Is"
Dave Brubeck, "Take 5"

A Smooth Jazz Station needs to be runned by an Independent Company, NOT a Corparte Titan like CBS & ClearChannel.

 

[aunti-terrestrial]

I agree with a lot of top 40 being trash music. Though trash music has been around, the earlier stuff was laced with innuendos that children precieved differently until they got older and realized what the song was talking about. Today's trash music is pretty blunt in sexuality and violence, even with the constant *bleeps.* That song "Sensual Seduction" is actually called "Sexual Eruption". Thank God we have artists like Miley Cyrus and other Disney Channel pre teen groups the youth can look up to. People like Brittney Spears and Snoop aren't great role models for kids.

We've got a new generation of parents who were Britney's first Disney crossover audience, girls of Spears' age who had their kids during the same years, and have pretty much decided one and all that Britney's antics aren't suitable for their young kids (and Snoop's never were). Britney isn't going to be saving Top 40 anytime soon. She, along with most other Disney teen stars, have a date/time stamp pretty much as soon as they bounce onto the set. In a few years, Hannah Montana won't exist because Miley Cyrus will be trying to break through to adult audiences as she grows up (they all do). Some other princess will gladly don a wig and sing to the core 'tween girls who drive Disney sales (they all do). Lather, rinse, repeat.

Disney does provide a good partnership for parents in this respect; parents trust the Disney brand won't let anything too nasty to get through, and the little girls are happy with the stars Disney creates and mom and dad $upport. How those teen stars do after they leave the Disney stable is anybody's guess and the tabloids' bread and butter. Ten years from now, they might be serving as cautionary tales for those little girls as they cast about for what to let their own kids watch and hear. Hope not, but you know. It'll be okay, though. There's always another pop princess handy. It's Disney, they probably have stacks of princesses lying around in a storage room.

 

[ericspin]

Looking at the playlist posted ... Phil Collins "In the Air Tonight" was always a strange pick for a smooth jazz vocal station in my mind. There's nothing smooth or jazz about it.

Others, including "What a Fool Believes," all Anita Baker, and most Steely Dan songs fit as vocals.

At the college radio station I programmed in the early-mid 90's (showing my age now), we played smooth jazz in the mornings and afternoons. We would play two vocals an hour. Before I was there, they would only play vocals by true smooth jazz artists. I added some jazz-tinged vocals from Rickie Lee Jones, Everything But The Girl, Basia, etc., and it worked very well. However, I think stations like The Wave went too far.

 

[tcsnrayp]

Soft ACs did Smooth Jazz specialty shows for years, until SJ stations started popping up with the format fulltime.

Exactly what I was thinking. And AC pretty much stopped playing it when SJ became a real format. Which begs the question: now that SJ has--apparently--ceased being a real format, is it time for AC to bring it back as an Oh Wow element?