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WHY is there no smooth jazz station here?

J

jerrymac

Guest
I was in my car doing some errands the other day and I'd hit scan. All of a sudden I heard a smooth jazz-type song. I left it there and it turns out it was a 5 second trail of a spot. It made me wonder why there's no SMOOTH JAZZ station in a market like St. Louis. I find that very odd, especially as old and fuddy duddy this market is. Someone could rake in the cash. I know it would be on at our crib.

Anyone?
 
My Friend Keri works on the wave 94.7 in Los Angeles, and it's a great station. I haven't heard anything like that here. I believe the station does well, it plays great smooth jazz.
 
New York City just ditched it's one and only smooth jazz station, despite good numbers and revenue. They plugged in another "rock" station, which is doomed. New York is just amazing when it comes to programming; they are the number 1 market, yet it's totally boring to listen to. Just most of the usual suspects with nothing interesting at all to recommend. The corporate biggies want a piece of the NY airspace just to say they are on the air there. It was magnificent at one time, but now it sounds worse than many less than top 30 markets. A shame...The Smooth Jazz station, while not a personal favorite, was on in so many public places, and came to be a reliable, friendly sound. But then, this is the town that threw away it's legendary oldies station WCBS FM (only later to rise like a pheonix from the ashes). Go figure...
 
Well, the old Breeze 97.1 was one of them in the late 80's, then it was 106.5 after that. So maybe, I'm pretty doubtful that we'll see that format return to St. Louis any time soon. In fact, smooth jazz is mostly popular on the West coast, except in Portland. So that's why in other parts of the country like in the midwest & anywhere east of the Mississippi, the format is not popular as it is than on the west coast. Is there more smooth jazz artists who were raised there, by any chance? Tell us.
 
Smooth Jazz format is huge with minority women 25 plus, and is known as a "passive" listening experience in offices, and work stations. St. Louis is only 18 percent black, so having such a small percentage relative to other big markets, add in the women in that category who are listening to other minority oriented radio stations, i.e. hip hop, or gospel, and the base is not much. Also, much of smooth jazz is very east or west coast artist based, namely New York-Philly, and Los Angeles.

St. Louis is a large, but very provincial midwestern city with a strong swing towards country and rock music. Lots of emphasis on sports and talk leaves a very small potential audience to reach out for today. Perhaps a small AM could make it work, despite the disparity between ultra high quality recording techniques used for smooth jazz, and the usual inferior sound quality the AM band is known for.

I think it's a simple matter of research which shows what I've pointed out here, and a corporations unwillingness to devote a big FM signal to such a limited chance of success. After all, we had one until fairly recently that was excellent, and won national recognition, but it got blown up unceremoniously anyway.
 
Let's also don't forget that WSSM 106.5 did reasonably well ratings-wise. In fact, I would argue Bonneville blew up the wrong station by keeping WVRV around for another almost 18 months and, eventually, replacing it with one of the biggest turkeys in the history of radio (Movin').

While the perception of a "passive audience" is a problem, the biggest issue with WSSM was likely to have been an aging audience. The average age of the typical smooth jazz listener is right around 55, which is outside of any demo coveted by advertisers. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to get national ads when the agencies have a "no 55+" dictate. Smooth Jazz has had issues, especially lately, with being considered another version of beautiful music. It has very little new product that tests well with 25-54 female audiences, and most of what does draws older audiences more than it does the target audience.

People will tell you smooth jazz has lots of new product. However, they seem to forget that virtually none of it is a hit among the target audience. If it were me, I wouldn't be testing the instrumentals for familarity, but I suppose I'm not an expert as all I do is jock one day a week (and I jock on oldies and top-40).
 
Smooth Jazz could probably work very well on one of the rimshot FMs, but it has been done three times here now, and failed all three times, first with 97.1 KLTH in the late 80s, then with 100.3 KNJZ in the early to mid 90s, and most recently with 106.5. With the format being dropped in such large markets as NYC and Philly, I wouldn't imagine that Smooth Jazz will be heard on a radio in St. Louis anytime soon, unless it is on KSHE HD-3.
 
Most fans of real jazz find smooth jazz to be booring at best, and get their real jazz on public radio stations or on satellite or internet streaming.
 
Check this out... www.smoothjazz1075.com This is what we had in Dallas/Fort Worth for nearly 18 years - then in October 2006 CBS flipped it to MOViN. That station is horrible. So, The Oasis is now on HD-2 and we have to settle for the Sunday Jazz Brunch on Sundays from 8:30 - noon on Lite FM... Which is great but it should be on FM 24/7.
 
kc1ih said:
Most fans of real jazz find smooth jazz to be booring at best, and get their real jazz on public radio stations or on satellite or internet streaming.
Click to expand...

True. Of course, smooth jazz isn't designed to appeal to jazz fans. Jazz fans are a very small niche, and smooth jazz was designed to appeal to a much larger audience.
 
abcparamount said:
Smooth Jazz format is huge with minority women 25 plus, and is known as a "passive" listening experience in offices, and work stations. St. Louis is only 18 percent black, so having such a small percentage relative to other big markets, add in the women in that category who are listening to other minority oriented radio stations, i.e. hip hop, or gospel, and the base is not much. Also, much of smooth jazz is very east or west coast artist based, namely New York-Philly, and Los Angeles.

St. Louis is a large, but very provincial midwestern city with a strong swing towards country and rock music. Lots of emphasis on sports and talk leaves a very small potential audience to reach out for today. Perhaps a small AM could make it work, despite the disparity between ultra high quality recording techniques used for smooth jazz, and the usual inferior sound quality the AM band is known for.

I think it's a simple matter of research which shows what I've pointed out here, and a corporations unwillingness to devote a big FM signal to such a limited chance of success. After all, we had one until fairly recently that was excellent, and won national recognition, but it got blown up unceremoniously anyway.
Click to expand...

St. louis is 51% black. I don't know if you were including suburbs when you said 18%, but the city itself is 51% black.
 
Yes, I was talking about the Greater St. Louis Metro.
 
There is now.

Get yourself an HD Radio and enjoy KSHE-HD3!!

My wife listens to it a lot. I listen off-and-on inbetween checking out KSHE-HD2 (Classic KSHE), The Arch-2 (album rock deeptracks), KEZK-HD2 (Christian rock), Y98-HD2 (some type of chill format), and KWMU-HD2 (their Exponential music format).

Don't pay attention to the naysayers regarding HD Radio. I've had an HD Radio for over a year and love it. There are some great new format choices here in St. Louis, thanks to HD Radio. And great signals that cover the entire area.
 
Majic 104.9 is also now doing Smooth Jazz on HD-2. HD Radio is great if you live relatively nearby to the stations, but if you are in the fringes of the coverage area, it can be pretty hard to get a consistent signal. The digital signal currently only broadcasts with 1% of the station's analog power, so a 100kW FM station's digital signal is only 100 Watts. The FCC is considering to allow broadcasters to power up to, perhaps as much as 10% of analog power, but NPR is lobbying against it, afraid that it could harm the analog signals, and fringe coverage of stations.

FM HD-Radio is great...AM is another story.
 
To be honest, every time I've tuned in Majic-HD2, it's been Black Gospel, not Smooth Jazz. I've only heard smooth jazz on KSHE-HD3.

Regarding the HD signals, I've listened to them as far as 65 miles outside of St. Louis. I've listened out to Sullivan, MO, on I-44; up to Litchfield, IL, on I-55; down to Park Hills on I-55; and up to Troy, MO, on Highway 61. My HD car radio is a JVC unit. No biggie. Cost about $165 and sounds great. So I'd have to respectfully disagree regarding the HD signals here in St. Louis.

I will say that in other markets, the HD signals are quite mediocre. Up in Chicago and Minneapolis, I've only been able to listen to HD up to about 25-30 miles from those cities. So the HD signals here in St. Louis cover twice the area of other markets. Pretty impressive, in my estimation.

I agree with you on the AM side. Despite how great KMOX sounds in HD, the signal can be pretty inconsistent. By the way, there are 4 HD's that I've found on the AM side...KMOX/1120AM, KFUO/850AM, Radio Disney/1260AM, and Hallelujah/1600AM. But I don't know if it's worth the effort on the AM side. But I must say, the FM's sure sound awesome!! And the extra HD-only stations are great. Saves me $13/month not buying satellite!
 
mbatchelor...you're right! Majic's HD2 is now Smooth Jazz. Thanks for the heads-up. Now my wife's gotta choose between 2 Smooth Jazz stations. Whodathunkit!?!?

And KLOU-HD2 is supposed to switch to an oldies format after their Rams contract runs out. Hope they can do THAT right, instead of wasting their HD2 signal like they've been doing for 2 years, replaying old Rams games...what a joke.
 
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