[Trombone-l] Jazz Radio

[George Carr]

> America is becoming musically more dumb every day.  Public stations are beholden to this very same public for support.  If there is not enough public interest in what is being broadcasted, then that station's programming becomes irrelevant.

I'd like to quibble with this point.  I believe that the music scene
(players and listeners) has actually been getting more and more
sophisticated and complex for decades now.  Witness the hordes of
qualified trombone players that attempt orchestra auditions, and the
dozens and dozens of good jazz recordings entering the market each
year.  So I'm skeptical that there are fewer jazz listeners now than
in 1985, or that audience members are dumber or less
educated/intelligent than twenty years ago.

What has happened, though, is that the audience has realized that
radio is a crappy way to get your sophisticated music thrills.  DJs
are rarely as sophisticated as their listeners (esp. on jazz and
classical stations), and recorded music is getting to the audience
more often by direct ownership than radio airplay.  Music sales (and
unsold transfers, like CD burning and MP3 trading) have increased
vastly over the last couple of decades, and with each listener owning
hundreds of great recordings, listening to the radio just isn't as
popular as it used to be.

Also, the jazz audience (speaking generally, again) is hungry for
stretching the musical envelope, and tends to listen outside the jazz
canon quite a bit, which draws down the numbers that listen heavily to
jazz radio.  Another way of saying this is that a huge percentage of
Metallica fans listen to nothing but heavy-metal radio, whereas a huge
percentage of jazz fans listen to a broad range of genres and styles.

Sure, I'm sad that jazz isn't easily heard on the corporate airwaves. 
But I can say the same thing about Mahler songs, or Ligeti works, or
'70s funk music - all of them are great in their way and criminally
hard to find on the radio dial.  But I'm not at all sure it's because
audiences are getting dumber, or less sophisticated, or less
interested in music that stretches their ears.  If anything, it's
because the audiences are getting smarter, with bigger ears, and radio
can't keep them happy.

George