Friday, March 07, 2008

ANOTHER SMOOTH JAZZ RADIO STATION BITES THE DUST

In an earlier post we asked what was happening to smooth jazz radio as both WQCD-FM in New York and WJZW-FM in Washington had flipped formats, both within weeks of each other. Now comes news that KJCD-FM 104.3 in Denver has done the same. The station owner, Lincoln Financial Media dropped Smooth Jazz programming on 104.3 KJCD-FM in Denver on Thursday, March 6. Lincoln Financial Media moved Sports 950 The Fan KKFN Denver to the 104.3 signal that had been home to KJCD at 1pm yesterday. KKFN will simulcast on 950 and 104.3 until the end of March, when a new format will debut on 950. The Smooth Jazz format will continue on 98.5 KYGO-HD2 and SmoothJazzDenver.com. T

he Fan offers a combination of local and syndicated programming, including The Sports Guys in mornings; Jim Rome in middays; Irv Brown, Joe Williams, and Jim Armstrong in afternoons; and Dan Patrick in nights. Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets games also move to the FM. KJCD's website at www.smoothjazzdenver.com gives listeners the details, citing "declining audience ratings over the past couple years combined with a decline in advertising support from our clients." What else is new?

Haven’t you noticed that the owners of WQCD-FM and WJZW-FM cited the same reasons for switching formats. Let’s hope this is not pattern that other Smooth Jazz station owners will follow. The Smooth Jazz programming will be streamed from the website and heard as an HD subchannel of Country clustermate KYGO, and station e-mail updates will continue.

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