THE WEATHER CHANNEL TUNES OUT SMOOTH JAZZ

The smooth jazz music that for years has played in the background of the Atlanta-based Weather Channel’s “Local On the 8s” segments has been replaced with soft rock songs instead.“ I think we’ve been doing an injustice to our viewers playing, for the lack of a better word, elevator music on the segments for all these years,” said Geoffrey Darby, the cable network’s new executive vice president of programming, The old sound was so popular, the network released a CD of “Weather Channel Smooth Jazz” that went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Album Chart. But all that smoothness let the programming slip too far into the background. This wasn’t great for the audience or the network’s advertisers who prefer viewers who are awake. Now, instead of hearing Spyro Gyra in the background while the announcer is intoning the latest local update (“Sunny and 75”), listeners hear tracks from the Rolling Stones (“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”).“People would have it on but they wouldn’t be watching and they wouldn’t be listening,” said Darby, who pushed for the change after joining the network in February. “We wanted music that would get their attention —- and this has.” It’s really to bad that smooth jazz has gotten such a bad rap after all these years, but the reality is that the genre has really shot itself in the foot by releasing boring and bland music for so many years. In any event it is time to move on to the next level/ Hey – anybody ever check out Blu 102.7 broadcasting out of Sante Fe, New Mexico. The good new is that you can hear a really cool mix of Jazz, Rhythm, World and Chill, but the bad news is that they are no longer streaming on the web. I bet it has to do with the royalty problem that is causing many stations to no longer stream. Let’s hope they can come back online soon because it is really a format worth looking into. If you have some time check out their playlist.