98.7 Smooth Jazz No More

[msamslex]

I was surfing the FM dial yesterday to discover 98.7 changed its format as of 5 pm yesterday from the smooth jazz they'd played for at least 10 yrs. to what seems to be a Top 40 95.5 imitation station. I went to the Smooth Jazz website where it was indicted that Smooth Jazz would be available online and on HD2 only. The new station is calling themselves "The 987 Takeover". I guess another reason to pay for satellite radio.

I'm disappointed in the format change. When I was driving around Friday they were screaming that they were in their van or truck whatever it was, riding around to different locations, a we've arrived, come find us thing. I forgot where they said they were but no way I'll be listening! No way!


I've always had 98.7 on in my car but I don't have satellite radio,[[I have an older model car) and I won't be buying one either. I'm sure it's nice to have the variety on satellite radio but it's another bill I don't need.

[professorscott]

Not sure how Ed Love got into a thread about an ex-"smooth jazz" station. Ed Love plays real jazz; he talks too much, but the music is excellent so I put up with the banter.

WVMV was not a jazz station; I'm not sure where the term "smooth jazz" originated, but "smooth jazz" isn't jazz. The first song they played after the format switch from hard rock was "Smooth Operator" by Sade, also the last song they played before they dropped the format the other day. Now, I love Sade, and that's a nice song, but jazz it decidedly is not.

By the way if you like eclectic music of any and all kinds, WDET is a great station for it, when they're doing music at all. I would hold that up as the exception to the "Detroit radio is abysmal" argument, which in general is otherwise true.

Now that we've had a fairly long period during which there is almost no local ownership of media and the top few companies own all of it - television, radio, what's left of newspapers - you can start to understand why the government for, oh, maybe a century thought this centralized control was a bad idea and tried to fight it.

I listen to the radio only for a purpose - I go out of my way to catch Ann Delisi or Jay Butler, for instance, and if I'm driving at rush hour I listen to WWJ to get the traffic. But other than that, I've got my Lloyd Cole and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Sam & Dave CD's in the Focus, and that is how your Professor rolls. If I had to depend on radio for my day-to-day music fix, I'd tear my hair out.