[Dixielandjazz] Fw: "Jazz Radio" gripe

[Stan Brager]

Nick;

Many stations are run by young men who do not realize the importance of
earlier jazz styles and music. They do not consider the loyalty which older
fans have. They are looking for the youth demographic. Their motto seems to
be "if I don't like it, my listeners won't either". They don't appreciate
that jazz shows generally appeal to a different class of listener - one more
similar to listeners of classical music.

KLON (now KJZZ), for whom I had my last show, paid me a small amount of
money which I turned around and spent on CD's to enhance the selection of
music for my shows. Often I'd go to record companies, explain who I was and
what I was doing in order to purchase recordings at a lower cost. Arbors was
always quite generous and sent their latest recordings. Mosaic allowed me to
purchase their sets at half price.

My show was on early Sunday morning and, during pledge breaks, easily beat
the Saturday morning show hosted by a professional DJ, and the show beat
many of the drive-time daily morning hours as well. Yet, the station
decided, for reasons still unknown, that I had to go.

My program was replaced by Chuck Cecil who puts on a great show featuring
popular music of the 30's, 40's, and early 50's but precious little jazz.

The positive side is I now have a great collection of CD's to which I can
listen whenever. But, honestly, I miss the excitement of putting together a
show and, as Turk Murphy once said, "playing something which they want to
hear and something which I want them to hear."

Stan
Stan Brager
Trombonist-in-Training
Former Radio Host

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Nickdragos at cs.com>
To: <sbrager at socal.rr.com>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Fw: "Jazz Radio" gripe


> Dear Stan,
>
> I agree with your thesis here....unfortunately, my former stations
provided
> me with no support, extremely small pay, no promotion & no budget...and,
in my
> last three Arbitron books, my 9pm hour trounced Riverwalk at 8pm....then
they
> canceled my show, ordered a new format with no thematic content, then
fired me
> six weeks later.....
>
> And they refused to conduct any fund raising during my show since 1992,
> leaving no evidence of actual support {they even deleted the "Listener
Comment"
> section from their fundraising pledge forms and ordered phone volunteers
NOT to
> ask for or take down Listener Comments!!!}.
>
> This from a public radio station!
>
> There IS some serious support for OKOM on radio, but, like all broadcast
> product, must be properly promoted and encouraged, not strangled and
ignored.
>
> Thanks for hearing me vent & for sharing your thoughts,
>
> Nick Dragos, Burned-out Old Ex-Jazz D.J., Sacramento, California
> NickDragos at cs.com
>