In the old days, the DJ would scoop up a batch of his favorite LPs from his extensive collection and then regale listeners with some great sounds, and in some cases, considerably informed patter. Knowledgeable DJs like Billy Taylor, Mort Fega or Joel Dorn turned loads of people onto jazz. This free form kind of radio is still heard on college stations throughout our land, including WKCR-FM in New York. I call it music without restrictions. We need more stations like this.

When I first got into jazz, back in the early 60s, my principal source of these new sounds was a two hour nightly jazz program on a local radio station in Hartford, Connecticut, hosted by a chap named John Birchard. Like everyone, he had his favorites but listening to what he called "The Golden Sound of Jazz" every night turned me onto Coltrane, Miles, Cannonball, Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon, Bird, wow, so many great artists.

Like our world, radio has been transformed dramatically in subsequent decades. It’s now a highly programmed, segmented and regulated medium, driven by demographics. Forget about extended tracks or sometimes, even personnel listings. Even NPR listener supported jazz stations have a regulated criteria of what they play, and time restrictions for on-air talk. They have one saving grace, at least they still play jazz. Accordingly, they’re light years hipper than the Smooth Jazz stations. I’d rather eat ground glass than listen to CD101 here in New York but there are plenty of office workers and others who find it "relaxing." One man’s relaxation is another’s torture.

Some people believe that the Smooth Jazz listener will eventually migrate to the harder stuff. From Richard Elliott to Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis? Not if they don’t hear "Jaws" alongside George Benson. And that will never happen thanks to BROADCAST ARCHITECTURE, an Owellian form of music censorship.

There are a bunch of stations around the country with a Smooth Jazz format and they have come to rely heavily on the research of New Jersey based BROADCAST ARCHITECTURE, perhaps best described as a test marketing company. BA has very successfully monopolized, for the most part, what is played on commercial jazz stations throughout the country.

BROADCAST ARCHITECTURE pays people (perhaps the same denizens who enliven the Jerry Springer Show) to sit down at one of their listening stations and listen approximately 10 to 15 seconds worth of music, and with a meter of sorts, grade the music between 0 and 100. Anything graded below a 70 percentile is cast off into the bogus bin and anything graded a 70 percentile or more is placed on a list with the BROADCAST ARCHITECTURE seal of approval,

That’s why you don’t hear fusion artists like the Yellowjackets or Weather Report, or any pure Jazz artists like Miles Davis, even Wes Montgomery on Smooth Jazz stations. That music didn’t pass the 15 second test.

Just another case of better living through market research.