theJazz to close
National commercial digital radio station theJazz is to close by the end of March, less than a year after its official launch.
The closure is part of a £9m package of cuts announced today by the station's parent company GCap.
theJazz proved to be an instant hit, attracting more than 330,000 listeners in its first three months.
But GCap chief executive Fru Hazlitt said that digital audio broadcasting (DAB) wasn't an economically viable platform, and that the company's future lay in broadband and traditional FM stations.
To soften the blow, theJazz managing director Darren Henley says jazz will be added to the remit of sister station Classic FM.
"We remain committed to supporting jazz music and the musicians who make it," he says.
"From February 25, Classic FM will broadcast two hours of jazz music between midnight and 2am, seven days a week. This programme will be available on FM as well as DAB and will therefore reach a far wider audience.
"In addition, these programmes will be available to listen to any time of the day or night, up to seven days after broadcast via Classic FM’s listen again service. You can access this service online at www.classicfm.com/listenagain.
"We will also be adding a rolling jazz music stream to www.myclassicfm.com which will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The service allows users to ban and rate tracks, giving them control over what they hear."
See www.thejazz.com for more about the station - for further details about the closure decision see the GCap website.
However, hopes that the station could survive have been fuelled by the response of Global Radio, a company currently considering a takeover bid for GCap.
Global Radio chairman Charles Allen was quoted by www.ft.com as saying that if his company's bid for GCap proved successful, he would not pursue the cutbacks in digital services.
"If the industry leader is pulling away from digital, the fear must be that the BBC will fill that gap as it did with digital television and it becomes something which will be damaging to the whole industry.
"So this is something for the whole industry to talk about."
The closure is part of a £9m package of cuts announced today by the station's parent company GCap.
theJazz proved to be an instant hit, attracting more than 330,000 listeners in its first three months.
But GCap chief executive Fru Hazlitt said that digital audio broadcasting (DAB) wasn't an economically viable platform, and that the company's future lay in broadband and traditional FM stations.
To soften the blow, theJazz managing director Darren Henley says jazz will be added to the remit of sister station Classic FM.
"We remain committed to supporting jazz music and the musicians who make it," he says.
"From February 25, Classic FM will broadcast two hours of jazz music between midnight and 2am, seven days a week. This programme will be available on FM as well as DAB and will therefore reach a far wider audience.
"In addition, these programmes will be available to listen to any time of the day or night, up to seven days after broadcast via Classic FM’s listen again service. You can access this service online at www.classicfm.com/listenagain.
"We will also be adding a rolling jazz music stream to www.myclassicfm.com which will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The service allows users to ban and rate tracks, giving them control over what they hear."
See www.thejazz.com for more about the station - for further details about the closure decision see the GCap website.
However, hopes that the station could survive have been fuelled by the response of Global Radio, a company currently considering a takeover bid for GCap.
Global Radio chairman Charles Allen was quoted by www.ft.com as saying that if his company's bid for GCap proved successful, he would not pursue the cutbacks in digital services.
"If the industry leader is pulling away from digital, the fear must be that the BBC will fill that gap as it did with digital television and it becomes something which will be damaging to the whole industry.
"So this is something for the whole industry to talk about."
posted by Andy Roberts @ 2:19 pm
1 Comments:
At 9:09 pm ,
Anonymous said...
Thanks for your summary Andy, what a mighty shame. seems rather short sighted to close down a popular station so early in digital's emergence. Any ideas what a Mac user might do to listen to any jazz shows once theJazz goes? Seems all internet tv and radio is PC exclusive...
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