KJAZ to go off the air
Horace Enea
said that KJAZ is going off the air. The owner of the radio station, a
local
businessman, can no longer afford to subsidize the station. It apparently
loses money every year. The station has been on the air continuously
for the last 35 years.
This is a real tragedy for jazz fans in the Bay Area.
Horace Enea
Lee Cohen
E>In today's San Francisco Chronicle, Herb Caen, a well known columnist,
E>said that KJAZ is going off the air. The owner of the radio station, a
E>local businessman, can no longer afford to subsidize the station. It
E>apparently loses money every year. The station has been on the air
E>continuously for the last 35 years.
Here is the actual text from Herb's column.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OH WOE, there's bad news today: Another quality radio station is about
to disappear from the local air. This time it's 35-year-old KJAZ, the
last 24-hour-a-day commercial jazz station in the country. Ron Cowan,
the Alameda entrepreneur who owns this much-admired operation has been
subsidizing it for years but is "no-longer in a postion to continue the
practice," he says, so he's putting the frequency, 92.7 FM, up for sale.
"The monthly payments for the frequency, " he goes on, "are simply too
great." Once the sale has been made, KJAZ will continue to broadcast via
satellite to cable systems and other radio stations around the country
but will disappear from the FM band.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's more here than meets the eye. Ron Cowan is an astute business-
man. Recently, he financed his move into satellite and cable by using
the station's frequency as collataral. The future of FM broadcasting is
clouded by the new "superhighway" technologies and perhaps the value of
the frequency might very well decline substantially. KJAZ may disappear
from the radio dial in THE BAY AREA, but very shortly afterward you will
be able to *PAY* to have it delivered by your local cable company. What
Ron understands is this: Why pay to transmit a signal when someone is
willing to pay *me* for that signal. You may wonder what happens to your
car radio, but understand this, in the future, your car will be a moving
satellite dish receiving digital transimission. Stay Tuned!
Ron Cowan is a jazz fan who helped bail out the financially troubled
KJAZ almost 20 years ago. I don't think he's throwing in the towel yet!
>>--=> Lee....@pcgfx.com
---
* CmpQwk 1.31 #439 * What is jazz? If you have to ask, you'll never know...
Carlo Dade
: Here is the actual text from Herb's column.
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
: OH WOE, there's bad news today: Another quality radio station is about
: to disappear from the local air. This time it's 35-year-old KJAZ, the
: last 24-hour-a-day commercial jazz station in the country. Ron Cowan,
: the Alameda entrepreneur who owns this much-admired operation has been
: subsidizing it for years but is "no-longer in a postion to continue the
: practice," he says, so he's putting the frequency, 92.7 FM, up for sale.
: "The monthly payments for the frequency, " he goes on, "are simply too
: great." Once the sale has been made, KJAZ will continue to broadcast via
: satellite to cable systems and other radio stations around the country
: but will disappear from the FM band.
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
: There's more here than meets the eye. Ron Cowan is an astute business-
: man. Recently, he financed his move into satellite and cable by using
: the station's frequency as collataral. The future of FM broadcasting is
: clouded by the new "superhighway" technologies and perhaps the value of
: the frequency might very well decline substantially. KJAZ may disappear
: from the radio dial in THE BAY AREA, but very shortly afterward you will
: be able to *PAY* to have it delivered by your local cable company. What
: Ron understands is this: Why pay to transmit a signal when someone is
: willing to pay *me* for that signal. You may wonder what happens to your
Interesting, I saw a piece in a Clari News group tht mentioned a deal
between a calif. company and a japanese company to develop a 24hr jazz
cable station. I think the article appeared in Clari.news.asia. The
station would broadcast throughout the pacific rim. Like I said interesting.
So what we're looking at here is eventually two all jazz radio stations in
the country, one in say NY and the other out west, broadcasting through
cable. Seems like the only way to come up with a large enough market to
turn a profit.
Gary Milliken
>in the future, your car will be a moving satellite dish receiving
>digital transimission. Stay Tuned!
Well, I wonder how long this technological advance will take to
appear... As for my car radio, I have been a Bay Area resident for
most of the last 35 years, and the *only* place I have ever been
able to pick up KJAZ cleanly in my car is within San Francisco
city limits [Lee, presumably that's where you are]. As a South
Bay and Peninsula resident, KJAZ's signal has always been
notoriously undependable. I recall living in Redwood City,
about 30 miles from SF, and not being able to get a thing on
my big receiver -- and then living in Los Gatos, about 60 miles
from SF, and being able to pick up the signal perfectly on a
table radio. Go figure.
92.7 is a weak frequency (others may be able to explain this better
than I, but the station once described the FCC regulations to me in
a letter) -- they can't boost their power without interfering with
other nearby stations with the same frequency, notably KBOQ (or KBOK?),
the classical station in Santa Cruz. In many Peninsula towns, my car
radio would present a block-by-block duel between Monk and Mozart.
More recently, some hard-rock station has begun to muscle in on
the same frequency: maybe the Santa Cruz station is no longer
classical...
So as much as I may mourn the loss of the 92.7 broadcast, I have
never been able to make it a central part of my life anyway.
Very sad.
GM
Marc Sabatella
> Interesting, I saw a piece in a Clari News group tht mentioned a deal
> between a calif. company and a japanese company to develop a 24hr jazz
> cable station. I think the article appeared in Clari.news.asia. The
> station would broadcast throughout the pacific rim. Like I said interesting.
> So what we're looking at here is eventually two all jazz radio stations in
> the country, one in say NY and the other out west, broadcasting through
> cable. Seems like the only way to come up with a large enough market to
> turn a profit.
As an aside, I heard mention on the Denver public jazz station KUVO 89.3 that
they had, in some manner having to do with an organization called "Community
Shares" (which I previously knew of as a loose collection of companies that
somehow were supposed to encourage donation to nonprofit organization), managed
to win the Colorado Lotto. Ironically, they have a pledge drive scheduled the
next week.
--
Marc Sabatella
ma...@sde.hp.com
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Joe Hellerstein
> As for my car radio, I have been a Bay Area resident for
> most of the last 35 years, and the *only* place I have ever been
> able to pick up KJAZ cleanly in my car is within San Francisco
> city limits [Lee, presumably that's where you are].
Given that the KJAZ studios are in Alameda, I expect that you could
pick it up *some places* outside the SF city limits. There is life in
the East Bay too, y'know. Matter of fact, much of the Bay Area
musical life is there.
Grumble grumble...
Joe Hellerstein
Malcolm Humes
>> Interesting, I saw a piece in a Clari News group tht mentioned a deal
>> between a calif. company and a japanese company to develop a 24hr jazz
>> cable station. I think the article appeared in Clari.news.asia. The
>> station would broadcast throughout the pacific rim. Like I said interesting.
I missed the start of this thread, but this cable jazz thing sounds like
KJAZ...
Rehashing whaat I read the other day, developer Ron Cowan, who owns KJAZ,
has put the frequency on the market and the station will stop broadcasting
jazz when it is sold. Meanwhile, KJAZ itself will continue as a sattelite/
cable operation which is already running in Japan and perhaps parts of the
US.
Cowan claims he's been subsidizing the station for years. Meanwhile he's
also aggressively marketed the station for rebroadcast in other areas
rather successfully, apparently.
For those who don't know, Cowan is the developer who took an old dump by the
Oakland airport, landfilled it into a huge residential development of
$300,000 -$1,000,000 homes on the bay, and is also responsible for the
Harbor Bay Business Park, which has suffered from a less than 100% occupancy
for the 5 years or so it's been there. After a major bio-med lab there
pulled out and left lab equipemnt behind Cowan tried to lure in UCSF
medical Center as a new tenant. The deal went down in flames with accusations
of Cowan wining and dining his friends on the UC board of regents, and still
almost went through but failed because Cowan's ferry service couldn't
guarantee enough funds to keep the ferry running for at least 5 years. The
ferry was heavily subsidized by county and/or state funds and he was unable
to secure further backing. So the deal fell through. Since then the business
park just rented the lab building to the FDA, but a large portion of the
development is still unrented. The hub of the whole business park is a
telecommunications company which I assume handles the KJAZ sattelite
broadcasts.
A few months ago newspapers had stories that KJAZ might be up for sale
or getting seized by a bank that had loans on it. Cowan denied it was
up for sale or the loan getting called in, claiming it was standard practice
for a bank to ask for papers to sighn over ownership to secure against a
loan. Radio industry folks said it was highly unusual for a title transfer
request to be filed unless the title was actually going to be transferred.
Cowna claimed that he'd just taken a large loan against KJAZ to subsidize
the new japanese venture and that the band had just requested this as
security. The papers seemed to suggest the loan was near default and the
station likely to change hands as a result. My impression of the whole
scenario is that Cowan has used the station to juggle funds and walk away
with the cable operation without the overhead costs of running a broadcast
station. His track record in the business ventures I've seen appears
questionable.
>> So what we're looking at here is eventually two all jazz radio stations in
>> the country, one in say NY and the other out west, broadcasting through
>> cable. Seems like the only way to come up with a large enough market to
>> turn a profit.
And to turn a profit and have broad general appeal also probably means
toning down any "out there" jazz that might scare off any segment of
the listeners or advertisers.
- Malcolm
Vance Maverick
writes:
[of dire predictions of a future with one universal jazz station]
And to turn a profit and have broad general appeal also probably means
toning down any "out there" jazz that might scare off any segment of
the listeners or advertisers.
But that's how KJAZ was already. I think that, once the technology
allows 'stations' to cover the global market, a station for strange
and interesting music will become practical -- because it will have
access to *all* the 50,000 people on the globe who like the same
strange music I do.
Vance
Brian Gross
: In article <malcolm....@wrs.com> mal...@wrs.com (Malcolm Humes)
: Vance
The other 48,998 people! I felt that way about KJAZ also. One of
the only redeeming features of trips I've made to (shudder) LA was
the LA RADIO market. The population base was big enough to allow
the unusual to be played.
Jazz has always been a tough sell. I remember waking up one morning
to what WAS Denver's jazz station KADX. The announcer drawled "And
now one from the KADX "Back 40"". I shot out of bed! The station
had gone from Jazz to country overnight!
Brian
kh...@parcplace.com
It's non-commercial (PBS affiliated, operated by the College of San
Mateo).
--
Michael Khaw kh...@parcplace.com (or khaw%parcpl...@netcom.com)
ParcPlace Systems, Sunnyvale, CA PRODUCT INFO: in...@parcplace.com
Ginny Wilken
>
>E>In today's San Francisco Chronicle, Herb Caen, a well known columnist,
>E>said that KJAZ is going off the air. The owner of the radio station, a
>E>local businessman, can no longer afford to subsidize the station. It
>E>apparently loses money every year. The station has been on the air
>E>continuously for the last 35 years.
>There's more here than meets the eye. Ron Cowan is an astute business-
>man. Recently, he financed his move into satellite and cable by using
>the station's frequency as collataral. The future of FM broadcasting is
>clouded by the new "superhighway" technologies and perhaps the value of
>the frequency might very well decline substantially. KJAZ may disappear
>from the radio dial in THE BAY AREA, but very shortly afterward you will
>be able to *PAY* to have it delivered by your local cable company. What
>Ron understands is this: Why pay to transmit a signal when someone is
>willing to pay *me* for that signal. You may wonder what happens to your
>car radio, but understand this, in the future, your car will be a moving
>satellite dish receiving digital transimission. Stay Tuned!
>
>Ron Cowan is a jazz fan who helped bail out the financially troubled
>KJAZ almost 20 years ago. I don't think he's throwing in the towel yet!
>
>>>--=> Lee....@pcgfx.com
has you fooled, too. The guy is a charlatan, a lousy businessman, and one
of the most insecure people in the world. His style of management
consists of jacking around his best talent, wringing them dry and tossing
them away. His real estate empire is crumbling, mortgaged to the hilt to
support his posturing, and KJAZ is just another victim of his
interference in things he doesn't understand. It's not likely the cable
version will survive for long without ad revenue- the market just isn't
there yet- and it's certain that Ron has no capital to invest; he's
selling holdings right and left, including the building that houses KJAZ,
which has just been purchased by Alameda county. If Cowan knew even a bit
about radio, or had he been secure enough to just stand back and let the
management run the station, things wouldn't be where they are. He's
stabbed it, and the staff and fans, in the back. The only thing that will
save the station is a buyout, free and clear.
--
All stunts performed without a net! gin...@netcom.com
Lee Cohen
GM>92.7 is a weak frequency (others may be able to explain this better
GM>than I, but the station once described the FCC regulations to me in
GM>So as much as I may mourn the loss of the 92.7 broadcast, I have
GM>never been able to make it a central part of my life anyway.
GM>Very sad.
Gary, reception has always been the bane of KJAZ'S existence, and
perhaps one of the reasons Cowan was unable to dump it, but beyond that,
the reality is that narrow-band analog broadcasting is in its waning
days. Cowan knows this and is involved in acquiring other *jazz*
assests. If you believe that information is the commodity of the future,
then you will see a pattern in his move. Recently, a small blurb
appeared in the NATIONAL JAZZ SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS newsletter about
KJAZ, UNITED VIDEO, and the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF JAZZ EDUCATORS
getting together to produce programs that will cut across all media.
UNITED VIDEO is the cable distributor in Chicago where KJAZ's signal is
uplinked to the Galaxy 5 satellite. When KJAZ approached UNITED VIDEO
with their jazz programming, they were already using a feed from KLON-FM
in Long Beach, which they dumped without notice in favor of KJAZ.
There's a shake-out going on that will pit jazz service providers
against each other. For a small market like jazz it could get *real*
nasty. One the positive side, the guy who said his type of music, which
might only constitute 50,000 people world-wide, will have access to a
music specific service provider never possible before, but at a price. I
just wonder what that price will be.
How about an all *ZORN* network? Zorn 24-hours-a-day in a digital loop
that you can tune in whenever you want. Zorn himself can be a DJ and
give live performances anytime he wants. This is not so far fetched.
'Virtual' jazz. Marc Sabatella, Ed Price, and Larry Lewicki can jam
while we non-musicians constitute a 'virtual' audience, tuning in
whomever we want and perhaps adding another component to the music.
Live pay-pre-view feeds from NYC jazz clubs, or even small towns like
Santa Cruz or Buffalo.
Anyone else care to speculate on the future?
>>--=> Lee....@pcgfx.com
---
* CmpQwk 1.31 #439 * Getz, Sims, Steward, Chaloff... magnificent.
Gary Milliken
Grumble grumble. I live in the East Bay now myself, and the station
will not come in at home. The *studios* are in Alameda, but the
transmitter is on Russian Hill in downtown San Francisco, which is
great for SF and perhaps for Marin County, but not so good for the
rest of the Bay Area. From what I understand, if the transmitter
had been moved to some location that covered the South Bay and
Peninsula better, they would effectively have violated the terms
of their broadcast license. A no-win situation.
GM
ACI...@auvm.american.edu
says:
>
>How about an all *ZORN* network? Zorn 24-hours-a-day in a digital loop
>that you can tune in whenever you want.
Great, I'll keep in mind if I ever want to commit suicide. A couple hours
should do the trick.
Alan.
David A. Kaye
: Rehashing whaat I read the other day, developer Ron Cowan, who owns KJAZ,
: has put the frequency on the market and the station will stop broadcasting
: jazz when it is sold. Meanwhile, KJAZ itself will continue as a sattelite/
: cable operation
I believe that's been his plan for quite some time. The gossip was that
about a year ago he was putting out feelers for a sale of KJAZ (but
keeping the jazz network). Actually, I think the jazz network is a good
move. I just find it hard to believe, though, that the KJAZ mortgage is
so huge that KJAZ is unprofitable. After all, he bought it at a deep
discount from Pat Henry when his license was challenged by those guys
from SF State who thought they were going to get the license. (They had
challenged it on public affairs grounds -- that Henry wasn't giving as
much pubaffairs time as he's promised in the license renewal.) KJAZ has
never really done very well in sheer numbers of listeners, though. I
remember when Pat Henry owned KJAZ and turned it off at night (even in
the 1970s) because he simply could not afford to run the place 24 hours.
And this was when he was in the dirt-cheap digs at 1509 1/2 Webster
street with the smelly carpet.
: For those who don't know, Cowan is the developer who took an old dump by the
: Oakland airport, landfilled it into a huge residential development of
Yeah, I miss that old dump by the airport. It was about the only rural
area left in that region, if you can call "rural" any plot of land with
fewer than 10,000 people per square mile.