Jazz FM (UK)

Jazz FM is a British digital radio station owned and operated by Bauer Media Audio UK. It broadcasts across the United Kingdom and Malta predominantly playing jazz music, jazz standards as well as blues and soul music.

The station, in this incarnation set up by Richard Wheatley, traces its roots back to 102.2 Jazz FM, which first launched in 1990. The current station commenced broadcasting on 6 October 2008.

As of September 2024, the station has a weekly audience of 537,000 listeners according to RAJAR.

History

102.2 Jazz FM

London station 102.2 Jazz FM was launched on 4 March 1990 with a concert performed by Ella Fitzgerald at the Royal Albert Hall. Jazz FM played mainly soul and jazz music and was broadcast to the London area. A sister station in Manchester called 100.4 Jazz FM was launched on 1 September 1994. The Jazz FM stations were purchased by the Guardian Media Group in 2002, and became part of the company's radio division, GMG Radio Holdings Ltd.

In 2003, GMG Radio conducted market research into the type of music that listeners in the north-west of England wanted to hear on the radio. The study concluded that many people were dissuaded by the name ''Jazz'', and as a result, 100.4 Jazz FM closed on 13 February 2004 and relaunched as Smooth FM on 1 March. In 2005, GMG rebranded the London station 102.2 Smooth FM. The two renamed stations played middle of the road music, soul and R&B during the day and as part of their licence requirements, jazz music at night.

ejazz.fm alongside Jazz FM

The original site ejazz.fm launched by Jazz FM on 7 June 2000 as a website focused on the wide genre of jazz and included free and subscription based jazz content as well as two continuous jazz music streams for uptempo and downtempo jazz. The website was originally designed by the DDW agency. Club ejazz for a subscription of £5 a month allowed listeners to listen to exclusive one-hour specialist shows from Jazz FM presenters as well as live and recorded concert material.

The website was relaunched by the Guardian Media Group to its current look on 12 July 2004 promising more than 200 specially commissioned programmes exclusive to the website, with five new programmes being added each month from Jazz FM's presenters such as Sarah Ward, the late Campbell Burnap and Peter Young, as well as jazz news and features, including the ejazz.fm artist of the month. The subscription fee for Club ejazz was dropped but user registration remained.

The website was heavily promoted via the Jazz FM website and through advertising on Jazz FM.

The rebrand to jazzfm.com on DAB

The ejazz.fm website was renamed to jazzfm.com on 7 June 2005, alongside the change of 102.2 Jazz FM to 102.2 Smooth FM. It was on this date that the radio station appeared on DAB in Yorkshire, south Wales and the Severn estuary using spare capacity from the now defunct Smooth Digital service. The station also broadcast on free-to-air digital satellite and via the Sky platform.

It was announced that on Monday 10 April 2006 that the service would no longer be available in Yorkshire on DAB from the summer of 2006 after a deal was reached with Leeds United and the multiplex owner, MXR Yorkshire to launch a new sports and music radio station, Yorkshire Radio, which took over the space formerly occupied by jazzfm.com. The Yorkshire jazzfm.com service closed on 26 June 2006 to make way for Yorkshire Radio test transmissions to take place, ready for its launch on 10 July 2006.News from Yorkshire MXR multiplex!
Published by MXR Ltd. Accessed 12 October 2006

The station was also carried on the Sky platform across the United Kingdom, but on Wednesday 3 May 2006, jazzfm.com was removed from the electronic programme guide, and did continue to be broadcast from the Astra 2B satellite, one of the satellites which provides part of the Sky service, for a short while after. GMG Radio said that the money saved by pulling the plug on the Sky and DAB services would be re-invested into the website. The jazzfm.com Blue Room stream would still be available on the website.

In March 2007, GMG Radio purchased and rebranded all the Saga stations. In the West Midlands, Saga 105.7 FM and Smooth Radio both broadcast on the MXR West Midlands DAB ensemble. Smooth FM and Saga 105.7 FM merged to become Smooth Radio and the spare slot formerly used by Smooth FM was replaced with jazzfm.com. The service also replaced Saga 105.2 FM on Monday 26 March on the Score Glasgow multiplex as Smooth Radio is already broadcast on the Switch Central Scotland ensemble.

Panjab Radio replaced jazzfm.com with Panjab Radio and Asian FX in the West Midlands on 1 November 2007 after a deal between the station and multiplex owner MXR was reached.

GMG Radio was also looking to sell its other DAB slot currently held in south Wales and the Severn estuary since the closure of jazzfm.com in Yorkshire. That service was earmarked to close in late 2006, but continued to broadcast after this date. However, in an Ofcom radio broadcast update for August 2007, it was confirmed that it would close at an unspecified date to allow the launch of two stations from United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) in a separate deal with MXR. The station left the multiplex on 28 September 2007 to be replaced by UCB UK and UCB Inspirational.

The only area to continue broadcasting jazzfm.com on DAB, Glasgow and west central Scotland, made the switch to Jazz FM on 6 October 2008.

jazzfm.com Playlist

The jazzfm.com DAB service and website relayed one stream of a mixture of smooth jazz and funk music in the daytime and traditional and mainstream jazz music in the evening without DJs at 64 kbit/s Windows Media Audio 9 format in stereo for free and at a higher bitrate through a subscription to RealMusic. Until 16 June 2008 the free bitrate streamed at 32 kbit/s. The jazzfm.com radio station on DAB was relayed at 128 kbit/s joint stereo MPEG-1 Audio Layer II encoding. At the top of each hour, a news bulletin produced and provided by Sky News Radio was broadcast.

The website however, used to have two dedicated stations, the Red Room and the Blue Room. The Blue Room played more smooth jazz and funk. The Blue Room feed was the one that was played on the Sky and DAB feeds as smooth jazz is more commercially viable and popular with listeners. From March 2006 the Blue Room used to carry advertising immediately after the news bulletin, though this was dropped later in its life. The Red Room played all styles of modern jazz from the 1950s up to the present day. The Red Room's jazz output was continuous and uninterrupted, without advertising or news bulletins. Neither station has DJs on its output.

Availability

jazzfm.com used to broadcast on the internet as well as digital radio in the United Kingdom on DAB in west central Scotland. It used to broadcast smooth jazz and funk music on DAB in Yorkshire, south Wales, the Severn estuary, the West Midlands and on Sky. The DAB service carried jazzfm.com at a higher bitrate free-to-air than the website stream.

Relaunch of jazzfm.com for the return of Jazz FM

On 28 February 2008 GMG Radio's chief executive John Myers made an announcement that Jazz FM would be brought back as a relaunch of the current jazzfm.com service with presenters on DAB. Myers also said that he believed it would make more sense for there to be a dedicated radio station for jazz listeners than the current 45 hours of jazz to be played on Smooth FM, as required by its Ofcom licence. The closure of theJazz was also part of the reason for the return of Jazz FM.

The original plan for the relaunch of Jazz FM by GMG Radio as set out in their format change requests for 102.2 Smooth Radio and 100.4 Smooth Radio in March 2008 would be to play smooth jazz during the day and jazz at night, including the return of the former Jazz FM ''Dinner Jazz'' programme.

In June 2008, The Local Radio Company, run under the former chief executive of 102.2 Jazz FM, Richard Wheatly, signed a three-year deal with GMG Radio to relaunch Jazz FM on DAB. According to ''The Times'', no money exchanged hands in the deal. However, ''The Telegraph'' reported that the deal was done for a single pound. The annual report from TLRC published in March 2009 shows that the station cost it £30,000 a month to provide the Jazz FM service on behalf of GMG.
There were also plans to relaunch the Jazz FM Records label with CD and download sales. The first CD released by Jazz FM was ''The Sound of Jazz FM 2008'' on 20 October 2008. WARL was appointed to advertise the relaunched station prior to its launch, including the return of the Jazz FM chameleon and ''Listen in Colour'' branding used previously on 102.2 Jazz FM. The station raised awareness of the relaunch through email and social media as well as a nationwide campaign through posters, national newspapers and magazines featuring the Jazz FM chameleon in 3D and listen in colour branding.

Launch

The station launched on 6 October 2008 at 19:00 BST (18:00 UTC) with an introductory speech from Richard Wheatly, followed by the ''Dinner Jazz'' programme with Sarah Ward. However, there were some problems with the playout system a few minutes into the programme, which interrupted the music but were soon fixed. The first song played was Art Pepper's "All the Things You Are