hoo hoo I invented the number 70

In other news, O&A continue to have 0.0 ratings.

If they're getting rid of a channel, Planet Jazz may be a good choice. But it is amazing that they would replace it with a single-artist channel, further crippling their music lineup. Is this to be a permanent arrangement?

there was no question "that remained" as far as i knew. this news was posted by me in the comments section of yesterdays installment of this saga. additionally i also speculated a week ago that planet jazz would be gone as sirius currently has four jazz channels. jazz cafe is basically the same as planet jazz and will easily continue on as sirius's contemporary jazz offering.

Steve Blatter & Scott Greenstein are obsessed with single artist channels. Regardless of what's best for the music experience or subscribers, they always get what they want.

Hence...Shade 45, The Who, Elvis Radio, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead.

Music is meant to be heard in the context of other arists. Instead, they research it to death... it's all marketing gimmicks by these suits.

This really looks like a major blunder. Obviously, it will save Sirius money on content expenditures, and that is clearly the objective. It is not a "marketing gimmick", it is a "cost cutting gimmick".

But it makes so little sense. Sirius is highly dependent on retail for its new subscribers. Apparently, many people (including SIRI's management) believe that the Ipod is damaging SIRI's (and XM's) retail sales. Yet, Sirius puts up a single-artist channel that can most effectively be delivered via -- you guessed it -- an Ipod? What happened to differentiating your product from the "competition"?

Get ready. Because after the merger, Mel will be pulling the same crap on XM's music lineup.

Instead of having a whole channel dedicated to one artist permanently, they should have one or two channels that showcase different artists. Have one artist/band on the channel for 1 or 2 months and change it. You can even change the genre each time. Have a rap artist, then rock, then country, etc., etc.

@Brumski: I know you posted that in the comments, but I wanted to make sure everyone was made aware of it. The information is also included on Sirius' website as well as being in their email newsletter last night.

The Planet Jazz rumor posted here was only partially correct. I had removed the post at the request of Sirius, only to learn that the truth wasn't that far off.

I'm with Tulane, Stack and Jeff on this one.

Instead of a permanent one-artist channel, make it a rotation, where a single artist stays for a month, then rotates to a new one. All this can be done on one channel, thus saving bandwidth.

This question may have already been answered in another post, but I'm wondering what this will do, if anything, to Deep Tracks on XM airing the Grateful Dead Hour show...Will they lose rights to that content, or will it continue? Admittedly, I'm not a HUGE Dead fan; just curious.

Sirius is more like a ghost town if you're an Adult R&B and Jazz fan like I am. This better not be a precursor to the Jazz lineup at XM.

And another thing, this is proof that Slacker is looking more and more attractive when sirius, and to a small part, XM are homogenizing their music offerings.

>> Instead of a permanent one-artist channel, make it a rotation, where a single artist stays for a month, then rotates to a new one. All this can be done on one channel, thus saving bandwidth.

XM's "microchannel" concept (like the Labor Day channel) is much more sensible, I'm thinking -- also, the XM 2 concept seems excellent -- I'm finding I spend a lot of time listening to it.

Even the best bands get tiring if that's all you hear. Mozart was among the greatest and most prolific of composers, yet would you want an all Mozart channel? I think that would get really tiring after a few days.

The jazz channels were the main reason I got Sirius radio. Looks like I'll be spending my commute listening to my iPod more often.

>>This question may have already been answered in another post, but I'm wondering what this will do, if anything, to Deep Tracks on XM airing the Grateful Dead Hour show...Will they lose rights to that content, or will it continue? Admittedly, I'm not a HUGE Dead fan; just curious.

Deep Tracks has already lost the Grateful Dead Hour, hasn't been on for a few weeks

- Anonymous Coward

>>Deep Tracks has already lost the Grateful Dead Hour, hasn't been on for a few weeks

Shows how much attention I paid to the show...Noticed I hadn't heard the incessant ads for it lately. :)

the host of the gd hour on xm....David Gans....will be coming over to sirius as an occasional host. also David Lemoiux from Dead.net will be doing some hosting as well.

I switched from XM to Sirius 2 years ago primarily for this channel. Contemporary Jazz is more than Kenny G! Sure some of the things they played on 70 were a little too avant-garde but 71 is not a viable alternative. They play just as much Luther Vandross and other adult contemporary artists as they do Jazz artists. I hope the merger goes through so there can be channel sharing. Hopefully the new entity will remember what attracted many people to satellite in the first place… the availability of diverse, less mainstream content. If no merger then I may have to switch back to XM…their modern Jazz channel was not as good, but it is better that nothing!

Planet Jazz gone.

That sucks. That was my favorite channel........ Mike Stern, Frisel, Schofield, Plus all the classics and more.

I'm getting rid of my dishnetwork because of this.

I always put that channel on for dinner time etc......

Of all channels to get rid of..... pfft.

Me too. I listened to Planet Jazz about 95% of the time I was listening to Sirius music (e.g., when not listening to Bubba or some of the other talk stuff). And it was very discouraging to be referred to JazzCafe and Spa73 by Sirius customer service when I wrote to complain. These people obviously have no knowledge of jazz at all, which gives me little encouragement for the future.

This puts me about 50% out the door with Sirius. Now if they don't re-sign Bubba, there will be no reason at all for me to keep it on.

I am very, very, very discouraged by the direction the station is going.

Planet Jazz had no announcers, so how much money does Sirius save without PJ?

Disorder is more like a Diss Order of disrespect to an entire group of world class musicians who just lost a huge communication line in Planet Jazz. Simply dumped. Artists like Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Mike Stern, the late Jaco Pastorius, Avishai Cohen and many more are worthy of much higher consideration.

Sirius and Dish subscribers who enjoyed Planet Jazz may not represent any market majority, but are generally upscale people. Clearly, the powers that be at Sirius do not reflect the listenership of Planet Jazz. Pretty sad....

Planet Jazz was also my #1 preset.

Very frustrated they did away with it for 70s disorder and The Grateful Dead.

I fell the terrestrial radio suits are making their way to Sirius. Why go and take away Planet Jazz when there are so many other slots they could of used. It had to be a cost cutting measure from the bean counters. I'm very frustrated. Jazz has many different forms.

Two channels (71 and 72) are not enough. Jazz Cafe is Smooth Vocal and saxaphone crap I don't care for, in fact that channel isn't even one of my presets, yet 70 and 72 are. So the suit at the top thinking that 71 and 72 are enough doesn't know jazz and messed up.

Directing Planet Jazz listeners to Jazz Cafe?? They've got to be kidding me that there is no room for the music on Planet Jazz. Besides Howard, the jazz (Pure and Planet) were the only reasons I was so happily on board with Sirius. I can't believe my wife's XM with Beyond Jazz looks so appealing now. I was so proud of the programming on Sirius. Unreal. So disappointing. Boo...

Very Very disappointing! It’s difficult to articulate without inserting ire; however, at the least, I will voice my dissatisfaction to Sirius and Dish Network and let them know that I and others may decide to NOT renew subscriptions with both.

Perhaps let subscribers have choices. For instance, I want Planet Jazz, so I “sacrifice” Canadian weather or Martha Stewart or Greatful Dead or Elivs?

How about a month of John Scofield, Dave Weckl, or Shelly Berg?

Planet Jazz was my #3 favorite music channel. I'm pissed too.

I think there was a huge difference between the programming on ch 71 (JazzCafe) and ch70 (Planet Jazz). for the most part JazzCafe plays smooth jazz, which went commercial about 10 years ago and took over as "mainstream contemporary" jazz. Much of it is predigested and homogenized elevator music. Planet Jazz, on the other hand played a lot of modern jazz, eclectic jazz, and fusion music. Beancounters at Sirius, this is an extremely important distinction! PlanetJazz was better than the XM modern jazz offering (BeyondJazz) and killing it was a big mistake. I can't believe that with that many channels available, many of which are complete nonsense, that there is no room for a modern jazz/fusion channel! I can only hope that this is an attempt to eliminate some of the programming duplication that will result from the coming merger. It just makes no sense to kill the modern jazz/fusion channel. It's a real shame to see the jazz programming space wasted by people who seem to know nothing about jazz.

So dissapointed that jazz planet is R.I.P. - it was the sole reason I got sat radio - and why I choose siriius after comaring it to xm - what are some suits thinking at sirius ? - you can't compare jazz cafe ( ok. contemp jazz light ) but itself moving more and more mainstream and sachrine like to planet jazz and the spectrum of the music there - funky miles - mclaughlin - gato - stern-cohen-osby-garret- sanders - jaco - weather reoprt - corea etc etc - if anything it was at times for me too MAINSTREAM - and there was a propensity to play a couple of songs by an artist and not earlier or later catalogues - I was disturbed when the dj's went and now the channel itself - what are the suits thinking about ? - some of the stations seem inane - presumably someone listens ?- as a european that lives in america I am shocked that america's only idiginous art form is being giving such a low or rather non existent profile - I am interested in jazz late 60's through now - some people at sirius better listen to the wants of their subscribers in this imprtant musical genre - if there is no change I will be cancelling my contract very soon -

So dissapointed that jazz planet is R.I.P. - it was the sole reason I got sat radio - and why I choose siriius after comaring it to xm - what are some suits thinking at sirius ? - you can't compare jazz cafe ( ok. contemp jazz light ) but itself moving more and more mainstream and sachrine like to planet jazz and the spectrum of the music there - funky miles - mclaughlin - gato - stern-cohen-osby-garret- sanders - jaco - weather reoprt - corea etc etc - if anything it was at times for me too MAINSTREAM - and there was a propensity to play a couple of songs by an artist and not earlier or later catalogues - I was disturbed when the dj's went and now the channel itself - what are the suits thinking about ? - some of the stations seem inane - presumably someone listens ?- as a european that lives in america I am shocked that america's only idiginous art form is being giving such a low or rather non existent profile - I am interested in jazz late 60's through now - some people at sirius better listen to the wants of their subscribers in this imprtant musical genre - if there is no change I will be cancelling my contract very soon -

The single artist channel theme is a gimmick to get new subscribers. "Greatful Dead" gives a bigger impulse than naming a music genre. I'm not sure this idea works to retain subscribers as well.

I like the Sirius music channels that have their own personality that you can't find on generic elevator music sources like digital cable TV music...like the now dead Planet Jazz, Disorder, Left of Center, Chill, Boombox. I'm afraid these will be phased out or dumbed down over time. All of the reasons that FM radio sucks will eventually cause satellite radio to suck. FM radio sucks because there are more dollars in broadcasting to the lowest common denominator than putting out anything with dimension.

Please continue to contact Sirius and let them know that it is unacceptable and shameful not to have a "contempory jazz" station.

Planet Jazz, although not perfect, was at least a contemporary alternative to their current jazz offerings:

Pure Jazz is very predictable and limited; it came out of yesteryears players. Today's players learned a lot from these great players without a doubt, and I do enjoy listening to classic, straight ahead, jazz from time to time, but as great as that music was, it's not all the jazz world has to offer - it's only the beginning.

Jazz Cafe offers, for the most part, pop-elevator jazz music. This is certainly not the high end of jazz music's creativity. And even though it does offer more creative contempory jazz at times, having to listen to so much elevator music for the occasional creative piece of music is just not worth it.

It is difficult to understand why Sirius chooses not to have at least one channel dedicated to new contempary jazz. Jazz is America's artistic gift to the world and it continues to grow and evolve - its newest offerings certainly deserve a place in Sirius' programming. I strongly urge you to contact Sirius again and again. Let them know that they must dedicate one of their many many channels to the newest forms of this great American music.