 Jazz In Media ReportThe growth of interest in jazz, as evidenced by increases in festival and club audiences, has not been matched by increased coverage of the music in the British media, according to a new report, Jazz in the Media. The research, carried out for Jazz Services Ltd, the national support agency for jazz, has found that jazz is still treated as inferior to classical music in the national broadsheet press and on radio and television. With the exception of The Guardian, the daily broadsheet newspapers gave classical music at least three times as many column inches as jazz. The gap was even wider in the four serious Sunday newspapers. The position was no better in the broadcast media. Over the two month research period, over 700 hours of classical music was broadcast by television and radio stations compared with less than 200 hours of jazz. (DAB-only stations were not included in the research, so these figures exclude the new defunct theJazz and the recently relaunched Jazz FM). Amongst the nine broadsheet titles included in the survey, The Guardian devoted the greatest amount of space to jazz and the Sunday Times gave the music the least coverage. However, all newspapers were found to be strongly London-centric in their coverage, with the only non-metropolitan events previewed or reviewed being large festivals or major tours that commenced outside the capital. One editorial trend noted was a tendency to prioritise what is perceived as novelty in music. If something is presented to journalists as 'jazz plus' another type of music or culture, they are more likely to preview or review it in the general arts pages. As a result, a publication may cover an event promoted by a jazz-based organisation under a non-jazz heading, especially 'world' music. The television networks with the best record of jazz coverage were found to be the minority arts channels Sky Arts and BBC 4. On radio, BBC Radio 3 provided the greatest amount of jazz with six hours a week. In the commercial radio sector, there is no national station geared towards jazz and the report found that the playlist of Smooth FM was dominated by easy listening music and the station betrayed no evidence of its former identity as Jazz FM. Jazz in the Media is part of a larger survey, The Value of Jazz in Britain, to be published later this year. The research team is led by Mykaell Riley of the University of Westminster and Dave Laing of the University of Liverpool. Jazz in the Media can be downloaded from this website. Download the report as a pdf file. 26/03/2009 |