Opinion: Can I find music I like on radio anymore?

Inspired by the story about WBEZ dropping jazz, I'm curious if I could still find music I like on air anymore. Turns out it is not that bad here in SF Bay Area.

On FM 90.5 KSJS, down in San Jose, there is a metal show "The Splatter Platter", from Tuesdays 10am-2pm. Check out its playlist. Very heavy stuff.

And FM 91.5 KKUP plays some blues and jazz. (Interesting story: a friend's friend played on this station during the blues marathon and that's how I knew about the station. The other day I was looking for it again but forgot the frequency and accidentally tuned into the above metal show on 90.5!)

And finally, in search of the great and probably non-existent jazz podcast that's supposed to displace jazz radio all over the country, I found Redjazz. The interesting thing is that it is broadcasted over the air on AM 1550 KYCY, the so-called "Open Source Radio."

As good as it is, there's no way it could replace the 24/7 jazz offerred by the local radio station KCSM. Here is the deal: if you could find me a daily podcast with 2 solid hours of jazz and classical music, I'll stop argue with you that jazz and classical are hogging public radio and should be taken off air.

Service: Jazz Radio on WBEZ

From this article:
"A Station Research Group multiyear study from 1999 through 2004 showed that of public radio's primary formats, jazz stations had the lowest average loyalty and lowest average time spent listening. The same study showed that the most dramatic audience growth came from all-news stations."

So, Chicago's radio station WBEZ replacing jazz programming by news seems like a very logical choice. It's sad news to jazz lover like myself though.

The same article also mentioned that iPod's popularity is another contributing factor to this decision, i.e., people'd rather listen to jazz on their own iPod than to radio. I'm not too sure about this one though. I recall there's something hugely popular before iPod and it's called Walkman.

[Update: apparently a lot of people care and discussed this topic]

Podcast: The Roadhouse

The name of this podcast is probably inspired by the song "Roadhouse Blues" and it is indeed a podcast about blues music. I recommend it because it strikes a good balance between well-known and lesser-known artists.

Here are links to its website and its podcast feed in case you want to use it with a Podcast client.