Sunday, January 28, 2007

Letter Posted to Reginald Hudlin's Web Forum

I've watched Mr. Hudlin for years now and I'm very impressed with his talent and his abilities...but I have to say I hate what's being done with BET on J. It's terrible. You've taken a station that was arguably the best music channel on the air (with material that was not being replicated anyplace else) and turned it into a wasteland of BET reject shows (The Christies? Good lord...how bored would I have to be to watch that?) and bad music that you repeat over and over and over again. Here's a thought: r and b isn't as good as jazz repeats because jazz is more complicated and it bears repeat listenings. You can get something out of Brad Mehldau solo on your seventh hearing...not so much for India Arie...Here's a question I'd love to know the answer to: are the ratings better for BET on J than they were for BET on Jazz? Even if they are better, who is the high brow audience for that awful model show? Golf doesn't win the ratings war because it get the most viewers, it wins because it gets the weathiest viewers. Jazz and classical probably won't beat american idol, but you'll get a better educated and wealthier audience.

Here's the small thing I'm asking for: Can you run Jazz Central, one of the best live jazz shows ever, more than once a day? how about two different jazz centrals a day? Also, could you please start playing jazz again on Sunday, the best day to play jazz? Or at night? Instead of repeating that awful 2 cents talk show could you play jazz central after 2 am, maybe even a different one than you played at 8 am? Ditto for the Knitting Factory, uncut with Williard Jenkins and your old World Music jazz show? I have other ideas as well, but I noticed that my posts have been deleted from the BET on J forum and all of my suggestions were ignored. If its different here, then I'll throw in my two cents about why you haven't asked Bill Cosby, who worships jazz, to do a weekly jazz show or why you ha haven't you tried to recreate poliitically incorrect (or any real news content for that matter) or why you don't play jazz dvds on the station, even on a once a week basis? It's just shocking...Do you hate jazz? If the answer is yes then I guess that explains the station...

Sincerely,

Philip Shropshire
www.threeriversonline.com