Best of Nashville
Music
Best Jazz Radio Station
WMOT-FM
This is a bittersweet honor, because some time in the near future 89.5 WMOT-FM will no longer be a 24/7 mainstream jazz station. Just as classical fans saw the pursuit of demographics and dollars doom Mozart and Beethoven in the daytime hours at WPLN-FM, their jazz counterparts will soon experience a similar fate vis-à-vis Parker and Coltrane. That's not to say jazz will completely disappear from the station—word is the nightly treasure Jazz With Bob Parlocha will remain, and hopefully they will salvage other worthy weekend specialty shows like Austin Bealmear's Jazz on the Side, The Brazilian Hour and the weekly program produced by the Nashville Jazz Workshop. But unfortunately, while the folks at Japan's Jazz Journal and listeners around the country salute and celebrate WMOT-FM's quality and excellence as a 100,000-watt voice for mainstream jazz, the folks who run the store are nearly ready to devote the daytime to talk—as if that's something lacking in the Nashville radio world. RON WYNN
