On Friday morning, a Murfreesboro radio station will stop playing jazz and start playing a musical genre with deep roots but a short history.
WMOT-FM, a 100,000-watt station owned by Middle Tennessee State University, is adopting Americana in an effort to broaden its audience and better serve the school’s students. The station is celebrating the switch at a private ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame which will be streamed
here starting at 11 a.m.
Ken Paulson, the Dean of MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment, says universities have a responsibility to make the best possible use of their assets and that playing jazz wasn’t doing that.
“There were strengths about our jazz and classical programming. But, candidly we did not have a lot of listeners,” he says. “And when you don’t have a lot of listeners, you don’t get the message out about the quality of education you provide.”
To spearhead the switch, the university partnered with
Music City Roots, a local syndicated radio show whose TV production appears on PBS stations. Paulson thinks the move to Americana better reflects the culture, the music and the people of Nashville. But if that’s true, why isn’t there already a local station committed to the genre?
“It’s not been successful really, in competition with what we once called top 40 and contemporary hits,” Paulson says. “It’s why nobody has jumped in with both feet in Nashville to try and create a commercial all-Americana station. But you know what, WMOT has this great gift — we are a non-profit radio station.”
In music history terms, Americana is still relatively young. The Grammys created an Americana category just six years ago. It encompasses a broadly defined range of roots music from blues to bluegrass. The
recent top 10 charts include the Lumineers, Sturgill Simpson and Joan Baez.
Paulson says the station will continue to broadcast MTSU sports. And WMOT will continue to play jazz on its HD channel and two FM outlets in Murfreesboro.
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