Soon after WSSM, the former smooth jazz station at 106.5 FM, went on the air in 2000, someone I knew asked, "We already have KFUO. Does St. Louis need another Classical jazz station?"
Despite all of my passionate proselytizing about the enticing, separate genres of jazz and Classical music, those formats were one and the same to her. They were just forms of instrumental music to which she didn't usually listen. Her reaction reminded me that one person's passion is another person's only-sporadically-sampled background music. It also reinforced that as often as I like to think of both formats as secure, they're still select tastes.
