Franglais

[Rankin, Robert L]

> Although it may be justified when the origin is French, the pronunciation
> of ch as sh has recently become an annoying problem in the Santa Barbara
> area.

It's not just Santa Barbara.  I call it "NPR English".  Although I'm not sure they're the only purveyors of the fricative pronunciation of "ch" and "j", they're certainly among the major offenders.  They can't make up their mind about Ahmed Chalabi (does Arabic even have a tch?), but they seem quite content with AzerbaiZHan, BeiZHing, FuZHian and various Chinese political figures whose names have "j".  I guess they must have had a year or two of High School French and think of it as "THE foreign language".  Apparently only English has the "dj" sound, as in "jazz".  All other languages just have "zh".  
 
Bob