JACK FM, the leader of the new radio movement
You may have read articles about this in a music magazine, or a New York newspaper or two. There’s a new radio station format showing up all over the country. Promising “we play whatever we want” (or something so remarkably similar that the original, JACK FM, has begun litigation), these stations have music libraries of over 1300 songs that they keep in their rotation instead of the supposed 300 that most other formats use. Possibly inspired by iTunes and the shuffle feature (something I personally dislike, as I’m tend to listen to complete albums), these stations play an incredibly eclectic group of songs in no particular order. There could be Madonna followed by Outkast followed by Jimi Hendrix. They also play more music than most stations apparently, upto twice as much in some markets. In fact, as of this week, eight stations, all owned by the same company, are switching over to this format.
So what’s all the fuss about?
Well, first there’s the actual music change. Having the station higher-ups picking the playlists (as opposed to the DJs) is not a new concept. In fact, the “Top 40” station in the area, B104 (a Clearchannel station), plays the singles at the top of the charts at least twice between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily, sometimes even more. Surely the DJs, who promise “Hits of the 80s , 90s and now”, would fill the slots between these top singles with any of the incredible amount of “Hits” from the past twenty years. Unfortunately, it seems that even with two and a half decades to pick from, it’s impossible to go a day without hearing “Superfreak”, or “Hotstepper (Word it up!)”. In the time that I’ve listened to them, it seems like they’ve totally forgotten the songs they were playing to death between 1999 and 2003, other than that damn Evanescence song that I used to like when Daredevil came out. If we go even broader, the Rock station (also owned by Clearchannel), has about forty years to work with, as they play “Modern Rock”, (read: Nickelback’s “Photograph” at least once a day), and “Classic Rock”, (read: KISS’s “Beth” at least once a day). They still have the same problem of the small playlist. Expanding your playlist four-fold would open up a whole new world of programming. I know these stations have the songs. The “Rock” station has specifically programmed Wednesday to feature “Songs that you haven’t heard in a while” between the everyday material. What prevents them from playing these more often? Probably the assumption that the audience likes specific (“popular”) songs because they’ve been played by the station already, and because other stations are playing them (the basis of “Radio Charts“). Of course the reason that other stations are playing them is that the record promoters are calling all of the popular stations and telling them to play these songs. The sort of pretzel logic that says that we like something because we have no other real options is why so many reality shows have succeeded on TV.
Second reason it’s such a big deal: This is the first response in programming to the looming threat of satellite radio. More and more people are switching to satellite because there you can be free to listen to stations more focused to the style of music that you are particularly interested in. In addition there are way more stations than you would have access to in a local market, with the exceptions of maybe New York, LA and Chicago. You have access to more music in general than you would have. The JACK/BOB stations are trying to fix this problem as well as the advertising issue. People don’t like to listen to ads, but in “Terrestrial Radio” (a term that’s popping up everywhere, used to describe regular radio. It bugs me that they have to give it an adjective in front of it to discern it from satellite , even though it was there first), ads are the driving monetary force, so in order to up the music amount while keeping the same ad time, in addition to saving money on personnell, the stations have made the following adjustment.
Reason number 3: NO MORE DJs. No longer are we interrupted with annoying voices that tell us what the song was, or who it was by, or what’s coming up, or dumb jokes (Ken Matthews and the “B Morning Crew”, I’m looking in your direction). Each station now has it’s own personality, instead of dozens of them, spoken over recordings between songs and commercial breaks. If you want to find out what song was playing, you can go to the station’s website (the L.A. one has a backlist of every song they’ve ever played, by time, complete with artist, album, cover art, label it was released on, and links to a review of the album and purchasing information, many times cheaper than buying it anywhere else) and find out there. The only problem with this is the gradual phasing out of DJ jobs, replaced by machines, something which I was never incredibly fond of… mostly because I’ve seen Terminator and The Matrix.
The point is these stations are giving us less talking, more music, more diverse music, and with an irreverent feel. The point is that this is the first wave of defense against XM and Sirius. The point is that soon enough our robot workers will rise up and overthrow us, forcing us to feed them with our energy while we’re laying, unconscious, in a tub of goo. In the meantime, enjoy this new format before it becomes old and all the stations change back to the way they were, or file for bankruptcy.
JACK FM and the copycats get four stars for their innovative (at least in the case of JACK) adaptation techniques and the fact that eventually this may lead to me not hearing Kelly Clarkson five times a day (literally), or the same REO Speedwagon song every afternoon.
One response to “JACKFM and other stations like it”
[…] September 20th, 2006 Nate WKAP failed in its bid to be the real version of WKRP. It was not based in Cincinatti. Call me lame. I like oldies music. Not like the sleepy old easy listening fifties stuff that you’re used to thinking about when you think of AM radio. I’m talking about the British Invasion of 1965, the California surf sound, a little bit of Motown, some Doo-Wop, and the Four Seasons. The origins of rock and roll. I don’t really listen to that stuff anymore. That was sort’ve what we listened to growing up, and since then, I’ve moved on to “Album Oriented Rock”, which on most “Classic Rock” stations consists of the same 200 songs over and over again. Granted I know that top 40 radio has about the same amount of songs, but theirs vary over a period of time, and two years later the list has been completely revamped. With classic rock and oldies there’s really no room for growth, which can get a bit repetitive and redundant. The good thing about that though is that they allow for both quick learning of the songs, and once you move on, when you do choose to eventually come back to it, it’ll be there, the exact way you left it. This was the case more than 2 years ago when I was driving back from California. On our way through Iowa, we hit what was probably the worst storm I’ve ever driven in. Huge hail and intense rain, and complete darkness, save for the tail-lights of the tractor-trailer I was following. Flipping through the radio furiously in an attempt to find something to ease my anxiety, I stopped at a radio show I hadn’t heard in years. “Rock and Roll’s Greatest Hits” with Dick Bartley. I had listened to his show on weekend nights growing up, when I was going to bed or whatever. The show was exactly the way I remember it, and I hadn’t forgotten the songs; they were just pushed all the way to the back of my mind, like the names of all those kids in my third grade class picture. A few months later I got a new cd player/radio for my car and to this day I still can’t figure out how to set the time or radio presets. I’ve worked around it by knowing that right now my clock is fifty-five minutes ahead, and having three FM channels saved and one AM. Unless you like talk radio, there’s no reason to have an AM station saved on there, but it’s a spot that needs to be filled, so I cycled through and to my surprise, one of the few stations was playing oldies. It was alright, but they played too much of a variety. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but I’m just not into all the really old easy-listening/a.m. gold-stuff. So being a station flipper, it’s good for an occasional song, but over an extended period of time, the songs are too erratic to keep listening. On the other hand, I found myself listening more and more as they broadcast Phillies games on the station, and started airing the Dick Bartley shows on the weekends as well. The station really didn’t have a lot going for it, other than those stand-bys. Maybe the older people who would typically be listening to it would like the radio personalities, but I found them grating… although not as grating as local “Superstar”, Ken Matthews who will be retiring from his role as the Lehigh Valley’s most obnoxious, over-inflated media personality after 15 years. They had what was billed as the largest Elvis radio library in the country, which I guess for them could be a good thing, and they had a built-in audience from the just sold (in 2001, by clearchannel, due to FCC rules, prompting both stations to change format), “highest rated oldies station in the country”, WODE. I’m not sure how they’d mess it up, because if there’s one place outside of Florida that an oldies station could thrive, it would be in the home of the most listened to oldies station in the country. I guess though, if you don’t advertise yourself, and you’re on a radio band that nobody listens to, even to scroll through, unless you’re looking for right-wing pundits, news, or sports games, you might be able to fail. But I’m assuming they did, because one day in August, I happened to hear a moderately saddening commercial. I’m going to paraphrase it, because I don’t remember the specifics (i.e. the names of the people). This is a dialogue. Keep in mind while reading it, that the people in the commercial were extremely energetic, and sounded like Jesus-camp counselors. Donny: Coming soon, to the new WYHM, the Donny and Marie morning show [not their actual names]. Filled with family-oriented fun. Marie: And our patented witty banter. Donny: Some of our topics include the whole ‘Mars/Venus’ thing. Marie: You know, the battle of the sexes. Donny: And the superiority of the canine over the feline. Marie: Oh, puh-leaze. Donny: So tune in, every morning on, HIM the new WYHM, 1470. I was waiting at the end of it for him to say “…or else you’re going to hell”. My first thoughts after I heard it were: what is happening to this station, why is it happening, and “patented witty banter?” The answer to the first one is that the station has since become a home for Christian music and preaching. The second, I’m not sure. As for the third question, there are only four types of modern, original “Witty Banter”: Dialogue written by Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin, and the Seinfeld scripts. ( I say modern so as to not include Neil Simon and all those people who wrote for Sid Ceasar and went on to individual fame way back when) All others are derivative (I admit my guilt in this as well), and when you advertise that you’re aware of the “witty banter”, it’s no longer spontaneous, which is hallmark of “witty banter”. As for the topics, that “Mars/Venus” book came out years ago, and who the hell cares about cats and dogs? Finally, saying “puh-leaze” has got to be the worst comeback ever, and when you’re trying to sell yourself as being “witty”, basically saying the equivalent of “nuh-uh” is not the best way to do it. I’ve given it a try (for the sole sake of writing this review), and I have to say, not only is it Jesus music presented with hyper-happy condescending hosts who have had too much of the fruit punch, but it’s bad Jesus music. It’s like they took the moderately okay inspirational music that’s out there and only decided to play Kidzbop versions of it. Granted, this opinion is of about only 10 minutes worth of airtime, but still. I can’t see how this can be a more profitable radio venture than the oldies station was. The only thing that I can think of is that Wikipedia says that they intend to sell blocks of time to religious groups, but I can’t see how an A.M. station with very little presence in the area is going to last as a very niche format, especially when it only plays one tempo and theme of music. People, even the most religious, need variety in their songs, and probably wouldn’t be able to listen to this station for more than 15 minutes on end. There’s really no need for this format change. If less people are listening to your station (10 people instead of 11), try changing up the personalities, the show formats, or focus your playlist a little bit as to not alienate the main group that you’re trying to go after. (There’s a big difference between the people that like Nat King Cole and those who like Billy Joel, and they shouldn’t be played on the same station unless like JACK, your gimmick is variety). Totally changing your format to an even smaller niche (I’m just guessing at that, so don’t quote me on it) is not the way to get more listeners, and now the people who are starved for oldies will have no place to go… after all, old people don’t know how to use iTunes. Oh, and YHM doesn’t spell HIM, or HYMN…. get a damn dictionary. […]