Jack Fm
Jack stations play a mix of 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s hits with some current hot adult contemporary singles. Jack stations use the slogan "playing what we want", and promote themselves as having a larger and more varied playlist than other commercial radio stations.
It is not unusual for a Jack-FM station to have a playlist of over 1000 songs compared to normal FM stations which sometimes have playlists of fewer than 500 songs. The stations are officially classified as the Variety Hits or Adult Hits format by radio research companies.
History and timeline
One of the early originators of this format was radio programmer Bob Perry, on an American Internet radio stream in 2000.
Perry named the station after a fictitious persona, "Cadillac Jack" Garrett, "a hard-living radio cowboy". The back story created by Perry for the original web stream was that Garrett, a DJ who had worked a lot of "big sticks", finally got his own radio station and after years of being told what he was to play on-air was creating a station where the motto was "playing what we want." However, according to Rogers Communications, the only thing taken for the first Jack-FM radio station, in Vancouver, was the name and the tagline.
Pat Cardinal, one of the first JACK Program Directors, says that he was unaware of the type of music on the American website and that "JACK" was one of several names that were considered for the format. Rogers Communications came to an agreement with Perry for the use of the Jack-FM name in Canada soon after the launch.
Program director Howard Kroeger was inspired to create Bob FM after hearing a mix tape at a friend's 40th birthday party. Other Canadian broadcasters copied the concept as well, adopting such brands as Corus Entertainment's "Dave FM" and "Joe FM".
The success of Jack caused a cloning effect, with some stations using the names of famous locals to promote their version of the format, such as WABZ "Abe FM" in Springfield, Illinois, named for Abraham Lincoln, WBEN-FM "Ben FM" in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, named for Benjamin Franklin, "100.5 FM Louie" in Louisville, Kentucky, "Doug-FM 93.1" WDRQ in Detroit, Michigan, "96.7 Steve FM" WLTY in Columbia, South Carolina, named after current University of South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier, or "The Chief 92.5 FM" in Champaign, Illinois, named for the controversial symbol of the University of Illinois, Chief Illiniwek, or local symbols like WARH in St. Louis (licensed to Granite City, IL), known as "106.5, The Arch".
On July 29, 2005, Rawlco's CKCK in Regina, Saskatchewan became the first non-Rogers station in Canada to directly license the Jack-FM brand rather than adopting an alternate name.
On Wednesday, May 4, 2005, at noon, WQSR, an oldies station in Towson, Maryland which targeted Baltimore area listeners, changed its format from oldies to Jack-FM.
WQSR received a large amount of negative publicity regarding their format change. Popular former WQSR personality Steve Rouse has since resurfaced as the new morning show host at sister station, the Soft AC-formatted WLIF.
Not long after, on Friday, June 3, 2005, at 5:00 p.m.
The switch to a more generic format has been termed The Day the Music Died by some New Yorkers and has drawn criticism even from non-listeners of the station, particularly due to the sudden firing of DJs of historic renown such as Cousin Brucie. In a partial nod to this controversy, on June 14, 2005, it was announced that the station would be unique among those with the Jack format in that it would occasionally include '50s and early '60s songs in its rotation as well as songs by performers like Frank Sinatra that are normally not part of the Jack format, though a later Web update retracted this and songs from before the late '60s were no longer played.
The change in New York generated the most negative publicity of any market that switched a station to the Jack format, including a derogatory comment by the mayor himself. What's with all the swearin' like a sailor? Fleet week is over.
Three of the fired DJs and staff (Dan Taylor, Bob Shannon, and Mr. G) returned to the station, along with newsman Al Meredith (who had stayed at the station during Jack-FM doing his Sunday morning public affairs show), as well as DJ Pat St.
John who had previously left CBS-FM for Q104.3 about a year before the flip to Jack. However, the Jack FM format is still available through WCBS-FM's HD2 subchannel, and via an internet stream at
http://www.1011hd2.com.
On the same day that WCBS-FM made the switch, another station owned by CBS, 104.3 WJMK, an oldies station in Chicago, Illinois, changed format to 104.3 Jack-FM as well.
The oldies format has since returned to the Chicago airwaves with the introduction of WZZN (94.7 FM; now WLS-FM).
All Jack-FM stations in Canada and the United States, except for WBUF use Howard Cogan as the "voice" of Jack. SparkNet has, in turn, licensed the format to Dial Global for satellite-based syndication to stations in U.S.
WDRQ in Detroit uses the line "93.1 DOUG FM - We Play…EVERYTHING!"
In late September 2005, CJAQ-FM in Toronto, Ontario announced that it would become the first DJ-free station in Canada. This station also follows the "classic rock" format, similar to CJAQ-FM in Toronto.
In October 2006, the UK's first Jack-FM format station won a broadcast licence for the Oxford area .
5, the first personality on the station since it went to the Jack format.
There is one nationally syndicated satellite format using the "Jack FM" name; after several years at ABC Radio, it was recently acquired by Dial Global.
Controversy
One of the main criticisms of the Jack FM brand has been that with the reduction or elimination of the role of the DJ, radio is losing its main selling point over an iPod, which is the sense that a live person is programming your music.