We recently had a radio station here in Seattle switch format to Jack FM. The station used to play alternative rock along with some misplaced Police songs. They switched a couple of weeks ago.
It’s the dumbest idea in radio and it seems to be infecting the nation. Stations all over are changing to the Jack FM format. It seems to have started over the border in Vancouver B.C. and they’re now selling (licensing) that format to stations in other markets. Dumb Dumb Dumb.
I hate the format. It’s top 40 songs from the past couple of decades on random shuffle. There is no sense to the order. You get things like a soft ballad from the 80’s played right after a hard driving song from 2002. Fill up an iPod with top 40 songs from the past couple of decades, put it on shuffle and you’ve got Jack FM. They have killed a radio station.
Here’s a Google news search on Jack FM. You can see the infection spreading.
If you live in an area that doesn’t have a Jack FM station yet, watch out. You’re gonna get one and it’s gonna suck. Hopefully they won’t kill a station that you like.
this is just the latest, saddest, development in a downhill slide that started when stations started employing ‘playlist consultants’ and took the music choice out of the hands of the presenters
this was yet another example of the belief that we are all the same
that we all like the same stuff
and that some capitalist piece of scum-f#$k can make more money by peddling his shite to the lowest common denominator
Internet radio and audio blogs don’t work in my car.
I’m not interested in paying for satellite radio.
I’m not a big fan of internet radio. A lot of the streaming stations compress the music so much that it becomes difficult to listen to.
I’ve been listening to Rhapsody by RealNetworks. Rhapsody is a perk or a bonus as part of my Comcast cable internet connection. The programming on the Rhapsody is poor and repeats too much. You can make your own station by listing 10 of your favorite bands and from that they determine a mix of music that includes those bands and other bands that fit in. The music repeats and has a limited play list. I made a classic metal station for myself that includes KISS. I’ve only heard a single KISS song in the rotation and they play the same one every time I play that station. Their other stations are the same.
I was listening to Rhapsody to hear stuff that I hadn’t heard before. They don’t have it. Rhapsody is just like Jack FM. They only have the popular songs that made the top 40 or the top of some other music list. It quickly gets old. They have a lot of stations to choose from. Maybe I’ll be able to find something that plays interesting music without boring me. But I doubt it.
I never thought I’d pay for satellite radio b/c I’m a cheap bastard but then when I got a new truck last summer it came with 3 free months of XM Radio. Well now I haven’t listened to FM since last summer…
it happened down here too in mid april. the change pushed fm stations to am and some am shows were lost all together. Entercom pulled the trigger in Oregon.
what is totaly rediculas is the jack station down here 97.1 “charlie FM” now plays commercials. COMMERCIALS!!! not very Mp3 like.
here are some links to what we have been doing to entercom since the change.
We have a new station here, BOB FM. “You never know what Bob will play next” they say. Except that it will be hits from the 60s through today. I added the hits part. And except it won’t be country, or opera, or rap, or probably anything else that isn’t basically pop or classic rock.
Problem: I like the format. A lot. I find it less limiting than a classic rock-only station, or a hits-only station, or a soft rock-only station. They play an even more limited selection.
When I play my iPod, most of the time I’m using a playlist called “All Regular Songs.” This is everything on there, minus holiday music, spoken word, and movie soundtrack music. Shuffled.
In larger markets, I guess your solution is public radio, though if you only have one public radio station, you have to wait for the one show that you like to come along.
Radio with commercials is a business, and follows these icky rules that require lots of people to listen for them to make money. But radio today is under attack from satellite radio and a universe of personal music players, like my iPod which spends most of its time in my car. Like TV, radio has to change to adapt to is new business environment.
What was it you guys wanted to hear? I like obscure stuff too, but the hard part is finding a large enough group of people who want to hear the same obscure stuff I like. I haven’t expected to hear non-hit stuff on commercial radio for many years.
I like stations with more focus than three decades worth of hits. There are too many duds in three decades worth of hits. If I want to listen to classic rock I’ll pick the classic rock station. If I want to listen to alternative rock I’ll pick the alternative rock station. If I want to listen to soft hits from the 80’s I’ll shoot myself. I don’t want a station that does all of that at once.
I like a station that announces what songs it has played. If I hear a song I’m not familiar with it is nice to be able to find out what it was.
I don’t like the sometimes awkward transpositions you can get when putting a radio station on automatic shuffle play. It just doesn’t sound right to have a hard rocking song from 2002 immediately followed by a soft sentimental love ballad from the early 80’s. That kind of programming is just brain dead. There needs to be some sensible ordering of the play list and sensible transitions between songs.
I primarily listen to the radio in the car where I’ve got several radio stations programmed in. If a station plays a song that I really don’t like or a song that I don’t feel like listening to I will change the station. I have found that with the Jack FM station I am switching away so frequently that I might as well not even start listening to it at all.
I like a station that has a passion for the music that they play. A station that tells you something interesting about the band or a song. A station that will play something new before it’s an overplayed national hit. A station that plays the good songs that weren’t mega hits. A station that will play a block of music that highlights a theme or a particular band. That is everything that Jack FM isn’t.
Then I look at the radio station ratings and realize that mush music gets higher market ratings than the music I like to listen to. If I ever get the urge to listen to a station with the slogan Warm 106.9 Continuous Soft Favorites, please shoot me. My life is over. But stations like that get good ratings. Country is still king here. The stations I listen to are way down on the list.
spoken like a true radio listening moron…people like you that agree with that cookie cutter, no talent, piped in from some corparate radio feed zone make me sick.
internet radio can be awesome. there’s indie 103 from somewhere that has internet radio. lots of musicians(big ones, like henry rollins) do shows. also if you have a college neary, find their student station. nearly all have internet radio and all of them will play unusual stuff, might not be your favorite music but they will have interesting formats and non-radio type songs. good stuff.
I need to look for some good internet radio stations. I’ve found some, but then I forget to bookmark them and I promptly forget them.
I primarily listen to radio in the car where I don’t have an internet connection. At home I’ve got lots of choices. In the car I prefer the regular radio. I can play MP3s in the car or CDs or cassette tapes, but I like the simplicity of the radio.
and the sad thing is that there’s no real excuse for that
the most entry level broadcast software package allows u to enter ‘Mood Code’ and settings are available to tell the machine which mood codes can go into a double- or tripple play
worse than brain dead, the kind of programming u mention is mostly just lazy
I figured there was software that could program playlists that way. Just look at sites like AllMusic.com. They’ve got albums and bands classified by mood and theme and other categories. They have to have the same type of info available that categorizes individual songs that get radio play.
The awkward song transitions are distracting and it feels all wrong to immediately from one mood or sound directly to a song with a completely different mood and sound. It’s just wrong.
i, for one, will desperately miss the human touch in radio
i was very fortunate in still getting a couple of opportunities to actually ‘do’ a show
pick the music, pick the content (or just do it off the cuff if i didn’t feel like prepping) and drive the desk myself
i’m still very tempted to get myself a high-speed internet connection and set up a studio at home from where i can broadcast when i’m in the mood
in true pirate-radio style
as i stand by your right to hold an opinion
i’m sure by now u would’ve noticed that i’m no fan of that kind of radio either and that i’m of the opinion that these automated services rob us of one of last remaining mass-consumption, individually expressive art-forms
that said, calling john foss a moron isn’t neccesary nor kewl
