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Jack FM question

anotherguyTN

anotherguyTN

On Jack FM stations their slogan is Playing What We Want, but do the individual stations determine what they play, possibly even pulling from past formats? I know that WASL 100.1 in Dyersburg, TN plays a lot of the same music like they played from when they were AC in the 80's and 90's and classic rock in the early 2000's. But WCJK 96.3 in Nashville seems to add in more rap/hip hop and sometimes country as well. Is this determined by the stations? Thanks for any info. :)
 
anotherguyTN said:
On Jack FM stations their slogan is Playing What We Want, but do the individual stations determine what they play, possibly even pulling from past formats? I know that WASL 100.1 in Dyersburg, TN plays a lot of the same music like they played from when they were AC in the 80's and 90's and classic rock in the ear;y 2000's. But WCJK 96.3 in Nashville seems to add in more rap/hip hop as well. Is this determined by the stations? Thanks for any info. :)
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There are two kinds of legitimate Jack formats (licensed by the rights holder). In larger markets (to 40 to 50) it is a consultancy, with guidance on local research, the well known voice work and other services. In smaller markets, it is a syndicated format delivered to the local station's automation to be run locally; it also includes the voice work, but not as customized and not as constantly changed.

The consulted stations determine the music locally with their own AMTs. The networked smaller market service is "one size fits all".
 
Most, if not all, Jack FM stations in small markets are using the same playlists. I'd wager if you listened to WASL and the Jack FM in Alexandria, La. or Morgantown, WVa. you'd get the same songs, possibly offset for time zones.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Most, if not all, Jack FM stations in small markets are using the same playlists. I'd wager if you listened to WASL and the Jack FM in Alexandria, La. or Morgantown, WVa. you'd get the same songs, possibly offset for time zones.
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Yep, it is syndicated outside the top 50 markets. There are two ways to run a service like that... one is "live" off a feed, and the other is with all the workparts loaded onto a computer and assembled locally but with updates from the syndicator on a regular basis.
 
DavidEduardo said:
There are two kinds of legitimate Jack formats (licensed by the rights holder). In larger markets (to 40 to 50) it is a consultancy, with guidance on local research, the well known voice work and other services.
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At this point only the Jack-FMs in the US owned by Audacy, iHeartMedia and Midwest Communications are not using the nationally distributed playlist. Audacy in Los Angeles, Dallas and Minneapolis. iHeart in Seattle and Baltimore. Midwest in Nashville and Knoxville.

The original argreement between Sparknet and CBS Radio in the mid 2000s carved out the Top 40 markets to be locally customized with the rest required to utilized the then-satellite fed playlist. Some of those such as San Antonio have now gone to the national log as well.
 
lanceventa said:
At this point only the Jack-FMs in the US owned by Audacy, iHeartMedia and Midwest Communications are not using the nationally distributed playlist.
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Do you think that is permanent? I heard comments that those that went to the national list are those that couldn't or wouldn't budget at least one annual music test a year during the pandemic. With the large playlist, those tests were in the $40 k range, so using the national list made sense.
lanceventa said:
Audacy in Los Angeles, Dallas and Minneapolis. iHeart in Seattle and Baltimore. Midwest in Nashville and Knoxville.
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The Audacy markets should not share playlists, but probably are. Seattle and Baltimore don't like sharable. But the two TN markets likely can be shared, or they do 50 people each in the two markets... since those tests are not done "in person" anyway, that is doable.
lanceventa said:
The original argreement between Sparknet and CBS Radio in the mid 2000s carved out the Top 40 markets to be locally customized with the rest required to utilized the then-satellite fed playlist. Some of those such as San Antonio have now gone to the national log as well.
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Yeah, that was what I was told by George Burns a couple of years ago just before his retirement.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Do you think that is permanent? I heard comments that those that went to the national list are those that couldn't or wouldn't budget at least one annual music test a year during the pandemic. With the large playlist, those tests were in the $40 k range, so using the national list made sense.
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That is how it has been since at least 2005. The CBS deal with Sparknet carved out the top 40 markets to be operated how they see fit. Hence why KCBS-FM (and WJMK, WCBS-FM and a couple others at the time) even had non-standard Jack-FM logos as well, while the rest have to use the Sparknet standard. The two now owned by iHeart were sold to them by CBS in 2008.

Part of the reason WJJK Indianapolis dropped Jack in 2006 was it was still not in the top 40 markets and Cumulus wanted to locally customize it.

DavidEduardo said:
The Audacy markets should not share playlists, but probably are. Seattle and Baltimore don't like sharable. But the two TN markets likely can be shared, or they do 50 people each in the two markets... since those tests are not done "in person" anyway, that is doable.
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For the longest time, KCBS-FM under Kevin Weatherly and Gene Sandbloom leaned much more Classic Alternative to give it more leeway away from KRTH.

Seattle and Baltimore do share libraries with iHeart's other Variety Hits stations such as WHLK Cleveland and WLKO Charlotte but are custom scheduled for each market.
 
Not sure if it’s coincidence that WASL has a similar playlist as Jack to what it had as SL100 or something else. I'd heard SL100 a few times in the 90’s and the previous 20 years, but I didn’t spend much time listening. So, I couldn’t tell you if the previous format sounded rather Jack-like.

Since the playlists are sent to the local stations and played on their hard drives, there’s theoretically nothing stopping them from jockeying with the music. There might be something contractually that prohibits doing that, though. My local Jack FM airs a morning talk show from 7-10, and it plays the network logs as soon as the talk show signs off. It matches KC and San Antonio within a few minutes once the morning show is off.
 
I know 102.7 Jack-FM Baltimore shares identical music logs with 102.5 The Lake Greenville, SC (and a few others), which is the same library but an alternate log than the main iHeart Variety Hits log that is shared by 1065 The Lake Cleveland, 947 Bob FM Erie, 1029 The Lake Charlotte, and 967 Steve FM Columbia, SC and more.

102.7 Jack-FM also breaks away for AT40 the 80s on Sunday nights.
 
I noticed WQSR and WHLK frequently had the same songs at roughly the same time. I always remember Charlotte's Lake being different, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it had the same playlist as the other stations in the same format. If you were to randomize those songs, even with the same categories, you theoretically wouldn’t hit the exact same order on two different computers.

One of the more interesting implementations of Jack FM that I once heard was KSPQ 93.9 out of West Plains, MO. It puts a decent signal, at least on a car radio, into the Branson area. It ran its local classic rock format in morning and afternoon drive and the satellite Jack FM the other dayparts. It used to refer to itself as “Q94 & Jack FM.” Of course, one could reasonably argue that interesting approach didn’t work, and the station is back to being ”Classic Rock Q94.” Not sure what it airs in middays and overnights, but it picked up Alice Cooper's syndicated show for the night shift. It hasn’t mentioned “Jack FM” in several years.
 
Kent said:
I noticed WQSR and WHLK frequently had the same songs at roughly the same time. I always remember Charlotte's Lake being different, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it had the same playlist as the other stations in the same format. If you were to randomize those songs, even with the same categories, you theoretically wouldn’t hit the exact same order on two different computers.
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At some point in the last year or so, WQSR and WHLK stopped sharing the same log. But if you look at their playlist history (don't do it right now though since there's a bunch of AT40 stuff in the WQSR list) all of the songs seem to be shared in both station libraries.
 
I think the “jack” or “bob” formats were simply different ways of labeling oldies stations. Of course, perhaps with some differences by including more recent hits. The oldies term needed to die. Yes, “classic hits” was a seemingly good replacement, until it wasn’t.
 
Kent said:
I noticed WQSR and WHLK frequently had the same songs at roughly the same time. I always remember Charlotte's Lake being different, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it had the same playlist as the other stations in the same format. If you were to randomize those songs, even with the same categories, you theoretically wouldn’t hit the exact same order on two different computers.

One of the more interesting implementations of Jack FM that I once heard was KSPQ 93.9 out of West Plains, MO. It puts a decent signal, at least on a car radio, into the Branson area. It ran its local classic rock format in morning and afternoon drive and the satellite Jack FM the other dayparts. It used to refer to itself as “Q94 & Jack FM.” Of course, one could reasonably argue that interesting approach didn’t work, and the station is back to being ”Classic Rock Q94.” Not sure what it airs in middays and overnights, but it picked up Alice Cooper's syndicated show for the night shift. It hasn’t mentioned “Jack FM” in several years.
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Several years ago, online, I heard the German version of Jack FM but don't remember a lot about it. Jack, with spinoff Union Jack, in parts of the UK seems to have disappeared according to this article. https://completemusicupdate.com/article/union-jack-radio-owner-goes-into-administration/
 
seatownmedia said:
I think the “jack” or “bob” formats were simply different ways of labeling oldies stations. Of course, perhaps with some differences by including more recent hits.
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In the sense that all the music is "old", I guess so.

But the playlist of an oldies station in 2005 and the playlist of a Jack FM in that era were really different.
 
For sure. There's a ton of overlap right now between Variety Hits and Classic Hits. But in 2005, Variety Hits was more of a super-gold Hot AC and was nowhere near a 60s-70s based Oldies format.

Keep in mind it wasn't *that* long ago that the 80s that dominates Classic Hits (and Mainstream AC) was still dominating the recurrent/gold categories on Hot AC.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
In the sense that all the music is "old", I guess so.

But the playlist of an oldies station in 2005 and the playlist of a Jack FM in that era were really different.
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Yes. "Oldies" or "Classic Hits" tend to focus on a core 10 year period with 3 to 5 years of "fall off" on either side.

"Jack" type formats cover 30 to 40 years, with some exceptions even reaching beyond that. A classic definition of the format is " a mile wide but just an inch deep". Classic Hits or Oldies tend to be much more narrow and much deeper.
 
I was recently driving across the country.

I heard Cutting Crew- I Just Died In Your Arms followed immediately by Eminem - Real Slim Shady on both W263AQ 100.5 Jack FM Effingham IL and 7 hours later on K273BZ 102.5 Jack FM Kansas City MO.

So they are both using the same log

On a side note, W263AQ is the translator that was responsible for the Mattoon Waiver.
 
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