Radio that jacks up the hits

Callers to the new Jack FM radio station in San Diego are greeted by a smug voice with this message: “If you want to request a song, call somebody else. We play what we want.”

A radio station telling listeners to buzz off would have been heretical a few years ago. Now it’s just business. As satellite radio and digital music players such as Apple’s iPod steal listeners from conventional radio, stations are trying to capture the best of those new technologies -- the variety and seemingly random order of the songs.

Already, more than 5 million people -- fed up with the endless ads and repetitive playlists of broadcast radio -- have signed up for the virtually commercial-free programming of XM and Sirius satellite radio. And Apple has sold 15 million iPods, which allow people to listen to what they want when they want.

The radio industry’s best response so far is called Jack, a format that 12 U.S. stations have adopted in the last year, including KCBS-FM (93.1) in Los Angeles, which formerly featured a rock oldies format and called itself “Arrow.” The new identity means a vastly expanded playlist of 1,200 songs, culled from the hits of the last four decades in all genres, from pop to R&B; to classic rock to Motown. It also means no DJs, no promotions or contests and fewer commercials.

“Jack is a revelation,” said Chris Butterick, general manager of Jack FM in Jackson, Miss., who sounds as though he has undergone a religious conversion. “Radio had forgotten what its purpose is. People want to hear music and variety. Jack is all about the listeners.”

But radio consultants critical of the format say research shows that listeners want to feel a connection with a station -- and that comes through on-air personalities.

“I always ask people to name a station that stayed successful without personalities, and nobody has come up with one,” said Robert Unmacht, a longtime radio programmer and consultant based in Nashville. “Radio is about the music, and it’s about doing radio with personality.”

Nonetheless, at least in the early going, Jack stations are attracting attention. Butterick’s station, which used to play “classic hits” and was sixth in its market among nonurban stations, has been either first or second in the last two ratings periods, according to Arbitron Inc., which tracks ratings for stations in the U.S. and Mexico.

Longtime listeners say their biggest complaint with radio is that there’s simply not enough music being played. There’s too much of what the industry calls “clutter” -- chatty DJs, promotions, contests, giveaways and commercials. That may explain why Americans are listening to less radio these days.

Arbitron reports that the time Americans spent listening to traditional radio fell from 21 1/2 hours a week in fall 1998 to 19 1/2 hours a week last fall.

“In the last 20 years, all these spots and sales promotions and contests were designed to deliver to advertisers, but we’ve lost sight of the fact that we have to get the listeners first,” said Mike Henry, chief executive of Paragon Media Strategies in Denver and a consultant who helped launch the first Jack station in Vancouver, Canada, in fall 2002.

U.S. stations that want to convert to Jack must buy the license for the format from Bohn & Associates Media in Vancouver. Along with it, they get some rules: Jack stations launch without DJs, with low commercial loads and with few if any promotions. After a few months, once the station’s playlist has been cycled through several times, the stations typically add back some of those layers.

Donna Halper, a radio consultant and media professor at Emerson College in Boston, praised the Jack stations for expanding their playlists and offering some diversity on the radio, but she said they’ll have trouble surviving without developing strong personalities.

“It’s wonderful to play different songs and stop having this mentality of nothing but the same five songs over and over again. But what makes the station unique?” Halper said. “Take away the elements that make it personal, take away all the liveliness, you get a jukebox.”

But it’s a jukebox jammed with hits. All of the songs played on Jack stations had to appear in the Top 40 at least once. In that way, the stations aren’t breaking new music as much as recycling a lot of oldies.

“If you play 1,500 titles and they’re not hits and they’re unfamiliar, then you get a radio station that very few people can listen to,” said Henry, the Jack consultant. “With this large body of music, you’re going to hear hit after hit after hit that’s going to be Led Zeppelin followed by Madonna followed by John Mayer followed by the Beastie Boys followed by Marvin Gaye.

“The format trains the listener to understand you might not like this song, but you’re going to know it and you’ll probably really like the next one.”