We have the Arch in St Louis. It replaced the Smooth Jazz station, so no great loss there. The play list is certainly eclectic, I listen to it occasionally.
One good thing about The Arch is that they have lit a small fire under the Classic Hits station. K-Hits plays whatever YOU want to hear, and has expanded its play list a little.
Here in Las Vegas, one of our two “lite rock” stations just became Jack-FM. I work in a hospital and have a radio at my desk, so I decided, WTF, let me see what this is all about. Surprisingly, I kinda got a kick out of it! In two days, 12 hours each day, I didn’t hear the same song twice. As far as radio goes, that’s a plus in my book.In just one 2-hour stretch, I heard: [ul]
[li]“Twist and Shout”[/li][li]“Kiss Me”(Sixpence None the Richer)[/li][li]“Paradise City”[/li][li]“I was Made for Loving You”(KISS)[/li][li]“Go All the Way”(Raspberries)[/li][li]“Fight for Your Right to Party”[/li][/ul] While I agree that, at home or in my car, I’ll stick with my CD’s and my XM, at work, I think I may stick with this for a while. I don’t know how long it’ll take for the novelty to wear off, but, for now, I think it’s kinda cool.
I’m 43 years old. I think this format was created to appeal to my generation. I drove from Ohio to Missouri last week and enjoyed the Arch out of St. Louis very much. There has been a lot of good music produced in the past 30 years and I enjoy hearing the variety.
Vancouver has a “we play what we want” Jack station. Forgive me for thinking that it’s more like a “we play songs selected from a list of market friendly tracks given to us by our corporate overlords” station.
Jack-asses IMHO.
No argument here. However, all radio is run by the so-called “corporate overlords” these days, and as long as radio is a money-making business, that will never change. But if that list of “market-friendly tracks” numbers 2000 rather than the 300-500 we’re used to, it may not be an ideal situation, but it’s a damn sight better than the status quo.
Austin now has Bob-FM (103.5). It replaced an oldies station, which replaced an a/c station, which replaced a suburban, community station out of San Marcos (I’m revelaing my age, now. How many old KCSW fans out there?)
I kind of like Bob-FM. I do, however, get tired of the endless promos - “Bob has thousands of records. He likes to play them all.” Duh. Shut up and play something.
The thing that radio gives me is a sense of sharing something with the community. Now, hear me out… What I mean is that I get a kick out of knowing that thousands of other people are listening to the same song as me. Listening to a CD, iPod, tape, whatever, is a solitary experience. Radio is communal. I miss the DJ’s out there. I don’t miss the inane banter or the piped in DJ who lives in some far-off land. I mean, just someone who comes on the radio and lets me know that there is someone else alive out there.
I’ve been comparing my local college station, KNMC 90.1, to the Jack-FM concept ever since I found out about the idea on the SDMB. (The only way we’ll get one here is if the local ClearChannel drone goes from Best Hits/Best Variety Top 40 to the Jack bull.) Here’s what I’ve come up with:
[ul]
[li]Varied playlist: In spades, baby! Right now, it’s playing “She’s My Best Friend” by the Velvet Underground (Here’s to Mullberry Jane, She made jam when she came/Somebody cut off her feet, Now jelly rolls in the street :D), but they also play electronica (trance and techno, I think) and hip hop and even the occasional Top 40 and classical.[/li][li]Lack of DJs: Not quite, but it can effectively be that way for days at a time during the summer. I have no idea how large the playlist is when the station is on autopilot, but it’s varied enough I don’t usually get bored of the station before I have to stop listening for some other reason.[/li][li]Ads: Well, it does run PSAs. It has run the same damn PSAs for a good long while now, including an annoying Christmas Seals ad. Yeah, even in late June.[/li][li]Smarmy pseudo-local color commentary: No! Hell, no! I believe you get your ass kicked playing shit like that![/li][li]Controlled from afar by focus-groupied suits worried about the FCC: Nope. It’s barely controlled by the average DJ in the booth, on the few times one is actually in. Muting the feed seven seconds before or after the bad word isn’t quite what the station manager had in mind. (BTW, they’re constantly looking for DJs. I wonder how they’d respond to a half-hour of Elvis Costello, Joy Division, and Minor Threat, with Elvis Presley and The Residents thrown in for color. ;))[/li][/ul]So, same as it ever was? Look where my hand was! Sorry, they’re playing Talking Heads now. Here comes the twister… ONCE IN A LIFETIME!
One last note about DJs: The local independent record store owner has twigged to the station’s ad potential in a big way, to the point of playing as-yet-unreleased CDs on air when he does his little show. Is it blatantly obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than the stations frequency in MHz? Yep. Is it a good chance to hear new songs before they’re done to death? Hell, yeah.
College radio: Not just feminist poetry and unskilled DJs. 