Area oldies listeners now know ‘Jack’ about format

Think the radio business is giving up its listeners without a fight?

You don’t know Jack.

Stations in Washington and Baltimore have joined broadcasters in other cities that are playing more songs with less repetition and fewer commercials.

This new format — usually called ‘Jack,’ but sometimes known as ‘Bob,’ ‘Doug’ or another simple moniker — represents the industry’s latest attempt to stem the loss of listeners to other media, especially IPods and commercial-free satellite radio, which is available by subscription only.

In the Washington area, WRQX-FM (107.3) shifted to a Jack-style format March 21. Baltimore’s WQSR-FM (102.7) adopted the full-blown Jack sound May 4.

The format is essentially oldies for people in their 30s and 40s. At any hour, a listener might hear songs such as ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ by Cyndi Lauper, ‘Super Freak’ by Rick James and ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls, with one or two contemporary hits thrown in.

‘Until now, nobody has quite figured out how to do oldies for this generation. This is basically one-stop oldies shopping,’ said Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming for Edison Media Research Inc., a Somerville, N.J., consulting firm.

The variety of songs played on Jack stations mimic an IPod’s ‘shuffle’ feature, which randomly chooses the music its users hear.

Apple Computer Inc. has sold 10 million IPods in the United States since it introduced the portable digital players in October 2001.

Overall, ratings in the 100 cities with the most listeners have dropped about 3 percent since winter 2002, according to data from the Arbitron Inc. research service. Ratings are down about 11 percent since fall 1998.

The Jack format originated in Canada a few years ago. Programmers in the United States have embraced it as they struggle to recover listeners who have been turned off by the homogenized sound on corporate-owned radio stations.

Jack stations typically have about 1,000 songs on their playlists.

In recent years, as the average amount of time people spend listening to the radio has shrunk, so have playlists. As a result, stations now play the same songs over and over each day — OK if you are tuned in for a few minutes at a time, but infuriating over longer stretches.

?This is a reaction to the perceived predictability of all music formats,? said Tom Taylor, editor of the Inside Radio trade publication.

At least 12 stations have flipped to Jack formats in the past year, usually with encouraging results. One Jackson, Miss., station that switched to Jack reports it now finishes first or second in the ratings, up from sixth place.

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