[zotjen]

WCBS FM 101.1 here in New York has always been an oldies station for as long as I can remember.....until today. They have suddenly changed over to the Jack format. See here:

http://www.wcbsfm.com/info/about.shtml

I have no idea what happens now to the DJs, such as Cousin Brucie and Mickey Dolenz, but I guess they're unemployed. This was the primary station I listened to at work. I can't imagine not hearing Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones and all the other great 60's and 70's music they used to play.

New York radio will never be the same.

Edit: they have a link on the website where you can listen to the old format of WCBS via the internet, but a lot of good it will do me at work since they've been monitoring employee internet use and I don't think they would appreciate me streaming audio.

 

[zoboomofo]

We have a Jack FM with the "Playing What We Want" slogan over here. It's MOR pop that'll appeal to sentimental types. It's a mixed bag, but overall not my kind of station.

Oldies have a special place on my am dial. Sometimes I like hearing a dozen different takes on "The More I See You"

 

[DJ e]

I just realized that that's one of the stations under my presets in Radio@AOL that I've been listening to for months...

What a coincedence...

 

[DJ Mauler]

in Santa Barbara they had Oldies 106.3, all of a sudden it was changed to smooth jazz... i mean they didnt even give a warning, i know because im a parts driver so i would listen to it all day at work


it a shame because they played alot of Great oldies with not as much commericials.


good thing theres still
a classic rock station here
and another rock station about 40 min that i get clear as day
and of course Kearth which is a oldies station in LA that i can get.



but ya its a shame that they just take over GREAT stations for ****** ass music.

 

[DJ Mauler]

i was gonna listen to it untill they wanted me to sign up to AOL, last time i used aol was 98 and i sayed to myself its like a convict says. Im never going back.

because well aol sucks.


/end rant.

 

[zoboomofo]

I don't think I'll have to worry about our oldies station being taken over. I thnk the guy who owns it is one of the wealthiest businessmen in BC. He bought Frank Sinatra's old rancher home and preserved all the kitsch decorations, so he probably cares about that whole scene enough to preserve the music as well.

 

[Welly Wu]

http://www.ilikejack.com/index.shtml

That's the NYC metropolitan area 101.1 JACK FM website. I think that this concept is long overdue in the flagging broadcast FM market. I listen to it all of the time and it strongly reminds me of Sirius, XM, and Apple Shuffle mixed together. It's a great idea and format that I think is traditional broadcast FM's best hope of not dying altogether. I wonder if it will be converted over to iBiquity's IBOC HD Radio technology. As long as they keep up the publicity buzz, I think they should be able to more than afford the conversion sometime either late this year or next year when HD Radio really gets rolled out big time. I'll have my Polk Audio I-Sonic universal radio by then (knock on wood)!

 

[stevesurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zotjen I have no idea what happens now to the DJs, such as Cousin Brucie and Mickey Dolenz, but I guess they're unemployed.

My best guess is that they'll wind up, like Howard said, on Satellite radio!

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Welly Wu http://www.ilikejack.com/index.shtml That's the NYC metropolitan area 101.1 JACK FM website. I think that this concept is long overdue in the flagging broadcast FM market. I listen to it all of the time and it strongly reminds me of Sirius, XM, and Apple Shuffle mixed together. It's a great idea and format that I think is traditional broadcast FM's best hope of not dying altogether. I wonder if it will be converted over to iBiquity's IBOC HD Radio technology. As long as they keep up the publicity buzz, I think they should be able to more than afford the conversion sometime either late this year or next year when HD Radio really gets rolled out big time. I'll have my Polk Audio I-Sonic universal radio by then (knock on wood)!

I don't really see the appeal of a computer generated "random" playlist over an dj'd oldies station probably because I love the oldies and the dj point of view. I have tried listening to Musical Choice for classical and it really sucks. You never get a complete work, only the tracks, ie, the randomly generated separate movements of various works. That's also why I can't use the shuffle feature on my ipod unless I restrict the genre to jazz or rock which have shorter complete works that fit on one track. With jack radio you will never hear music in any logical context, ie: you won't have an intelligent sensibility culling and ordering the music to advance a point of view. That makes for very boring music imho, and is just another form of muzak. I imagine that nothing will kill fm faster than this type of boring programing.

As for hd radio, dream on! The record companies have already been making noises about losing sales if people can record the digital signal which gives "cd quality" or near "cd quality." They believe that with good digital radio, no one will need to buy cds or whatever they are trying to change format to. I also think it will put a huge dent into Itunes and other online music stores. Why pay to download what you can record for free? Digital radio (the proper terminology for this) has been available over-air in Europe for quite some time and there have been attempts to start it here but music companies wont permit the broadcast of their materials. They have different royalty arrangements with satellite radio, which I will remind you is a paid-service.

 

[Welly Wu]

Well, we will see whether 101.1 JACK FM radio will survive or die in time. It is my humble opinion that 101.1 JACK FM is modeled after the new way in which a larger percentage of music listeners are listening to their music. Apple iPod and Shuffle owners along with XM or Sirius satellite radio subscribers listen to a random mixture of music more oftenly than complete albums played in their entirety. I think that it should be noted that the JACK FM radio format conforms to this new vogue of listening to music. That they choose not to listen to traditional broadcast radio as their medium is the precise reason why I need to talk about iBiquity IBOC HD Radio in my next paragraph.

On the technology front, I don't mean to sound querelous, but the iBiquity IBOC HD Radio format may contain provisions that preclude owners of HD Radio tuners to record and transfer compressed digital music files to their PCs that can be shared online throughout peer to peer networks. Can you find evidence that HD Radio will permit owners of HD Radio tuners to record and transfer such digital files to their computers to enable peer to peer sharing? Lastly, one of the avowed goals of HD Radio is to compete directly against XM / Sirius satellite radio services but at no cost to the owners of HD Radio tuner technology. Furthermore, the concept of the new digital radio format is to compete against the burgeoning number of owners of Apple iPod, Shuffle, and other manufacturer's brands of MP3 portable players as well. With the provision to record your own programming complete with metadata, HD Radio tuners will permit owners to create their own playlists, "HD Radio casts," etc, but do you have evidence that such recorded data can be transferred to different components or devices such as Apple Macintosh, IBM PC compatible, and other computers?

As an addendum, it should be noted that the conversion from analogue AM/FM to digital iBiquity IBOC HD Radio technologies will not effect existing music databases stored at the different radio stations in your community whatsoever. So, the same music will be played albeit in both the analogue and digital frequency spectra vice versa. In my humble opinion, there exists an elegant but slightly expensive (i.e., $100,000 USD) solution for traditional broadcast radio stations to compete in a hyper competitive market in which satellite radio services and portable digital music players are consuming a greater slice of the listening demographics nationwide: HD Radio.

 

[zotjen]

Despite mourning the loss of the oldies format, I did give JACK FM a try. I have two major problems with it. First, the lack of DJs makes it feel artificial somehow. It doesn't come across as a real radio station without living, breathing people behind it.

The second problem I have is that going back and forth between different types of music can be jarring at times. There's something unsettling about hearing Led Zeppelin followed by George Michael followed by Roy Orbison followed by Avril Lavigne. Likewise, Abba, ZZ Top, and Smash Mouth don't mix very well together. While I do listen to just about every genre of music, I usually like to keep it to same genre in the one sitting.

 

[Bunnyears]

Welly,

HD radio may be all that you proclaim it to be, but that doesn't address the conundrum of Jack Radio as the new muzak! Being able to make your own playlist with a radio sounds great. But, if you are driving, how many people can safely multitask to that point? More likely, you will just choose a genre and get the music generated by the station's computer. Most of the commuters I know listen to talk radio and sports radio rather than music anyway, and that is the largest radio audience around now. If the only place that you find a dj is going to be satellite radio, then you are going to find a lot more people subscribing to satellite than listening to on air broadcasts.

As for the classical repetoire on jack, a lot more needs to be done. For classical music you need whole albums to be broadcast rather than the shorter individual tracks. Just take a listen to Musical Choice and other similar services. Genres are totally strange: Only baroque, Only pre-baroque, Classical Masterpieces (which frequently includes segments from movie scores), Light Classical (whatever that means). No complete Operas, just individual scenes from acts generated randomly; no complete symphonies, just randomly played movements; no complete sonatas, just random movements, one Schubert lied rather than the complete cycle, etc. If you even hear composers like Mahler or Ives or Schuman played it will be a shock to everyone, and without the full context of their music, they will become so unpopular as to become shunned! Playlists will resemble the compilation cds that are issued every so often by record companies as a means of drumming up sales of complete works, or worse yet, like those cds that have those ghastly compilations called the Classical commuter, or Music for Winelovers, or Classical for Cats. How will anyone truly appreciate a Beethoven sonata if they only get the first movement? Or a Mozart serenade? Yes, you will hear the familiar but you will lose that which the public is unfamiliar with and you will also lose the chance to acquaint yourself with something new and thus broaden your tastes and outlook. You will end up hearing the same things over and over and the play will be manipulated and in the end not dictated by the public so much as by the corporate entities which will promote the broadcast of what they want heard with various financial incentives to the stations. I rely on the djs of stations such as WQXR and NPR to bring new things to my attention. I also rely on them to expose me to the types of music that I would not regularly gravitate to. That's how horizons are broadened. Sometimes popular taste is not the best way of deciding a broadcast playlist. Sometimes you need some real intelligence making choices.

Jack radio is just another way that corporate America is going to dumb-down culture. Comparing jack radio to thoughtful prepared programming is like comparing Gerber's strained peaches to biting into a ripe, mature fruit. If that's what you want, then go for it. I don't doubt that it will appeal to the majority of Americans who seem to prefer everything dumbed down, from curriculums to probably to every facet of the arts.

 

[Mark from HFR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bunnyears Sometimes you need some real intelligence making choices. Jack radio is just another way that corporate America is going to dumb-down culture. Comparing jack radio to thoughtful prepared programming is like comparing Gerber's strained peaches to biting into a ripe, mature fruit. If that's what you want, then go for it. I don't doubt that it will appeal to the majority of Americans who seem to prefer everything dumbed down, from curriculums to probably to every facet of the arts.

AMEN!!!

And as for "random" listening or shuffle features on playlists, iPods, radio stations, etc.: It's like driving. Driving randomly through fields and forests may be briefly fun (until you get stuck), but if you really want to get anywhere, you have to find yourself a road. And in the words of the late great George Harrison: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Mark

 

[Welly Wu]

Bunnyears:

101.1 JACK FM radio format is succeeding as an innovative broadcast radio station, but if you don't like it, then don't listen to it. The JACK FM content format has no relationship with the iBiquity IBOC HD Radio broadcasting format...period. You will still be able to enjoy your favorite AM / FM radio stations regardless of whether you have a traditional analogue or digital HD Radio. Put simply: you will still be able to listen to weather, traffic, music, or talk radio programs in both analogue and digital AM / FM, but the HD Radio digital broadcasting format promises higher fidelity of sound. Both analogue and digital broadcasting formats are available to the general public at no charge (unlike Sirius or XM satellite radio services) other than the cost of purchasing a HD Radio, but that is at the discretion of the consumer. Radio stations nationwide have a choice of switching over to the iBiquity IBOC HD Radio broadcasting format, but it is inaccurate to say that doing so will force a change of the content format. I hope you will do some research about the multi-faceted communications formats -- both in terms of content programming and broadcasting formats -- that are available to the American public.

On a germane issue, Sirius and XM Satellite radio services represent premium radio not unlike the analogy of UHF NTSC analogue television channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 to that of Dish Network, DirecTV Satellite or cable television services. You must pay a subscription fee or sign a contract in order to receive hundreds of specialty programming channels that narrow cast to a specific target demographic for both satellite radio and television along with cable services. So, how does this effect the landscape of traditional AM / FM radio stations today?

As I have stated earlier in this thread, traditional AM / FM radio stations face competition on many different fronts. Since one traditional analogue AM / FM radio station can not have more than one entity on a pre-selected frequency that has been approved by the FCC, they have to find a way to compete for dwindling listeners (and viewers too). To that end, there are several options on the table: 1. change the content programming to mirror the habits of contemporary listeners who choose to subscribe to satellite radio or television services and those that own a portable compressed music player like an Apple iPod -- the JACK FM radio content format is one example, 2. switch over to HD Radio which will allow one radio station to broadcast in analogue AM / FM and simulcast in digital HD Radio (i.e., NPR HD Radio can broadcast its talk and classical programming on channel A while it also broadcasts a new jazz programming lineup on channel B), 3. switch over to digital HD Radio broadcasting network but retain the same programming content on both analogue and digital AM / FM frequencies, 4. do nothing.

That's it in a brief nutshell: choices over the content of programming do not correlate with broadcasting formats. As listeners and viewers alike, we have the power to vote over whether the JACK FM programming format will succeed or fail and the same is true of the variegated broadcasting formats -- analogue AM / FM, digital HD Radio, satellite radio, satellite television, and even compressed digital music players along with formats. I see (and hear) a sea full of exiting choices over the horizon. Stay tuned.

 

[Publius]

Over in Texas this sort of thing is called "BOB". 103.5 in Austin specifically. Superficially, the format is shuffling from the top40 from the past 40 years. It's good for a few songs, but IMHO it's still constrained by top40 just like most of the other crappy stations out there.