The problem with Jack is that it doesnt get a the real root of the issue - lack of personality. If radio is going to try and compete with an iPod, it going to loose every time - iPods dont have 20 miute spot loads with screaming car ads every sixty seconds.

Variety Hits is the cheap way out, and unfortunately has killed allot of personality driven oldies stations (101 CBS-FM and 104.3 WJMK in Chicago) in favor of trainwreck segues and wiseass liners.

Maybe CBS Radio should listen to Sirius or XM - and find out what REAL radio sounds like...

*note - I am a happy XM subscriber

i'm with williams, jack rocks.

in a city this big without a decent radio station, jack's been my savior (especially in a ten year old car that has no CD player). i love FUV, but you can't get it everywhere and on the weekends it's just, well, weird celtic crap. and i love the indie scene, really.

but while i will absolutely turn the dial if i hear celene dion or beyonce, hearing nick lowe and styx and elvis in the same set just work... even with the cheesy car commercials.

Though I refuse on principle to listen to "Jack," because the whole idea of computer-controlled media scares me, the thing that really gets me about Jack is the "We're Jack" part. And the billboards in my city that say "Jack FM: Playing What We Want." This is a computer program, right? So, when I read "Playing what we want," I'm thinking, 'What? Is this computer program sentient?' And, if so, how can it "want"? If it has musical preferences, what other preferences does it have? Isn't that scary? I feel so much closer to August 29, 1997....

Well, Mary Elizabeth, I'm afraid our little secret is out. JACK is all about random sex; the iPod thing was just a cover so that the government wouldn't listen in.

The only correction I might ask for is the part about "His "variety hits" format took its name from a Vancouver DJ's on-air persona and migrated to the States in 2004. Why give a radio station a guy's name? Because you can't get the hots for something called Smooooth or Lite. But Jack? That's someone you banged, or wish you had."

Can't argue the last part, but JACK got his start below the 49th parallel - in New York. It was named after my on-air persona "Cadillac" Jack Garrett, a radio cowboy who after working at a lot of "big sticks", finally gets a radio station of his own (in 2000) and declares that they will be "playing what we want" from now on.

The first broadcast station was in Vancouver and I licensed it in Canada for a small number of stations. The US stations started popping up early in 2004 starting in Denver and it hasn't stopped.

Obsession? You bet.

I happen *not* to have ever heard of this radio program, or network, or satellite thing, or webcast thing, or whatever the hell it is, so with a headline like that (punny or not), I figured the article might be enlightening.

Wrong.

The author, and apparently the "editors" -- don't seem to care that by the fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh paragraph in, the main subject of the article has still not been described.

I'm not going to waste another second trying to figure out WTF Ms. Williams is talking about.

And I wish that Salon would not waste another electron on articles which, like this one, reflect an apparent total ignorance of Journalism 101.

When the Twin Cities '80s station turned to Jack, I gave it a try. It was a nice station to listen to while channel surfing in the car, because occasionally I'd hear a gem I couldn't hear anywhere else. Unfortunately the good songs were very few and very far between, so Jack moved down to the 6 spot on my dial.

As for the sex connection, I just didn't get it. Is it just because I'm male, or because I wasn't looking for a cutesie hook for a bad column?

And I love the "playing what we want" tagline. If by "we" you mean "our corporate masters," then yeah. But how does that set you apart from any other station out there?

I had never heard of Jack before reading this article either, but got a good picture of how it works with this passage: "The new image would be modeled more on the iPod's shuffle, with an automated playlist of thousands of songs from the last few decades, and no disc jockeys. With little bits of patter between songs now delivered in a prerecorded, just-not-that-into-you drone, Jack was about as genuine as a 2 a.m. pickup line. And for me, just as promising. Like Rush, Men Without Hats, and Dudley Do-Right, Jack originally hails from Canada. His "variety hits" format took its name from a Vancouver DJ's on-air persona and migrated to the States in 2004."

You must have skipped that part.

the "what" it is, is it's a radio format. (I know that sentence wasn't structured very well, but it's early and I'm not into the grammar thing right at this moment.) That is actually spelled out rather clearly in the article - that Infinity radio stations (Infinity is a major radio company, like Clear Channel) that used to carry Howard Stern have now adopted this format. In case you haven't noticed, many if not most commercial radio stations, the ones owned by these ginormous corporations, have adopted these soullessly automated music formats "spun" by a "DJ" who is actually some corporate stooge doing the same empty between-song patter for stations all over the country. "Local" is fast becoming an extinct species in the radio world.

This format sounds like utter crap, but I don't listen to commercial radio anyway so what do I know.

This is the kind of article that I miss so much from what Salon used to be. Irreverent, quirky, life for adults. Thanks, bring us more of this please.

The description of an iPod shuffle with thousands of songs is an interesting one, but I can't help noticing a certain amount of repetitiveness when I tune in. I only listen to it when I drive (once or twice a week) and yet I think I've heard "White Hot" by Tom Cochrane and Red Rider more times in the past three months than in my entire life prior to that. Of course, this is probably due in part to the fact that I live in Canada and a certain percentage of the broadcast must be Canadian content.