Last week I wrote about what radio could learn from the Jack (a.k.a. “Variety Hits”) format. Now let’s reverse the process…

So far, Jack in the U.S. has been different than in Canada. The Canadian stations are fully-developed, well-rounded stations, with (among other elements) morning shows and personalities. Even if they launched jockless, they didn’t stay that way long.

In contrast, being jockless is part of the strategy for most American Jacks, at least so far. The “personality” of these stations is their stationality — a cool attitude conveyed by outstanding voice talents delivering creative, irreverent “attitude” sweepers.

The Jack stationality appeals to many listeners turned off by the repetition and narrow focus of most radio circa 2005….listeners who like the idea of a station that “plays everything,” “plays what it wants” (or whatever). Cool.

But I have two concerns about this approach…

First, the sweepers themselves may become a repetitious element for listeners. Right now, I’m listening to Doug FM out of Detroit. And the “Doug guy” carries 100% of the station’s identification. I hear him every break, between every song, before and after spot sets. That’s too much of the Doug guy for me! He’s got a cool personality, but he’s “in my face”…like an overbearing party guest that won’t let me walk away.

That’s me. Honestly, I don’t know if he’s getting old for Doug’s listeners. But here’s what I do know from lots of research…

Companionship is a major motivation for listening to radio. For example, in our 2003 national study, radio’s ability to “keep you company when you’re alone or lonely” was rated as important by more than half of 12-64 listeners. One-third rated it “very important.”
Personalities contribute to this companionship. Listeners want a real human being in the mix. This does not necessarily mean they want a lot of talk! Personalities aren’t “the cake” for most listeners…they’re the icing on the cake, and a little goes a long way to making “the cake” taste better.

This is what Jack can learn from radio. Sure, listeners dislike jocks who talk too much when they have little to say. Jockless Jack’s are a reaction to that. But jockless stations have rarely experienced sustained success.

The Canadian Jack’s have it all…cool attitude enhanced by real personalities. The American Jacks may yet get there too…if they want to be more than short-term novelties, they’ll need to!

For years, stations made “variety of music” their major selling point. A few even went as far as to call themselves Variety 101 (or whatever).

I never thought this was a powerful positioning. True, if you ask listeners about variety, they’ll invariably tell you they want it! This is like asking them if they like mom’s apple pie.

Just as consumers vote with their dollars, radio listeners vote with their quarter-hours. And until recently, I never found a positive correlation between variety and station preference. The
“variety” station and most-preferred station were rarely the same.

That’s because we live in a polarized society. What wins are the highly-focused edges, NOT the middle. In radio this translates to Country, Hip Hop and News/Talk (among others)…formats with little variety. OK. So that’s what I thought about variety…until recently.

The emergence of the “Jack” (or “Bob,” “Joe,” etc.) format has put a powerful spin on the concept of variety. The format emerged Canada, with monster books in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary. Now, Jack is the “hot format” in the U.S.

The concept of Jack is that it’s anti-format radio. The stations use positioners like Playing What We Want and We Play Anything.

Of course, they really don’t play “anything.” You won’t hear country on there. You won’t hear soft A/C. You won’t hear hip hop. Jack is a gold-based contemporary music station with emphasis on the ’80s and ’90s. It does play music you won’t hear on typical Classic stations — for example, recent tunes and lot of pop from the ’80s that other formats won’t touch.

When Jack first launched, many thought it wouldn’t succeed. How could a station that played music that tested horribly (for example, retro ’80s Euro-pop by performers like Pet Shop Boys and ABC) hold on to listeners?

But that cut-by-cut mentality misses the point of Jack. In this case, the total package really is bigger the sum of its parts (i.e., songs). What Jack does is builds a powerful rationale and cool attitude around variety.

In other words, the listener is thinking: “‘Come On Eileen’ really is a piece of sh**, but hell, they’re just playing what they want!…

And that’s cool.”

In other worlds, Jack’s positioning is much more than “variety of music.” What Jack stands for is an irreverent attitude …one that gives variety the edge it needs to “cut through” today.