Sparknet Communications
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| Slogan | "Playing What We Want" "Playing Whatever, Whenever!" |
|---|---|
| Format | Adult Hits |
| Owner | Sparknet Communications |
| Website | http://www.jack.fm/ |
JACK FM is a radio network branding that is being licensed by Sparknet Communications to various media outlets located across Canada, United States, United Kingdom, and Russia. Those stations who adopt this branding play a wide mix of songs from the late 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s along with some current adult contemporary/hot adult contemporary singles.
Jack's slogan "playing what we want" is also considered to be as more of a motto or philosophy of their programming. They promote themselves as having a larger and more varied playlist other than most commercial radio stations. It is sometimes not unusual for a Jack FM station to have a playlist of about 700 to 2000 songs being compared to normal FM radio stations which sometimes have playlists of fewer than 500 songs. The format has also been linked to an MP3/iPod set on shuffle. The stations that have the Jack FM format are officially classified as Variety Hits or Adult Hits by radio research companies in most cases.
One of the early originators of this format was radio programmer Bob Perry, on an American Internet radio stream in 2000. Perry named the station after a fictitious persona, "Cadillac Jack" Garrett, "a hard-living radio cowboy." The back story created by Perry for the original web stream was that Garrett, a DJ who had worked many "big sticks," finally got his own radio station and after years of being told what he was to play on-air was creating a station where the motto was "playing what we want." However, according to Rogers Communications, the only thing taken, without permission, for the first Jack FM radio station, in Vancouver, was the name and the tagline. Pat Cardinal, one of the first JACK Program Directors, says that he was unaware of the type of music on the American website and that "JACK" was one of several names that were considered for the format. Rogers Communications came to an agreement with Perry for the use of the Jack FM name in Canada soon after the launch. The original webstream is still live to this day.
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