Variety Hits

Adult hits (sometimes also called variety hits) is a radio format that draws from a wide variety of different musical genres. Most adult hits stations play a mix of rock, pop, pop rock, soft rock, classic rock, adult contemporary, and new wave hits as well as select oldies hits, predominantly drawing on music from the late 1960s through the present day. Adult hits is akin to classic hits, although the classic hits format uses a slightly older and often narrower playlist (1960s to 1980s).

Companies associated with the format in Canada include NewCap, Rogers, Bell Media, Corus Entertainment, and other various companies. Companies in the United States include Clear Channel Communications, CBS Radio, Cumulus Broadcasting, Newsweb radio, and Entercom.

Forerunners of the adult hits format appeared on radio during the 1970s. At the time, enough of a backlog of popular music from the rock and roll era had developed to support a format based on them; oldies stations, however, were still very rare, and instead, stations that did not want to bind themselves to the current top 40 playlist would mix in current hits with the hits of the past two decades. This hybrid format began to fall out of favor in the 1980s as self-contained oldies stations rose to prominence.

The Adult Hits format dates back to 1990 when 98.9 WMMO was launched in Orlando, Florida.

The adult hits format as it is known in the 21st Century rose to prominence in the early 2000s (decade), with the “Male First Name” FM format. One of the earliest was BOB FM; originating in Canada, BOB was intended to be an acronym for “best of the best.” Following Bob was Jack FM, a proprietary format from the U.S.-based company Sparknet Communications. Jack FM, which originated from an Internet radio station, became widely popular as a “flavor of the month” format on a number of U.S. radio stations in the mid-2000s. The popularity (and significant media attention) Jack FM drew soon led to a litany of imitators, as stations that did not want to pay Sparknet for format rights adopted brands with other male first names, including but not limited to "Frank", "Joe", "Mike", "Ed", "Max", "Mac", "Dave", "Giant", "Simon", "Sam", "Charlie", "Ben" and so on.

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