Photo of New York Traffic by Stig Nygaard. Used under licence.
The “Jack” format has been made much of over the last few years. To a music programming outsider, the format appears to be “lots of non-stop music, with a much wider music catalogue than a standard radio station”. And a funny announcer.
Jack FM made it to the UK this week with a launch in Oxfordshire, and I’ve been listening to the station this afternoon. And thoroughly enjoying it.
Their website is unusual in that it instantly streams Jack FM as soon as you visit - which, even though I was aware it would do it thanks to a review elsewhere, still made me jump out of my skin. I’ve always believed that to start a stream without user consent is wrong, and the Jack website doesn’t make me change that view at all; even if they are streaming using Flash (and therefore not too unpleasant). Anyway, what happens if they’re already listening?
The website itself is not too splendid, it ought to be said: it’s actually optimised for screens -larger- than 1024×768, with the result that it doesn’t quite fit on my screen. The content, what there is, is on the lower third of the screen, so it’s time to get scrolling.
But the radio station itself is excellently splendid. The sarcastic Jack voice (with a Brit accent this time, not the normal Jack voice you’ll hear in the US) pops up enough to be fun and not often enough to be a nuisance; the jingles never play over the songs (if you’re playing great music, why spoil it by saying so over the song itself?!); and the music choice seems varied enough for my taste, bouncing around from Virgin-favourite Paul Weller to Sister Sledge, Depeche Mode, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and even a little bit of Dido but I’ll let Jack off just this once. (Quite a Virgin-friendly playlist, all things considered). Segues are tight and well automated, unlike most automation you hear these days. The promos for the station are well-written, tidily produced, and nicely done. I heard a “Jacktivities” promo with some things to go to in the Oxfordshire area, which was read by the morning crew with a bit of personality.
The radio player on the website is quite good; hover your mouse over the left-hand side, and it shows the last song played, while if you hover your mouse over the right-hand side, it shows the next song to come. Streaming sounds like it’s 128k MP3, and is heavily (but well) processed to sound like the radio.
After listening for over an hour, I’ve yet to hear an ad-break, or any commercial content whatsoever, so I’m not entirely sure how heavy a typical weekday is.
The question I have with jukebox services like this is (over a weekend, at least) is why I’d choose it over my iPod. When I want to listen to the radio, I’ll always listen to speech radio; but when I just want some background noise, it’s normally iTunes on shuffle. (I’ve realised that I’ve over 2,000 UNLISTENED-TO songs within my iTunes catalogue, scarily). But when nearly every song is a cracker, as is the case with Jack FM, I can certainly envisage listening to Jack every now and again.
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