At the R&R Convention, there was a great panel all about Jack, hosted by Saga’s Steve Goldstein. Here’s the 2nd installment of observations about this session.
This "no DJs" policy is interesting…and probably shortsighted. While there’s no question that creative liner-writing is important, there’s going to be a point reached where the lack of a morning magnet, as well as personalities throughout the day, is going to take its toll.
It’s hard to imagine that marketing and musical novelty alone are going to sustain killer ratings much beyond a year or two. And it’s not going to be easy to simply add personality at that point. While Jack breaks a lot of radio rules, being local and providing warmth and personality are radio staples.
Otherwise, I can dump 1,000 songs into my iPod, set it to "shuffle," and make something just like Jack. And it’ll be commercial-free. Note that AOL Radio is starting its "Shuffle" format.
If Jack doesn’t develop interesting, connected personalities, it will go the way of Arrow – another format that focused on variety/hits. If the "innovation" behind Jack is simply another code word for satisfying ownerships’ provclity to default to cheap, quick ratings hits with low overheads, this craze will become just that.
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