JACK fm - Oxfordshire

More on JACK music

So, music...

There's been plenty of speculation about JACK fm music (hello, ukonair.com among others). Thanks for the discussion - we hope that JACK fm's audience will always be passionate and vocal about music and the station, or what's the point?!

JACK fm Oxfordshire will not be a carbon copy of the American/Canadian JACK fms, we'll play what WE want. That's not a selfish "we", it's an inclusive you-and-us-against-the-boredom-that-is-corporate-radio "we". I guess we wanted to put it out there and see what people threw back at us! I just sent Ian Walker (Programme Director, JACK fm) and Clive Dickens (Programme & Operations Director, ARI) a list of playlist suggestions that included:

Jonathan Richman - Roadrunner (personally I think we should play almost everything on the bizarre and amazing Beserkley label, especially The Rubinoos!)
Wah! - The Story of the Blues
Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Dr. John - Right Place, Wrong Time

I re-discovered all of these playing some old vinyl at home.

JACK fm will have it's core artists: The Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, The Beatles, Queen, Fleetwood Mac, et al will of course all get their spins alongside some suprises.

Album tracks are all good. We even play album tracks on FM107.9 - the way people listen to music is changing and radio needs to catch up with music fans. Songs enter the download chart as people discover them on albums, not just when they're pushed as a single. At FM107.9 we have songs from the Timbaland, Mark Ronson, Rihanna, Jamie T and Just Jack albums on our playlist, among others.

JACK fm will not play James Blunt and Snow Patrol on repeat until you want to stave your own head in with your radio!

Darren Lee
Helper-outer with the launch of JACK fm Oxfordshire... but my proper job is Assistant Programme Director & Head of Music at FM107.9
darren.lee@fm1079.co.uk

JACK fm - Those wonderful ads!

Hello all!

I'm Sophie and I'll be doing the commercial scheduling and managing Jack's traffic. Ooh this feels ever so slightly like a Blind Date intro. So let me see... if Jack was a fruit, I suppose it would be a sharon fruit - juicy, lip smacking and with a relatively ordinary name disguising the truly exotic nature of the product!

Commercial scheduling for Jack obviously hasn't started yet, but the execs are getting tonnes of calls and enquiries about advertising weeks and weeks prior to the launch. Good job I'm taking a holiday before it all kicks off - I've got a feeling that first month is going to be manic!
This week I am having fun (well, as much fun as can be had with a computer program) playing with my shiny new Airwaves scheduler package and working out which of the five hundred billion minutely detailed reports is the one I actually need! The execs are also taking baby steps with their online Airwaves setups, although I have master control of it all, mwa ha ha.

The most exciting thing this week has been multi tasking and writing some scripts for the new voice of the Jack test transmissions. I'd like to say more... but then I'd have to kill you. Really. But they're going to be hot!

Anyway, I'd better get back to scheduling otherwise our other station FM107.9 is going to sound a tad empty tomorrow! You can always drop me a line at sophie.bruce@jackfm.co.uk if you have any questions.

Bye for now,

Sophie Bruce
Traffic Manager, JACKfm Oxfordshire