Variety Hits News

September 30, 2008
Gone for more than two years, the Variety Hits format is back on the air in Ft. Wayne, IN. Rhythmic AC "106.3 The Vibe" (WVBB) flipped to Variety Hits as 106.3 Joe FM effective 9/27/2008 according to 100000watts.com. The 106.3 signal in the Ft. Wayne market is one that has seen a slew of formats, though with new owner Russ Oasis (who purchased the station from Artistic Media Partners in November 2007), perhaps some stability has finally arrived for the station.

WVBB is a Class A signal that has what those in the business sometimes refer to as a "small stick" (6,000 watts from a relatively short tower). But it covers the Ft. Wayne metro area with a city-grade signal, something that the last Variety Hits station in the market (102.9 Mike FM) was unable to do with its even weaker signal, which did *not* provide the same city-grade coverage to Ft. Wayne that the new 106.3 Joe FM will offer.

September 29, 2008
The AM simulcast of 95.3 Bob FM (WBPE) on 1410 WSHY in Lafayette, IN has now ended, with WSHY becoming "News/Talk 1410".

September 24, 2008
Variety Hits is on in the UP (upper peninsula) of Michigan. According to 100000watts.com, Radioactive, LLC's new 107.3 WUPF has signed on as 107.3 Jack FM, effective 9/21/2008, in the Escanaba, MI market.

September 23, 2008
The AM simulcast of 95.3 Bob FM (WBPE) on 1410 WSHY in Lafayette, IN is about to end. The Lafayette Journal and Courier reports that in a few days, 1410 WSHY will begin carrying Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other top-flight talk programming. The change is in part because of a sale of WSHY by Artistic Media Partners to a group headed by Jeff Holmes. This tip came via the always valuable information resource AllAccess.com.

The long-anticipated station move with 96.1 Chuck FM (WAVF) moving from Charleston, SC to Myrtle Beach, SC and 101.7 WKZQ-FM moving from Myrtle Beach to Charleston has taken place. The Charleston Post and Courier has details of the move here. According to 100000watts.com, that the stations will soon be swapping call letters, though for now 101.7 Chuck FM is technically WKZQ-FM.

September 22, 2008
Congrats to radio programming vet Kevin Weatherly, who has been promoted by CBS Radio in Los Angeles from programming highly successful 93.1 Jack FM (KCBS-FM) and legendary rock station KROQ to VP/Programming for CBS Radio's entire L.A. cluster.

September 16, 2008
Chuck Bortnick has been named Executive Vice-President of Sparknet Communications' Jack FM radio brand, according to a report in All Access. Bortnick has more than 30 years of experience in the radio business. According to the article, Bortnick will be responsible for expanding Jack FM into new markets while also working with Jack FM's radio partner Dial Global and with current Jack FM stations across the United States.

September 15, 2008
It's Bob FM out and Jack FM in on Powell Broadcasting's 102.3 KZSR in Sioux City, IA. After the Bob & Sheri syndicated show ended yesterday at 9 a.m. CT, the station went into three hours of stunting with "Pop Goes The Weasel" before relaunching at noon CT as 102.3 Jack FM.

To my knowledge, this is the first time anywhere in the world that a station has switched from Bob FM to Jack FM.

According to the Sioux City Journal, station general manager Dennis Bullock made the announcement about the switch when the stunting ended at noon. That was followed by "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones, which was the first song to be played on the station under its new Jack FM identity.

Humorously, a report on radio-info.com reveals that Bullock claimed that Jack obtained the station from Bob in a poker game, which is not the first time that Jack supposedly won a radio station via a poker game.

Bob FM originally came to the Sioux City market while owned by NRG Media; Powell Broadcasting obtained control of the staton in January 2007.

September 12, 2008
With Hurricane Ike bearing down on Houston, multiple radio stations will be simulcasting television coverage of the storm event. That includes Cumulus-owned 103.7 Jack FM (KHJK), which will be simulcasting CBS affiliate KHOU-TV 11 News beginning at 3 p.m. CT today.

103.7 Jack FM is a rimshot with a tower located to the east of Houston, which should allow coverage of Hurricane Ike to be heard in cities as far east as Beaumont, TX and Port Arthur, TX.

September 3, 2008
Niagara, Ontario's 91.7 Giant FM (CIXL) has shifted from Variety Hits to classic rock, effective as of late August 2008. The station covers much of the same territory that is already served by 92.9 Jack FM (WBUF) in Buffalo. Giant FM came along first (January 2005), but it had little time alone with the format as WBUF became Jack FM in May 2005.

September 2, 2008
NRC Broadcasting flipped AAA 102.3 KCUV/Denver to a simulcast of 105.5 Jack FM (KJAC) on Sunday, August 31, according to allaccess.com. The move gives Jack FM its first city-grade signal in Denver; since its debut in April 2004, Jack FM has broadcast as a rimshot from the north, as KJAC is licensed to Timnath, CO.

NRC Broadcasting acquired KCUV in November 2005 and, until now, had programmed a community-oriented AAA format on the station. But, with a relatively weak Class A license and a signal that broadcasts from just 781' with 1,000 watts of power, the station was not able to garner the traction it needed in the market.

To see how the two signals will cover Denver, you can check out the radio-locator.com maps for KCUV and KJAC to compare/contrast.

It's worth noting that Jack FM's early success in Denver, despite the poor signal, helped the Variety Hits format to gain the attention of programmers nationwide in the United States. Ultimately, that success (in part) lead to the rapid pickup of the format in 2005 in dozens of markets across the country.

August 27, 2008
Mere hours after the news went up here last night of a new Variety Hits format coming soon to Huntington, WV (where I once lived early in my TV news career), the speculation turned to fact, as Connoisseur Media flipped 101.5 The River (WRYV) to Variety Hits as 101.5 Bob FM at 10 p.m. ET last night. In conjunction with the flip, the station changed its call letters to WXBW.

August 26, 2008
Will Variety Hits be coming to the Huntington, WV market? That is the speculation over at wvbroadcasting.net, where classic rock 101.5 The River WRYV has fired its morning show and appears to be heading to a format flip. The station is owned by Connoisseur Media, which has implemented the Bob FM brand of Variety Hits in Bloomington, IL, Wichita, KS, and Eric, PA. A source that has been traditionally reliable reports that the same consultant who put the format on in Bloomington visited the Connoisseur Media studios in Huntington today.

WRYV is technically licensed to Gallipolis, OH, but the station's signal covers Huntington and much of the I-64 corridor between Huntington and Charleston, WV (which had the Jack FM format for 14 months in 2006 and early 2007).

August 19, 2008
Tom Taylor of Radio-Info.com reports that Allegheny Mountain Network subsidiary Farm & Home Broadcasting Company, the owner of SAM 106.3 (WQRM) in the Olean, NY market, has sold the station to Colonial Radio Group for $290,000. Ray Rosenblum served as the broker for the deal.

August 14, 2008
CBS Radio has confirmed that the new market manager for its Los Angeles cluster, including 93.1 Jack FM (KCBS-FM), is bringing in Roy Laughlin to run its stations there. Previously Laughlin worked with Magic Broadcasting in Los Angeles, and prior to that he was co-market manager in L.A. for Clear Channel.

As for Jack FM, the roll-out of the PPM (personal people meter) that Arbitron is developing to replace its diary system is reflecting well on the format. All Access reveals that Jack FM has held its #3 spot in Persons 25-54 (the big money demo in radio) for a second straight month. That news, coupled with Ben FM in Philadelphia having shown strong performance in PPM in past tests there, is an encouraging sign for the Variety Hits format.

August 11, 2008
I spent the past 12 days on the road with the Karg Brothers band, primarily in North Carolina. And I can confirm what several readers have told me about WSSM in New Bern, NC having flipped back to the SAM Variety Hits format -- I not only heard it first-hand, but also rolled tape on it to land the legal ID for TopHour.com.

Congrats to 106.5 The Arch (WARH) in St. Louis, which (according to All Access) finished #1 in Persons 25-54 in the Spring 2008 Arbitron ratings. Some people predicted that Variety Hits would be a quick fad format, a la Rhythmic Oldies, but it's been 3+ years on the air for The Arch and here it is at #1 in the big money demo.

July 14, 2008
Backyard Broadcasting is selling 94.7 Jack FM (WWJK) in Jackson, MS to New South Radio, according to a report on All Access. WWJK was one of the first stations in the United States to license use of the Jack FM name and format.

July 2, 2008
The FCC has denied a petition by Entercom and CBS Radio (known as Infinity when the petition was filed) that Cumulus-owned 105.1 Jack FM (KCJK) in Kansas City does not provide city-grade coverage to Garden City, Missouri, the station's official city of license. The station moved its transmitter location (with the permission of the FCC) earlier this decade to provide better coverage into Kansas City.

June 30, 2008
Report: In "September or October" of this year, Apex Broadcasting's 96 Chuck FM (WVAF) in Charleston, SC will be moving from its 96.1 frequency to 101.7, which is currently the home of NextMedia's rock WKZQ. The frequencies are switching markets: 96.1 is moving from Charleston to Myrtle Beach, while 101.7 is moving from Myrtle Beach to Charleston. Odds are that the format place-swapping will happen when the signals move into their respective new markets.

June 14, 2008
Entercom has pulled the plug on 106.3 Charlie FM (WGVC) in the Greenville, SC market. The station, which flipped from female-oriented talk to Variety Hits in August 2007, shifted to News/Talk as part of a trimulcast with 950 WORD/Spartanburg, SC and 1330 WYRD/Greenville, SC and has new call letters WYRD-FM.

June 10, 2008
New station 97.5 KSRX in Sterling, CO has signed on with Variety Hits as 97.5 Bob FM.

May 15, 2008
Jones Radio Networks has launched a new 24/7 jockless Variety Hits format titled, appropriately enough, Variety Hits. According to the JRN website, the music on its satellite-fed Variety Hits format will be centered on the 1975-1985 era but will feature music from the '70s through the '90s. It promises a selection of "familiar music emphasizing transitions between songs that span genres and eras."

This move will allow radio programmers who want to choose their own name (as opposed to Jack FM or Bob FM) to do so. It will be interesting to see if any existing Variety Hits stations opt to go with the satellite-fed approach, as opposed to programming the often tricky-to-perfect format locally.

The name "Variety Hits" is one I came up with when I first launched this site in April 2005, back before the genre had an established title. At that point, 100000watts.com was calling it "Classic Hits/Hot AC", which isn't a bad way to describe it.

The most common description of the format seems to be "Adult Hits", which I personally don't like as I believe it doesn't properly convey the multiple genres that go into making it the unique product that it is. But whatever, as long as people know what format you're talking about, that's the main thing in my opinion.

May 12, 2008
The deal that sent Fickle 93.3 (WFKL) in Rochester, NY from Entercom to Stephens Media Group, along with WRMM and WZNE, cost $13.25 million. That's according to the FCC filing on the deal, as reported on All Access. Stephens has been running Fickle 93.3 under a time brokerage agreement that began on April 28, 2008.

May 7, 2008
The Jack FM Variety Hits format has been dropped from New York City's 101.1 WCBS-FM HD2 sub-channel effective today, nearly one year since it was jettisoned from the primary spot by the return of oldies/classic hits "101.1 CBS FM" to the spot. According to multiple published reports, CBS Radio is now operating a currently unbranded "80-centric" Variety Hits format in its place.

May 6, 2008
Panama City has its first station in the format, as Double O Radio abruptly dropped sports from 105.1 WASJ (which went to sports in January of this year in place of its previous Smooth Jazz format) to become 105.1 Bob FM.

April 30, 2008
All Access confirms what it teased last week, as Cumulus flipped Hot AC B-103 (KBIU) today to the satellite-fed version of JACK-FM in Lake Charles, LA as 103.3 Jack FM. The website reveals that while the KBIU call letters remains for now, they will be changed soon to call letters that closer match the Jack name.

It's interesting to note that this is the first Cumulus-owned station to put the satellite-fed version of Jack FM on the air. It inherited the Susquehanna Jack FM stations in Kansas City and Indianapolis in May 2006; the Indy station later evolved to Classic Hits (and ultimately dropped the Jack name).

However, in August 2007, Cumulus licensed Jack FM for a rimshot station covering the Houston market. And that, coupled with the addition of Jack FM in Lake Charles, may be a sign of the company finding interest in the Variety Hits format, particularly with the Jack FM branding.

April 18, 2008
Entercom has divested itself of Fickle 93.3 WFKL in Rochester, NY, along with two other stations it owns in the market, to comply with FCC-mandated market ownership limits that Entercom exceeded when it purchased the CBS Radio stations in Rochester in August 2006. According to All Access, WFKL is being put into a trust with WRMM and WZNE that is being run by David Pearlman.

April 7, 2008
Gapwest Broadcasting has brought Variety Hits to Yakima, WA, where it dropped Spanish "La Preciosa 99.3" on KQSN and replaced it with "My 99.3". It debuted on 4/1/2008 by playing 5,000 songs in a row. KQSN belonged to Clear Channel until Gapwest officially acquired it in February 2008, and the new owners didn't waste much time in putting a new format on the air on the signal.

This is the second Variety Hits station to go on the air in Yakima, the first being New Northwest Broadcasting's 105.7 Bob FM (KRSE).

March 31, 2008
NextMedia's 98.7 Will FM in the Wilmington, NC market has been moved to a much-weaker signal in the adjacent New Bern/Morehead City, NC market.

The call letters for 98.7 Will FM changed from WILT to WLGD on March 16, 2008, which served as a hint that something was up there. Then, effective March 31, the Will FM format went to 104.5 WSTK, a Class A signal with a Spanish format that recently upgraded to Class C1. The move saw Spanish move to 98.7 as "La Gran D", with the idea that the signal will cover a range with a population of 130,000 Hispanics.

In a related note, NextMedia had a Variety Hits signal on in New Bern/Morehead City, NC with SAM 105.1 (WSSM), which flipped to Standards as "105.1 The Coast" on November 1, 2007.

March 28, 2008
The Odessa/Midland, TX market has a Variety Hits station, as classic rock "102 FZX" (KFZX) switched changed formats to pick up the satellite-fed Jack FM format on March 1, 2008.

February 29, 2008
KSCB-FM (B 107.5) in Liberal, KS shifted from Hot AC to Variety Hits effective February 1, 2008. The station falls into one of those "tweener" positions that is difficult to pin down, but it passes enough tests (Adult Hits listing by 100000watts.com, use of Jack-like phrasing as "80s, 90s, and whatever" on its website, etc.) to make the cut for this site.

February 20, 2008
The satellite-fed version of JACK-FM will be moving from ABC Radio Networks to Dial Global Digital effective March 31, 2008. The move, which should be transparent to listeners, will happen without a disruption of service for affiliates.

Bob FM is on in San Angelo, TX, where K-Lite 98.7 (Hot AC) flipped to Variety Hits as 98.7 Bob FM on February 18, 2008.

February 7, 2008
Tom Taylor reports that CBS Radio has opted not to renew Howard Cogan for voiceover duties for the WCBS-FM HD2 stream of JACK-FM in New York City. He is being replaced by voiceover talent Pat St. John.

There have been an unfortunate number of cuts in the radio biz recently, and today it hit a Variety Hits station. According to All Access, CBS Radio PD/MD Craig Powers is out from KKJJ/Las Vegas (100.5 Jack FM) as part of sweeping cuts institued by the company today in major markets across the country.

February 5, 2008
According to All Access, Variety Hits simulcast 104.9 WYNA and 100.7 WGTN-FM, known on-air as 104.9 Bob FM, will be sold by Coastline Communications to Qantum Communications. Qantum has operated the station via an LMA, but this move will give them possession of both licenses.

January 18, 2008
All Access reports that 106.9 KZY (WKZY/Ocala-Gainesville, FL has transitioned from Variety Hits to Hot AC, putting an emphasis on contemporary hit music (in the Hot AC mold). In one of those unusual twists that happens in radio sometimes, the station has picked up "Jayne FM" (a female-oriented Variety Hits music service) for the 7-11 p.m. weeknight timeslot.

Jack FM is on the air in Russia. This link takes you to the station broadcasting on 89.9 FM in Moscow and 91.1 FM in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida.)

January 9, 2007
Connoisseur Media has improved the coverage of Bob FM in Wichita, KS, supplementing 100.5 KIBB (a class C3 signal without good metro coverage west of Wichita in Sedgwick County, KS) with new move-in 97.1 KGGG, a Class C2 move-in with great coverage from the west, as a simulcast partner as of December 26, 2007. This may be a transition as opposed to a full-fledged simulcast, as the station's website is promoting a "move" to 97.1.

January 4, 2008
Bob FM has a new affiliate in Salina, KS, as Adult Contemporary "OZ 05" (KQNS) flipped to Variety Hits on December 1, 2007 as 95.5 Bob FM and landed new call letters KVOB.

December 28, 2007
It's a late Christmas gift for Omaha, KS! Waitt Radio brought the Variety Hits format back to the city the day after Christmas, almost one year after dropping it from the same market. Waitt dropped Bob FM from 106.9 KOPW-FM on December 31, 2006, but it brought it back (albeit in a new form) on December 26, 2007, replacing AC KLTQ "Lite Rock 101.9" with "101.9 the Big O" -- two days later (today), the station picked up new call letters KOOO.

December 26, 2007
More than a year after dropping the Variety Hits format (shifting to Classic Hits), Cumulus' WJJK/Indianapolis has dropped the Jack FM name and associated imaging and now is known simply as 104.5 WJJK.

December 7, 2007
Lafayette, IN (the home of Purdue University) landed the Variety Hits format on December 6, 2007, with 95.3 WLFF dropping its "Wolf Country" format to become 95.3 Bob FM. The old Jack FM in Indianapolis (WJJK) was a distant rimshot at best to the area, but its flip to Classic Hits last year negated any potential problems there.

November 6, 2007
Variety Hits KJXK (Jack FM)/San Antonio PD Mark Landis signed a multi-year deal with Border Media Partners which puts him in charge of English Programming for BMP, including oversite of the company's JACK-FM stations nationwide (so far KJXK in San Antonio and KJAV in McAllen, TX.) Jack debuted in McAllen on September 14, 2007, replacing the Rhythmic Oldies format there (Digital 104.9.)

November 5, 2007
The rumors proved true in Dayton, where Main Line Broadcasting flipped legacy CHR Z-93 (92.9 WGTZ) to Variety Hits as Fly 92.9 at noon on Friday, November 2, 2007. This is the second station that Main Line has flipped to the format; in Richmond, VA, Main Line put the format on as Liberty 98.9 more than two years ago.

November 1, 2007
Could Variety Hits be coming to Dayton, OH? That's the hot rumor; Main Line Broadcasting recent acquired the Dayton cluster from Radio One, an acquisition that included Z-93 (92.9 WGTZ), which has been engaged in a head-to-head CHR war with Clear Channel's WDKF. The Dayton Business Journal breaks it down in this article.

Z-93 is currently stunting with an automated countdown. It is expected to debut its new format tomorrow at noon EDT.

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