WCBS's new Jack format is noxious. I hear FYC's "Suspicious Minds" for the first time since the late '80s, but the transitions are often painful ("U Can't Touch This" into "Photograph"?!) and the absence of a DJ to break things up is annoying to me. The current crop of music listeners apparently just wants the tunes without the interruptions, but I'm old-school enough to desire a certain feeling of relationship with the DJ.
Is it safe to assume Infinity has one PD doing the programming for every Jack station they own across the nation? Or are they still programming regionally to allow for regional flavors and local-artists-made-good?
Infinity has indeed just promoted someone to "VP of Jack" (yes that's his title!). But the stations are supposedly being programmed to cater to the area. By all accounts NYC's Jack is harder-edged and more rock-leaning, if the posts on MYRMB are to be believed (although one guy, a former ABC colleague of mine who's apx my age, said he'd "never heard of" Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy" before this week).
The flip made no sense, especially since, as a hard-edged Jack, the station is directly competing with Infinity's own K-Rock. But the sales guys (who are all, like, 30) insisted 'CBS-FM's demos were a tough sell. Apparently it happened really quickly because they were caught with their pants down in several other markets -- the rumor is SF's KFRC was set to go Jack the day after MAX debuted (and so the flip was put on ice) and they didn't want someone else to beat them in NY & Chi-Town. WPLJ had been making Jack-like noises for the past month with its "Flush the Format Weekends".
