Hit the Road, Jack

On June 3rd, Viacom, the owner of WCBS 101.1 FM in New York City, bought an iPod Shuffle, changed that station’s format, and fired all the disc jockeys. What was formerly New York’s favorite oldies station is now JACK-FM. The oldies are still available online, but what made WCBS-FM great were the characters. And they’ve gone to the stars.

The basic format is simple. Take a large music library, set iTunes to shuffle, and play advertisements every 14 minutes. I think the format, also used by Philadelphia’s 95.7 BEN, is a vast improvement over your typical payola-driven radio station. The playlist is eclectic enough to not bore. But it fails in two respects: the jackass interrupts the music every other song to pretend to be human, and the lack of character.

In other words, it serves for those occasions when you’ve forgotten your iPod, and don’t have an alternative.

Update: They seem to have forgotten that they don’t have to repeat their playlist every 12 hours.