Increasingly, stations
move toward variety

updated 5:59 p.m. ET May 24, 2005

CHICAGO - The posters hanging on the walls of the broadcasting booth at Nine FM are as eclectic as the music the radio station plays — Pink Floyd and Aerosmith sharing space with the Marx Brothers, the Rat Pack and the Beatles.

“We play anything” is the station's mantra, and to prove it, program director and afternoon personality Matt DuBiel's afternoon mix moves from Boz Scaggs to Prince to Cheap Trick.

With names like Jack and Bob (or Fickle and Nine), radio stations promising an anything-goes mix of pop and rock hits are springing up across the country. The variety format is seen, in part, as a way to appeal to listeners used to loading their own iPods with music from different genres — or to keep those thinking about switching to satellite.

But more than that, it's a mea culpa to music lovers who started tuning out as their favorite stations shrunk their playlists in the 1990s, leaving the same old songs to play hour after hour.

The stations tell listeners “we play what we want” or “we play anything.” But they're really carefully crafted to keep advertisers happy, observers say. Song choices target a lucrative but musically hard-to-define demographic, 25- to 54-year-olds, who want to hear new music but not rap and bubblegum pop, and who declare themselves too young to listen to the oldies.

“This is oldies wrapped up in new wrapping paper and a new bow,” said Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio, a trade publication owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc.

The variety format began in Canada three years ago and migrated into U.S. markets a little over a year ago. While the original Canadian formats, called Jack and Bob, differ somewhat — Bob introduces more new music and Jack sticks to older hits — they and other U.S. variety stations share some basic themes.

They're heavy on the '80s and '90s. They play mainly hits, but hits that haven't been heard on the radio for a while. They aren't afraid of “train wreck” segues, running, for example, a classic rock hit into an '80s pop confection.

For Harvey Wells, vice president and group station manager for Newsweb Radio Group, Nine FM's owner, inspiration struck sitting at a college bar with his 21-year-old daughter. After hearing hard-rock AC/DC followed by pop from Huey Lewis and the News, then followed by country singer Kenny Chesney, he asked her if she thought the mix was strange.

“And she said, ‘Why strange?’”Wells said. “‘It's just good music.’”

People always liked a variety of music, but as radio stations consolidated under corporate owners, playlists got shorter, said Bob Sinclair, president of Sinclair Communications, which launched the first U.S. Bob station in Norfolk, Va., 14 months ago.

“The big suits worried about their Wall Street stock price ... and there were these so-called experts telling station owners (that) to be successful you have to narrow your focus to a particular segment of music,” he said.

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