This March, Tyler Media is launching Jack FM in Oklahoma City. The station will be available on 97.3 FM.

For those of you not familiar with the "Jack" format, it features a playlist of 1,000 or more songs with no deejays and fewer commercials. It is a Classic Rock/Adult Contemporary hybrid -- but even that description doesn't do it justice. You could easily hear a Guns N Roses song segue into The BeeGees or Tone Loc segue into The Beatles.

There are dozens of "Jack" stations already on the air across the country. Dallas, Kansas City and Los Angeles are among some of the cities where the format exists.

OKC's Jack FM is already streaming:
http://www.jackokc.com

More information about the "Jack" format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/JACK_FM

Interesting. I've been listening for about an hour now. It sounds like a KISS FM/KRXO Hybrid for the most part. It does seem like it is a deeper play list than any one station, but I don't think it's bringing any new music into the market. It's just taking everything we got already and putting it in one place.

Kind of a lateral move format wise, but less commercials and no DJs will be welcomed. I'm pretty confident that it won't be programmed by anyone within 300 miles of the city, though.

Ack! It's like internet radio without the computer...

OH, WAIT!

The computer's at the station, pooting out all those 80s hits for the sheeple.

Local radio is dead.

I sure wish they had a station like that in tulsa.

No dj's and less commercials, yea right look at 94.7 when they first started they promised the same thing imo 94.7 is not dj free or commercial free. Hopefully this jack fm will take off, we need more soft rock relaxing stations, What I would really like is a smooth jazz station and a blues/bluegrass station.

I think most new formats launch that way, but I think this is a long positioning strategy. The format itself is actually a brand defined by those characteristics.

Who knows if it will last, but it's basically an attempt to solve radio's problems caused by Clear Channel et al, as well as compete with sattelite radio.

That would hurt satilitte radio if we had public radio that was nonstop dj free and didn't have to pay 10 bucks a month for. Even still xm radio is not commercial free they will stop and have short breaks between songs at various times. Anybody that has the direct tv satilite has xm radio on there tv, tune in from 801 to 8?9 don't member how far it goes up. It will be nice to have a bigger mix of softrock, kinda think of it as kmgl, kiss, and krxo mixed into one station.

Honestly they need to bring back the Spy....everything else on OKC radio for the most part in my opinion is poo.

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Jack will have one of the same problems that the Spy did: lack of metro coverage. (One thousand watts? From Blanchard? As Paul Simon once said, "Who do you think you're foolin'?")

It's worth noting here, I suppose, that when this station was KWEY-FM in Weatherford, it had 100,000 watts to play with; the problem, of course, is that in its new location, it's short-spaced to KQOB at 96.9. In other words, Jack's path is partially blocked by Bob.

Sirrius has commercials as well - kinds misleading in my opinion but hubby had to have Stern and NFL so there you have it..

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I'd like to bring a term to this conversation: stealth marketing.

Here's a clip from a relevant wikipedia article:

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Good info, thanks for the update!! Of course I have XM so I have 200 or so Channels and most are commercial free

http://www.1053thespy.com

I agree the Spy will be missed, move to Satellite Radio

If I want to listen to music on the web, I just bring up Yahoo Music. Sound is decent and I get to pick what I want to listen to.

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It's on the air and the signal totally sucks. It started to fade away in my car -- at I-240 and Penn! By the time I got downtown, it wasn't listenable at all. I can't believe they wasted their money on bringing that station to town.

I'm so getting XM!

That is because the transmitter is in Blanchard.

This station simply doesn't have a lot of range; if the FCC coverage maps are to be believed, only the southwest quadrant of Oklahoma City gets a city-grade signal, and not all of it at that.

In my car, I didn't actually lose it until I got into a car wash south of Britton Road on May. How well it comes in at home - I live west of 50 Penn Place - is a function of how good the equipment is. (My $25 portable won't pick it up at all.)