For Immediate Release:
Tuesday August 23, 2005

JACK Listeners Rate the Format's Appeal

What can the radio industry learn from the recent success of the JACK format?

As part of an on-going study of JACK formatted stations in five markets*, Bridge Ratings today released results of a study in which listeners rated the most important facets of the JACK formatted station in their market.

1500 listeners 25-54 years of age who consider their JACK station their favorite station, the one they listen to most, are included in this study.

The intent of the study was to learn what assets of successful JACK stations are important to the listener experience and would be transferrable to radio station programming in general.

Listeners were asked to list all the elements of their favorite JACK station that made their listening experience more positive than other radio stations they were familiar with.

Then, these listeners were asked to rate each programming element on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 was "least important" and 10 was "most important".

The following is a listing of the most mentioned JACK format assets along with their average score:

JACK Format Asset Appeal

1. Music Genre Variety	9.4
2. Minimal Talk	8.9
3. Music Familiarity	8.1
4. Potential For Music Surprises	7.6
5. Station Attitude/Humor	6.9
6. No Announcers	6.2
7. Lack of News, Weather, Sports or Traffic	5.9
8. Perception of Fewer Commercials	5.0
9. No Contesting	4.7
10. Long Sets of Music	3.9
11. Lack of Repetition	3.7

"One of the more interesting aspects of these results," explains Bridge Ratings President Dave Van Dyke, " is how the perception of fewer commercials while an important facet of the JACK format success, is not as important as the lack of announcers or even the station's attitude."

The lack of lifestyle information such as news, sports or weather is not a detriment to this format's appeal. In fact, that this type of information is not included in the presentation gets a higher score than the perception of fewer commercials is a revealing element of JACK's appeal.

Whether 100% of these assets are transferable to other formats remains to be seen. However, our findings suggest that these elements are crucial to the success of JACK-type stations when executed properly but may not provide similar listener response in other formats.

Of the JACK-formatted stations that have been with the format for longer than 9 months*, we asked those that considered JACK their favorite, "the one they listen to most", if they were listening to that station more, the same, or less than they were three months ago.

JACK Station Listening Over Time

Demographic	More	The Same	Less
35-44 Adults	10%	67%	23%

Station Source: KJAC-FM, Denver, KPKX-FM, Phoenix, KJKK-FM, Dallas-Ft. Worth, KBPA-FM, Austin, KCJK-FM, Kansas City, WWJK-FM, Jackson, MS

8 month trending of the JACK stations in this study represents two audiences: 1) JACK Favoriteness shares among all 25-54 Adult listeners in the market composite and 2) JACK cume listeners 25-54 ONLY.

1) JACK Favoriteness Trends - All Listeners

2) JACK Favoriteness Trends - Jack Listeners