How Jack FM SAVED my ears

I recently spent frustrating hours doing lab work with only a radio for company. Determined to make the best of a bad situation I twiddled the tuning, and eventually escaped […]


Stop talking and play some music!

I recently spent frustrating hours doing lab work with only a radio for company. Determined to make the best of a bad situation I twiddled the tuning, and eventually escaped Classic FM and Radio 3 (which seem to be able to have 100% signal even if you’re buried in a cave in Outer Mongolia) to find Radio 1. Now I don’t know about you, but when I listen to radio I tend to want to listen to music, not Scott Mills “entertaining the nation” with inane chatter about how great a time he had in some upmarket club I’ve never heard of with other overpaid radio stars I don’t care about.

As the Radio 1 DJs were clearly all far too hip to play more than 1 song every 5 minutes I decided to embrace the inevitable now I’ve hit my 20s and switched to Radio 2. Surely other middle aged listeners would prefer music to hipster banter? It appears not. Instead I was treated to 20 MINUTES of listener’s letters being read out in drive time. I can only assume that the station figure they have a captive audience as everyone stews in traffic jams and so they can get away with telling us about Maureen from Sheffield’s girls night out to celebrate her 50th without irate listeners smashing their radios in frustration.

In desperation, and despite an inbuilt hatred of adverts, I switched to Heart FM. At last the music outweighed the bad DJ banter and I reluctantly settled down to do some work. For about 20 minutes. Then the déjà vu started. Hang on a sec, I thought, I’m sure they played this song about half an hour ago? 3 repeats later and I was back at the tuning dial, growing desperate enough to even contemplate some ‘relaxing classics’. Then, just when my faith in radio was in tatters, I caught a blast of “Mr Brightside” somewhere around 106FM on a station just labelled as ‘Jack’.

3 back-to-back TUNES later I couldn’t believe my ears. Here at last was an escape from Dubstep and inane chatter. Yes there are adverts, but the rest of the time was solid music. And what music – think Jesters at 1am meets Reflex with a sprinkle of Brit-rock. Jack FM “playing what we want” does what it says on the tin – plays what they want, ignores the overplayed top 10 and keeps it music heavy.

So if you’re a skinny jean-wearing chart victim I’d recommend you stick with Radio 1, but for the rest of us just looking for some tunes on the minibus to training, give Jack FM a try.