On December 26th, 20 years ago, JACK 96.9 first hit the air in Vancouver, and we’ve accomplished so many great things along the way.  Like… uh … hmmmmmm …

What we do know is that we’ve spent the last 20 years playing what we want from a dumpy old studio almost overlooking False Creek. 20 years of giving 20% … Give or take 20%.

A lot has changed in 20 years. When we first started, the Canucks were led by Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison, Ed Jovanovski, Matt Cooke, Trevor Linden and Dan Cloutier.  An apartment in Vancouver cost $165,000 while a detached home in the Greater Vancouver area cost a mere $357,000.   Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Ramones, Talking Heads, Isaac Hayes were named to the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame, legendary rock band KISS were on their FAREWELL TOUR … by the way check KISSonline for their latest tour dates, the world couldn’t get enough of Nickleback’s new album ‘Silver Side Up’ and Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ led MTV Video Award nominations with 9!

YouTube wouldn’t be a thing for another 4 years, MySpace in 2 years, and 3 years until Facebook.

32% of the population had a cell phone in 2001 and this was the MUST HAVE model, you know the one where you played ‘Snake’.

The bleach blonde hair dye industry was smiling because every guy looked like this:

(Photo by Chris Weeks/Liaison)

 

There is so much we can reflect on, we’d like to share some of our favourite JACK 96.9 highlights.

You can hear the original launch from December 26th, 2001 of JACK 96.9 HERE!

FIRST SONG PLAYED: AC/DC ‘You Shook Me All Night Long

CONCERT TICKETS GIVEN AWAY: 119,423 (approximately, and it’s an odd number because of that one AC/DC show years back, we went alone)

ANGRY LETTERS: 6,969

MOST SPUN SONG: Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

BEST CONCERT: JACK’s BIG SHOW

Did you go to JACK’s Big Show in 2007? We brought ZZ Top, The Pretenders & The Stray Cats to Rogers Arena (then known as General Motors Place) for an amazing night. You can see the setlists from that night HERE. You can read a great review from the Georgia Straight HERE.

 

FROM LARRY:

There it was. Everybody Wants to Rule The World. JACK had launched in Vancouver and I called everyone yelling ” It’s Happening !!!”

JACK was born and music that had not been heard on the radio in decades and certainly not in THAT combination rolled out effortlessly to the astonishment of those tuning in. You see there was a time when radio stations played only one genre of music. Rock stations did not play Willie Nelson. Country Stations did not play AC DC. No one played the songs that had been forgotten from years ago.

JACK played it all. One of my favourite mixes was from Madonna to Judas Priest to Dean Martin.

In the early days we called these mixes “Trainwrecks” . It broke every rule radio programmers had ever devised.

What a crazy listening experience. Within a few months of its debut it was a phenomenon.

There had not been that many people listening to the station EVER. It was so successful that the JACK concept at one time was heard on over one hundred radio stations around the world. All from an idea born in Vancouver.

It was daring and inspired. It was fun and unpredictable.

It still is.

COMMERCIALS:

We’ve had a lot of TV commercials in the last 20 years! How many of these do you remember?

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for being with us for 20 years of JACK! You’d think we’d be better at this by now… but we promise to try harder the next 20 years, well, try a bit harder.