Bob FM
Bob FM is the on-air brand of several FM radio stations in Canada and the United States. Bob FM stations in Canada are all owned by CHUM Limited; those in the United States are owned by a variety of companies. Bob FM stations follow much the same format as the more famous (although newer) Jack FM brand, and are officially classified as variety hits or adult hits by radio research companies.
It was originally named for the "Best of the Best", and subsequently associated with an everyday man character named Bob, and it proved extremely successful in its first implementation on Winnipeg, Manitoba's CFWM. It inspired Rogers Communications to license the Jack FM format at many of its stations, Corus Entertainment's subsequent Joe FM and Dave FM brands, and comparable moves at other stations. Currently a syndicated version of the format is offered by Waitt Radio Networks.
The format was largely conceived by Howard Kroeger, an executive at CHUM, after attending a friend's 40th birthday party. He took the "Bob" moniker from a country music station (then WBOB, today KTLK-FM) that had broadcast in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market of Minnesota to the south several years earlier. The Bob FM format features a mix of classic 1970s, 1980s and 1990s hits with some current hot adult contemporary singles.
So far, Honolulu, Hawaii and Sacramento, California are the only North American markets where Bob FM has failed; though in the Honolulu case Salem Communications acquired the station and likely would have jettisoned the format, regardless of its success, due to that company's programming philosophy. In Sacramento, the owner of the station requested that listeners "vote" whether the variety hits format or an 80s format should remain, as the owners were selling the frequency which housed the 80's format. The 80s format won, and 92.1 Bob FM turned into Flash 92.1.
The newest Bob FM station in Canada, CHUM Limited's CKLY in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario, adopted the format on August 21, 2005, while WRRK in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania jettisoned its classic rock format to introduce Bob to its listeners on November 1, 2005.
Many Bob-FM stations are imaged by Digital Sound & Video, Inc located in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Bob FM stations in Canada
- Brockville, Ontario – CJPT
- Kawartha Lakes, Ontario – CKLY
- London, Ontario – CHST
- Ottawa, Ontario – CKKL
- Winnipeg, Manitoba – CFWM
Bob FM stations in the United States
- Anchorage, Alaska – KBBO
- Augusta, Kansas – KIBB
- Austin/San Marcos, Texas – KBPA
- Bloomington-Normal, Illinois – WBBE
- Eugene, Oregon – KEUG
- Hampton Roads-Norfolk, Virginia – WPYA
- Larned, Kansas – KGTR
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – KQOB
- Omaha, Nebraska – KCTY
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – WRRK
- Reno, Nevada – KBOB
- San Francisco, California – KYUM
- Santa Rosa, California – KNOB
- Sioux City, Iowa – KZSR
- Spokane, Washington – KYWL
- Texarkana, Texas – KBYB
- The Woodlands, Texas – KTWL
- Tucson, Arizona – KSZR
- Wichita, Kansas – KIBB