Bob FM

Bob FM is the on-air brand of a number of FM radio stations in Canada and the United States. The Bob FM format features a mix of classic 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s hits with some current hot adult contemporary singles.

BOB FM stations in Canada are (with the exception of London, Ontario's Bob FM station, CHST-FM) are all owned by Bell Media. Those in the United States are owned by a variety of companies. Bob FM stations 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 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, a former 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.

Many BOB FM stations market themselves with the slogan "Turn your knob to BOB"; this was parodied in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 skit in which TV's Frank creates his own radio station and exhorts viewers to "Turn your crank to Frank", satirizing commercials for BOB 100 FM that were playing in the Minneapolis area at the time.

So far, Honolulu, Hawaii, Omaha, Nebraska, Sacramento, California, Richland, Washington, and The Woodlands, Texas are the only North American markets where Bob FM has failed. 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 WLFF in Lafayette, Indiana, jettisoned its country format to introduce Bob to its listeners on December 6, 2007.

Many Bob-FM stations are imaged by Digital Sound & Video, Inc, located in Daytona Beach, Florida.

At least three non variety-hits Bob FM outlets exist, WBYB in Portville, New York, WRBT in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KLCI in Minneapolis-St. Paul, all of which run a country music format.

The newest Bob FM station, KVGS in Meadview, Arizona, replaced its alternative rock format.