Many shows claim to be the first free-form radio program, but the earliest on record is "Nightsounds" on
KPFA-FM in
Berkeley, California, D.J.'d by
John Leonard. Probably the best-remembered in the Midwest is
Beaker Street, which ran for almost 10 years on KAAY "The Mighty 1090" in Little Rock, Arkansas, beginning in 1966, making it also probably the best-known such show on an AM station; its signal reached from Canada to Mexico and Cuba, blanketing the Midwest and Midsouth of the U.S.
WFMU is currently the longest-running freeform radio station in the
United States, having adopted the format full time in the summer of 1968. WNEW-FM 102.7 in NYC was the first commercial station in the US to introduce a free-form format, in October 1967. It stayed that way under the ownership of
Metromedia Broadcasting until it was sold and the new owners were not interested. WNEW-FM was a leader in introducing new music and making household names of a good deal of the bands that became known in the 1960s and '70s.
Jim Ladd of
KLOS in
Los Angeles, California was one of the most notable freeform DJs. Tom Petty wrote a song about Jim Ladd called "
The Last DJ". The only time Jim Ladd didn't have complete control over what music is being played is when he turned control over to his faithful listeners commonly referred to as "The Tribe". On October 26, 2011, Ladd was among various staffers let go from KLOS following the acquisition of station owner
Citadel Broadcasting by
Cumulus Media. From 2012 until shortly before his death in 2023, Ladd hosted a daily freeform show on
Sirius XM's Deep Tracks. The free-form
ethos tends to disdain playlists confined to a single
music genre. However, DJs may opt to play selections according to an arbitrary theme (e.g.,
Bob Dylan's "
Subterranean Homesick Blues" followed by
Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien"). Freeform-ish stations that played only or almost only rock music were known as
progressive rock stations, while those that play mostly
folk and/or
country-leaning cuts are known as
Americana stations. Commercial free-form radio stations were common in the late 1960s and early '70s, particularly on the
FM band, but are rare today. An exceptional case was
Indie 103.1 FM of
Santa Monica and
Newport Beach, California. Indie 103.1 broadcast radio programs in which famous musicians from the world of
popular music host radio programs and choose the playlist. Indie 103.1 left the FM airwaves in 2009, but continued on the internet for a time. Another commercial free-form radio station is
KHUM, "radio without the rules", on 104.3 and 104.7 FM in Ferndale, California. KHUM has transmitted since 1996 and is the most popular station in
Humboldt County, California.
Internet radio and, to a lesser extent,
college radio are sanctuaries of the free-form format (although even the latter has lost much of its independence as stations begin modeling corporate stations in their presentation). On
Sirius XM satellite radio, the weekly
Bob Dylan-hosted
Theme Time Radio Hour featured a freeform format, as do several specialty programs on
The Loft. The nationally syndicated
The Mainstream, distributed by
Native Voice One, follows a freeform format. Many terrestrial freeform stations are small and lack corporate backing, and therefore have relatively weak radio
transmitters (especially around
metropolitan areas where corporate radio signals dominate, but at the same time have enough of a population density to cover enough people to support such a station), a problem that has caused numerous broadcasters to transition to
Internet radio,
pirate radio or both. In Canada,
Reiner Schwarz was a prominent pioneer of the free-form format, often being hired to host free-form shows on radio stations that were otherwise conventionally formatted apart from his program. The
full service format can be seen as a variant of the free-form format, though since most full-service stations are located in rural areas,
country music,
adult standards,
classic hits (
oldies or
classic rock), and occasionally
adult contemporary music tend to form the bulk of the music on a full-service station, and the vast majority of full-service stations focus primarily on mainstream, popular music (whereas freeform stations often put the emphasis on less widely known or more exotic selections). ==Adult hits/Jack FM==