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What goes up on your home page when your hometown team wins the big championship?  If you’re WRIF, you play it up big, provide great resources, and make it the big deal of the day – because that’s what the Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup means in Detroit. It’s this flexibility and understanding "What’s […]

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Question: How are television networks working around the TiVo problem? Answer: By doing something that radio has done forever. The New York Times reports that live commercials (or as we call them in radio, "live reads") are making a comeback on network TV shows.  Jimmy Kimmel (yup, a former radio guy) has done a live […]

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So, musicFIRST in their "humorous" effort to extract pay performance fees from broadcasters is sending the following songs from iTunes to the NAB: Springsteen’s "Pay Me My Money Down" Steve Miller’s "Take The Money And Run" McCartney’s "Back in the U.S.S.R." (huh?) Sheryl Crow’s "A Change Will Do You Good" Maybe David Rehr can respond […]

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In Part 1, we talked about all the weird and lame reasons why many stations still aren’t streaming.  I’ll bet the majority of you who read this blog smugly read that post, comfortable in the knowledge that your station has been streaming for years. Well, I’m here to tell you that many broadcast radio streams […]

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As streaming capability rapidly makes its way into phones and cars, I think about the odd and meandering course that radio has been traveling during the past decade.  Slowly, but surely, most stations and companies have reluctantly thrown in the towel and begun to stream – as if they’ve been forced to do so. And […]

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You have to hand it to Fox Entertainment.  They’re going to try a new experiment with two of their new television dramas this fall – fewer commercials at higher rates.  What a concept. As Peter Liguori, chairman of Fox Entertainment, notes: "It is potentially revolutionary." If it works, it truly will be revolutionary.  Marketed as […]

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A burgeoning trend among many web-savvy businesses is to create microsites to help their efforts stand out.  A great example of this in radio is KQRC/Kansas City.  They’ve built a microsite for their upcoming all-day concert event, Rockfest.  Users have access to resources that include a venue map, ticket info, rules, lodging options, the full […]

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It’s just a game, right?  No, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are more than just games.  They capture the fantasy aspect of Rock music that we all have inside us.  From the very first dude who ever played the "air guitar," Rock music lovers have always pretended to be Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy […]

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Today’s posting title is a quote from Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore, and it cleverly sums up how the Internet now exceeds television during the daytime hours.  In fact, a recent New York Times article actually asked the question, "What is primetime?"  That’s because 6,000,000 May sweeps viewers have disappeared since last year. The culprit?  […]

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What will kids do this summer when the schools let out next month?  According to Toys ‘R’ Us, a big trend is "Backyard Bands," spurred on by the success of brilliantly marketed concepts like Disney’s Jonas Brothers. The idea is kids yearn to be Rock stars (thank Reality TV for that), and toy manufacturers are […]

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The JacoBlog will return tomorrow.  Have a great day!

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Jacobs Media’s Eric Holmes weighs in on Metallica’s new website: I’d like you to meet the newest Jacobs Media client, our first band – Metallica!  Well… OK, so we’re not consulting Metallica, but it definitely looks like they got the W.T.D.A. memo.  (Or maybe they could have written it!) Their new website is called Mission: […]

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Today’s Arbitron PPM webinar produced another helpful update about how the new service is tracking, along with a strong contribution from CBS Radio CEO Dan Mason, talking about PPM, accreditation, and posting. The slide that jumped out at me covers new markets coming online – and soon.  If you’re programming, managing, or jocking in one […]

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If you haven’t checked out Hulu.com, take some time over a weekend or a slow evening.  But you’d better prepare to spend a couple of hours watching some interesting television – or perhaps, better referred to as video.  A product of NBC Universal and News Corporation, Hulu is the next wave of video streaming, and […]

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When the Cell Phone Only controversy took shape a few years ago when our first Tech Poll was released in ’05, Arbitron’s Ed Cohen told me that the nation’s landline statistics were tracked by the National Center for Health Statistics.  I’ve never figured out why they’re the ones that research this data, but nonetheless, their […]

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In a recent post to "Online Spin," Seana Mulcahy wrote a great piece about the quest for brands to build communities, and the struggles that many face.  We’re going through a similar dialogue in radio.  The good news, of course, is that many radio listeners have profiles on MySpace and Facebook.  The challenge for stations, […]

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You tune in sports talk radio, and you’re bound to hear that cliché debate about whether professional athletes are overpaid.  When a team is winning – like the Celtics – it’s rarely much of an argument.  But when we’re talking about the cellar-dwelling Miami Heat, it’s a different conversation.  Consider the 2007-08 salaries of these […]

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XM’s first quarter numbers are out, and what do you know?  Its losses widened to nearly 6 percent, even though revenue is up.  For the quarter, XM hemorrhaged $129 million, and their customer acquisition costs rose to $73 a subscriber (up from $65 last year). And this is a business that deserves to be rescued […]

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