The Jacobs Media Blog

Radio’s hot streak continues, and the reasons why go to the heart of what the industry as a whole ought to be focusing on. First, Wells Fargo analyst Marcy Ryvicker upgraded radio earlier this week.  Noting the gains made by NextRadio with additional telecom acceptance, as well as singling out Entercom for both ratings and […]

No one loves a serious research conversation more than Larry Rosin and me.  When we first met, Larry had just started up Edison Research and we worked together at WBOS/Boston back when it was a Triple A station.  Over the years, we have sat in what seems like hundreds of conference rooms, staring at data slides, […]

Radio veterans acknowledge that content tends to have a short life span.  In fact, the vast majority of what is created by programmers and talent on the radio is never heard a second time.  It typically plays once and goes off into the ether. So how do most members of the audience find your content […]

It’s amazing how sometimes you look back on things that PDs did several decades ago – not in a nostalgic way, but in an effort to understand why the radio that many people grew up with was so captivating and memorable. Some say that radio was largely successful in the ‘70s and ‘80s because there was […]

From my perch as a consultant, the only thing worse than not being asked for an opinion on a key issue, is to get the question when it’s too late to affect the decision. So queries like “What do you think of our new billboards?” or “How does our new afternoon drive jock sound?” leave us […]

As my Uncle Bert used to say, “If you wait long enough, everything comes back into style.” Maybe he was talking about radio and the amazing press run the industry has enjoyed over the past few months. It seemingly began with the 93% reach number that made the rounds back in June, backed up by the […]

You may think this is a post about Fantasy Island, a place where Talk Radio is #1.  But in fact, there’s a real island where talkers are on top of the ratings heap, bolstered by happy listeners and strong ratings.  And Sean Hannity is nowhere to be seen. The mysterious story of that missing Malaysia Airlines […]

What are you doing tonight? Chances are you’ll be doing something you haven’t done in a while. Or maybe ever. The odds are pretty good that many of you will be curiously viewing the Republican presidential debate, along with what is sure to be a record number of Americans.  You might even want to turn it […]

You hear a lot about those amazing YouTubers – seemingly regular people who make videos that out-cume Z100 and Power 93. So what’s the secret? Adweek caught up with YouTube sensation, Rosanna Pansino, to learn the secrets of viral video success. You may remember we highlighted Rosanna last year in a blog post about YouTube […]

In May, when we hired Seth Resler – our Digital Dot Connector – he told us that his background, experience, and interest in podcasting would be of value to both Jacobs Media and jācapps clients. He was right. Seth has been deep into podcasting for five years now – and his area of interest just happens to […]

It used to be that radio stations were in control, and their audiences reacted and behaved accordingly. A great example of this occurred more than 30 years ago, typifying how radio campaigns usually worked. Many rockers – especially those from Milwaukee may recall the stunt that WQFM’s Tim “The Rock N’ Roll Animal” pulled off in […]

Sometimes the best strategies and advice come from someone outside the business. In the case of a recent Fast Company article about identifying and managing two-person teams, Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone unknowingly wrote a primer for radio programmers. These guys actually wrote the book on it – Team Genius – which breaks down […]

It’s been a crazy week for radio but that’s the world in which we live. You may have heard the recent news about Neil Young’s decision about how consumers will be able to listen to his music. Last week, he pulled his catalogue off all streaming services. This means no “Southern Man” or “Rockin’ In […]

While the radio industry is wringing its hands over measurement, encoding, black boxes, and number games, the rest of the world that calls itself “radio” is busily generating revenue.  And a lot of it. If you clicked past the Voltair news last week, you may have read the story that Pandora reported Q2 revenue of […]

Amidst the Voltair madness last week, you may have missed the second biggest story in radio. It was about radio getting serious about podcasts and on-demand radio, and it’s an important one.  Because if “Voltair” is the word of the year in radio, “podcast” has to be  a close second. In case you missed it, […]