The Jacobs Media Blog

On his blog over the last several days, Larry Rosin has made a compelling case that broadcast radio simply hasn’t kept up in the streaming department. His posts are worth your time and your consideration. Along the way, Larry points to factors like a poor streaming experience, commercial clutter, and the shaky assumption that simulcasting the broadcast […]

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” – Unknown A week or so ago, something truly fascinating happened in the world of radio format branding that caught my attention. One of the original Classic Hits stations – the legendary WKLH in Milwaukee – abandoned the C-word and adopted a new slogan: “Milwaukee’s Hometown Rock.”  Not surprisingly, I […]

Perhaps one of the lessons about how the Internet disrupts everything is that legacy brands have to find different ways to feed the beast, to make their numbers, to evolve to these modern media and entertainment demands. As we discussed last week in this space in a few different posts, radio’s bread and butter – selling […]

On the heels of yesterday’s post about public radio and iHeartRadio staging podcast upfronts, I heard from an old friend and former morning guy, J LaLonde. Many of you remember J as an accomplished radio air personality who made his way through a number of stations in the Pacific Northwest, the Big Easy, Florida, and Knoxville. […]

  On a recent trip, I was asked by a client why this blog seems to feature a public radio post seemingly every week. And my answer is that there are some pretty innovative things happening in the programming/content arena with their stations, as well as with networks like NPR, PRI, and APM. But today’s post […]

Last week at the Worldwide Radio Summit in L.A., there were truly some amazing panels. As someone who has been to all five of these conferences since 2011, it is fascinating to watch how this conference has evolved. WWRS’s opening session featured an unambitious, low-key title: “The Future of Radio.” Amazingly, it actually delivered on that […]

Last week at the Worldwide Radio Summit in L.A., there were truly some amazing panels. As someone who has been to all five of these conferences since 2011, it is fascinating to watch how this conference has evolved. WWRS’s opening session featured an unambitious, low-key title: “The Future of Radio.” Amazingly, it actually delivered on that […]

  Some of us (hey, don’t look at ME!) might be guilty of being so committed to our careers and our craft that we simply never make much time to pursue other interests.  There’s golf, gardening, scrapbooking, wine collecting, art, tennis, and endless other entertaining ways of expanding ourselves and spending free time. All the signs […]

  Some of us (hey, don’t look at ME!) might be guilty of being so committed to our careers and our craft that we simply never make much time to pursue other interests.  There’s golf, gardening, scrapbooking, wine collecting, art, tennis, and endless other entertaining ways of expanding ourselves and spending free time. All the signs […]

  Today’s the day we’re presenting a deck of big findings to attendees at the Worldwide Radio Summit in L.A.  As any researcher who conducts expansive, national studies will tell you, the big dilemma often comes down to determining which results to include in a one-hour presentation – especially when there’s a lot of important news to […]

So the good news is that the wildly successful public radio podcast Serial has just nabbed a highly respected Peabody Award. That makes it the first podcast to pull that off. And that’s also the bad news, because now the Serial team may be feeling the pressure to recreate that success. At more than 77 million downloads, Serial has […]

You know that old Who lyric – “Hope I die before I get old.”  For Roger and Pete, Mick, Keith, Charlie, Sir Paul, Ringo, and many others, that wish has not come true.  The aforementioned are bigger than life in 2015, still touring, with no end in sight. And it’s that way on the radio, […]

OK, in the spirit of full disclosure, I did not attend the National Association of Broadcasters Convention last week in Vegas.  Paul and I drew straws and….well, you can guess the result. But I kept in close tabs with him and others about the comings and goings, those lobby bar meetings at the Wynn, and the other […]

By now, you’ve probably read about the Voltair audio processing system that has stirred up some controversy about whether or not this electronic box helps boost radio station encoding in the PPM system. The essence of this conversation revolves around the suspicion (and in some circles, the belief) that certain formats have an inherent disadvantage when it comes to […]

If you work in radio, chances are good that you have a closetful of logoware, representing your journey in the business from stations to station, and market to market.  Most radio pros proudly sport the colors – in the form of the station logo. But a tattoo that indelibly identifies you with your brand?  That’s a […]

Radio is an industry whose foundation is formats. It’s how stations are defined – by agencies and ultimately, by the audience. Radio has created a language and a nomenclature so that  listeners and marketers can understand the lay of the land.  In fact, it allows for us to do business with one another.  When we […]