The Jacobs Media Blog

What makes something valuable? Is it strictly based on cost, or the quality, or the time it took to make it? And what makes one branded item more valuable than another? Is a Porsche a better car than a Corvette? Is a Harley a better motorcycle than a Honda? And would you pay more for a night […]

Many years ago, Coleman Research (now Coleman Insights) came up with a breakthrough idea after years of conducting audience surveys for stations throughout North America and the world.  Realizing that all images aren’t created equal, the Coleman team developed a unique tool that has provided incredible perspective for programmers, marketers, and managers. The Image Pyramid […]

It’s pretty amazing watching the results of Techsurvey11 rolling in.  Like the returns on election night, you can literally track the results as they come in and start the obligatory comparisons to the results from previous years. We’re not quite done yet, but with more than 36,000 in-tab interviews collected, you have a pretty good idea […]

You might not have known it from last night’s spectacular halftime performance in “The Big Game,” but Katy Perry has some major issues to sort through. So does Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, and Ariana Grande. (Maybe not Taylor Swift.) That’s because something statistically scary happened in 2014 that has never happened before since that advent of […]

You might not have known it from last night’s spectacular halftime performance in “The Big Game,” but Katy Perry has some major issues to sort through. So does Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, and Ariana Grande. (Maybe not Taylor Swift.) That’s because something statistically scary happened in 2014 that has never happened before since that advent of […]

Stories are memorable. Ratings – not so much. As the advertising world moves inexorably toward heavy reliance on metrics and ROI, what will separate the winners from the losers? With programmatic buying, why will we even need salespeople when computers are talking to computers? In fact, the most profitable media outlets will contain a combination of […]

Most radio companies are going through flattish times, but that is not the case for the automotive industry – radio’s top revenue category. Yes, most car companies are having record years as the recovery from the Great Recession continues. And the “connected car” revolution is projected to continue at high rates of speed.  eWeek is reporting […]

You can see it happening pretty much every day in the news – the automotive space is experiencing a renaissance largely due to its new love affair with technology and electronics. We’ve talked extensively on this blog about CES a couple weeks back. And last week, it was the North American International Auto Show – […]

Today’s blog post title is a twist on the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Obviously, that adage resonated with Frank Zappa, but today’s headline is more about how futility just might be the catalyst that spawns and motivates out-of-the-box thinking. In radio, the old pre-Internet rankings always showed the industry behind TV and print, […]

One of the great puzzles many local-minded stations have struggled to solve is how to effectively cover high school sports. The games represent incredible, hyper-local content that attract sponsors who want to be a part of them.  They can be an incredibly rich source of community involvement for stations in the Talk/Sports environment. The challenge […]

One of the great puzzles many local-minded stations have struggled to solve is how to effectively cover high school sports. The games represent incredible, hyper-local content that attract sponsors who want to be a part of them.  They can be an incredibly rich source of community involvement for stations in the Talk/Sports environment. The challenge […]

As we wandered around the Las Vegas Convention Center and other casino hotels featuring the latest and greatest in gadgets and innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, you couldn’t help but wonder if something was missing. Yes, the gadgetry and innovative devices were amazing this year as we chronicled last week in […]

How often has someone in the upper regions of corporate radio uttered (or at least thought) the title of today’s post? There have been all sorts of audio innovations over the past two decades that consumers now enjoy as a part of their entertainment experience.  Whether it was Pandora picking the next cool song, Shazam […]

As our media lives continue to evolve, we know the numbers for digital and social usage are off the charts.  But if you really want to get a sense for just how mind-boggling the stats are for the platforms, gadgets, and devices that we use, look no further than this link: WebpageFX – The Internet in Real Time Yes, […]

As the creation, exposure, and marketing of music continue to change at a very rapid rate, feel free to join me in lamenting the disappearance of the record album – and the art that accompanied it. Yes, vinyl is making a comeback as more people buy turntables and wander down to their basements to dig […]

Maybe you read the story about 12-year-old Cade Pope from Oklahoma who sent the same handwritten note to all 32 NFL franchises  – addressed to each team’s owner. His letter simply asked these captains of industry which pro team he should support. You can probably guess how this worked out. Young Cade did not receive a response […]

In yesterday’s post, we discussed how the evolution of digital media and technology may be altering the role that broadcast radio plays in the music discovery hierarchy. The spate of new options for consumers points to a familiar theme for this blog:  the media environment has been repopulated with many new digital channels that play a growing role […]

In last Wednesday’s post, we talked about how music performers are faced with difficult challenges and decisions over distribution and monetization.  We have used this space in past posts to discuss the way that digital data and consumption patterns are changing the relationship between artists and their music, and the fans that listen and purchase […]