The Jacobs Media Blog

Yesterday, outgoing Seattle morning star Bob Rivers talked about his career path and his three families in what’s turned out to be a revealaing exit interview. Bob’s career exemplifies all those old school values – hard work, a belief in the team, a commitment to the community, and an understanding of what’s important. Of course, it wasn’t […]

Last week, another radio icon walked out of the studio for perhaps the last time.  Bob Rivers is hanging up his headphones, but plugging in his amp – lots of them – to tour with Heart By Heart – at least for now.  While some former radio stars go the podcasting or satellite radio route, […]

As radio competes with digital platforms for revenue, and as the agency community re-evaluates everything, a recent New York Times article about Facebook’s advertising efforts caught my attention. You may recall that when the Facebook IPO launched a little more than two years ago, there were serious questions about its ability to connect with consumers and successfully sell them products […]

Did NPR just disrupt itself? It’s always breathtaking when a megawatt brand has that realization that there’s an even greater opportunity beyond their core product – and has the (schweddy) cojones to act on it. We’ve seen Apple do this several times. They disrupted the iPod with the iPhone and then disrupted the iPhone with the […]

If you think the radio industry is at odds with itself at times, perhaps you can take solace in what the music business is experiencing. This hit home for me last week when Buffalo radio veteran, Jim Pastrick, referred me to an article in Forbes about how the music industry has been essentially trumped by the technology […]

As Lori and I make the final preparations for our Morning Show Boot Camp presentation later this week at Don Anthony’s historic conference, I can’t help but think about how the role of personalities in radio has changed over the past few decades. Our session for MSBC utilizes our ten years of Techsurveys to lay out […]

As smart as automakers are when it comes to marketing, they are frequently surprised by car sales demographics that often defy logic – or certainly go against the grain of why a model was designed in the first place. Consider this list of vehicles that represents the best sellers among a specific age group. So […]

No, today’s blog post title is not an oxymoron despite what you hear from naysayers in and out of the radio business.  But as an industry, I think we all can agree that when it comes to innovation, we could do more and we need to do better.  And that’s why today, Jacobs Media is introducing […]

In case you’re wondering, today’s blog post acronym means “What Would Anita Wadd Do?”  And if you don’t know, that was Lori Lewis’ air name when she was on the Bubba the Love Sponge Show back in the day.  Yes, it’s Throwback Thursday here on JacoBLOG, a perfect excuse to run this old picture of […]

You own a smartphone, you download apps, and your radio station may be very involved in the mobile ecosphere.  But a guy who lives this space every day of the week, jācapps’ COO Bob Kernan, brings a unique perspective to the conversation.  Recently, Bob celebrated his one year anniversary with the company, during which time he’s […]

If you’ve been following our Consumer Electronics Show and telematics conferences tours these past few years, you know the one thing we’ve learned about the “connected car” is that there’s no single pathway to success. The lack of standardization among the automakers and their suppliers was a big topic at DASH last October, because the many […]

More than a year ago, we ran a blog post called “Gone Mobile” that highlighted two photos taken from the same vantage point at St. Peters Square in the Vatican – taken eight years apart. It was a stark reminder about how much our world has been changed by the mobile movement in less than […]

So Al Yankovic’s newest effort, Mandatory Fun, is the #1 best-selling album in the country?  Wow.  Amazing.  Weird. Weird?  Not really. When you think about the state of the music industry and the rapid change in the ways that personality brands have the ability to market themselves, it’s not weird at all.  It makes all […]

That is the question, and one that Lori Lewis gets asked a lot. After all, stations are aggregating likes, followers, and connections at a rapid rate.  Why shouldn’t they monetize them? And in fact, there are ways to motivate and engage these socialized consumers.  But there are also downside risks that come into play as well, […]

Yesterday, Mike Stern wrote a guest post about “super consumers.”  The idea of focusing on hardcore P1s has been around for decades, but the advent of new media tools changes the conversation and the strategy.  This played out in a recent Nielsen Insights memo that talked about the value of finding and delighting these uber fans. And […]

Mike Stern has programmed lots of great radio stations in small markets and Top 5 metros alike.  No matter where you go, super fans – or as they are often called, “contest pigs” – are always part of the package.  In today’s guest post, Mike takes a look at how one consumer product has approached […]

An ongoing trend in social media is the realization that the free ride is, in fact, over.  Maybe it never truly existed, but like many things free, it felt pretty good for a while. Facebook, and then Twitter, convinced brands (or did brands convince themselves?) that for absolutely zero investment, they could build pages that […]

Last week, Dave Martin fired off a tweet featuring a cartoon created by the brilliant marketer, Tom Fishburne.  It depicts a corporate meeting that has the ring of truth for some of you who work for companies going through the difficult transition that has impacted the world of media over the last decade. The “low hanging fruit […]

Last week, I was reminded by Don Anthony that Steve Dahl’s famous “Disco Demolition” at Comiskey Park (in an aborted doubleheader with my Detroit Tigers) was celebrating its 35th anniversary. When you look back at this bombastic event, it doesn’t feel dated.  More to the point, it begs the question of why these over the […]