The Jacobs Media Blog

As we head into the final leg of the Presidential campaign and the first debate tomorrow night, the topic of how a music station should be dealing with this contentious historical event is front and center. Morning shows have to talk about the election, the debates, the mud, the advertising, the polls, and the gossip.  […]

So it took just a couple days after that Monday Night Football debacle, but the NFL and the referees quickly got back together and solved their problems in record time.  And the zebras even got standing ovations over the weekend. The interesting aspect of this labor strife getting solved after some gnarly exhibition games and […]

Yesterday, we highlighted NPR’s Kinsey Wilson (at left) and American Public Media’s Dave Kansas (below right), both of whom were featured panelists at a Public Radio Program Directors session moderated by NHPR’s Virginia Prescott in Las Vegas a couple of weeks back. Today, I’d like to focus on two big topics from that session:  new […]

In a panel at “The Radio Show” last week about mobile apps, moderator Steve Goldstein asked a question about podcasting and who is doing a good job in this area.  Noting that NPR and public radio have excelled in the space, he wondered whether commercial radio has experienced similar success. And Steve’s question speaks volumes about […]

So football fans everywhere are up in arms about these replacement officials.  And our Ralph Cipolla – Bills devotee extraordinaire – is no exception.  (Lori Lewis is still in mourning over Monday’s night’s Packers loss.)  Today, Ralph finds a way to analogize these stand-in officials with a more common occurrence in radio. Game on. When […]

One of the more disappointing aspects of the Presidential campaign is that radio has somehow gotten the short end of the political advertising stick.  As the two candidates have amassed unthinkable sums of money to focus on this last leg of the race, most of those dollars will go right into television in swing states. […]

It was another Radio Show, and another speech by the NAB’s CEO Gordon Smith about the necessity for an FM chip in cell phones.  As he told the assembled masses at the Anatole: And in this corner, it’s Gary Shapiro, the head honcho of the Consumer Electronics Association who recently wrote this in an op/ed piece: […]

It’s amazing to watch the frenzy around iPhone 5.  Even though some tech pundits and geeks have essentially written that it’s not a breakthrough device for Apple, early sales figures are through the roof.  In the first 24 hours it was available, Apple had booked 2 million orders for its new technological wonder. It’s in […]

Seth Godin has done it again. He has boiled down success to choosing among six different constituencies, making the point that successful organizations can be focused on any of the following groups (and this is a partial list): the sales force the stock market potential new customers existing customers employees or the regulators While he lets […]

We saw indications of this in our Techsurvey8.  Now, our new public radio version of our trended tech surveys is out, and PRTS4 reveals the same finding about Twitter. While Facebook and LinkedIn dominate in the world of public (and commercial) radio, Twitter is growing fast – up 57% from PRTS3’s results back in late […]

Since we hired Lori Lewis to handle our social media strategy at Jacobs Media, some friends and colleagues have asked us about why we need this position?  In essence, what does Lori do for stations? Most people “get it,” especially those who have met and worked with her.  But sometimes there’s a sense that because social media […]

In the wake of the Facebook IPO debacle, a lot has been written about Mark Zuckerberg’s philosophy, “The Hacker Way.”  Lori Lewis uses it extensively in her talks and presentations because it represents insights into the way the Facebook platform is constructed. The idea behind “The Hacker Way” revolves around Facebook’s goal of accomplishing social good […]

It was not an unfamiliar scene for me – flying at 35,000 feet.  In this case, I was on my way to Las Vegas for the PRPD Conference on yet another Delta flight out of Detroit. During the taxiing, I finished my New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.  So I reached into […]

Our Director of Digital, Tim Davis, was riveted to Apple’s big announcement yesterday.  Here’s his “take” on what is looking to be an exciting end of the year for technology, media, and audio. Some of the most anticipated tech news of the year focused on yesterday’s announcement of the iPhone 5 with its faster processor, […]

There’s a thought permeating the world of traditional media that there are very few success stories for traditional brands that have made the turn to digital. As old and new media companies struggle at times to “monetize” their audiences, the thinking is that the value of old-line brands have diminished as consumers flock around modern-day phenomena like […]

The news that troubled Best Buy has a new CEO who is heralded as a “turnaround specialist” comes as no shock.  The company is in a heap of trouble for many reasons – competition from brands like Amazon as well as corporate leadership that has at best been questionable. So Hubert Joly, a French executive, will […]

So the big buzz in radio late last week was this rumor that Apple is moving to get into the streaming radio business.  Whether this happens with the release of the iPhone 5, it occurs later in the year, or never at all, shouldn’t change the game for traditional radio broadcasters. Here’s why… Pandora has clearly done […]

Recently, we wrote a post about music discovery focused on a Nielsen 360 study that showed radio’s ongoing value to artist and song exposure. Many noted the finding that teens have gravitated to YouTube.  I saw this in my own home several years ago when I watched my son moving off of iTunes and banging away at YouTube […]

We received many comments about Tuesday’s post – “Spineless Maggot” – that talked about the importance of DJs and station staffers stepping it up and providing more value to their stations.  A frequent topic in this blog is “indispensability,” a concept popularized by Seth Godin in Linchpin. Researcher, futurist, and radio vet John Parikhal submitted […]