The Jacobs Media Blog

A few weeks back, we ran a post about the slow death of the request line.  Our Techsurvey8 study reveals that among the many digital conduits – email, Facebook, text, etc. – that listeners use to stay in touch with radio, the lowly request or studio line has become a very tertiary communications mode. Nonetheless, I […]

Lori Lewis wrote a great column this week for “Merge” that appears in All Access.  We’ve excerpted her story to run as today’s JacoBLOG post.  It’s all about harnessing the power of social media for music brands – and the analogies to radio are obvious. As we know by now, social platforms give brands opportunities to connect […]

Radio folks are among the most social people I’ve ever met.  They love to hang out, party, enjoy music, movies, and sports.  And because being on the air and programming combines sociology, psychology, and pop culture, most programmers and DJs are pretty good at reading other people – what they think, what they want, and […]

You have to love those Silicon Alley Insiders.  Every day, they send out a cool chart that helps put our media lives in perspective. The other day, the graph du jour showed the fastest growing app categories, and you’ll be gratified to learn that music-centric apps are among the biggest winners. This is especially important when […]

KPCB’s Mary Meeker is an analyst that makes the best use of PowerPoint of  anyone I’ve ever seen to explain what is happening in our media world.  Thanks to Business Insider’s Silicon Alley Insider Chart of the Day, the slide below tells an amazing – but illogical – story about media spending and where it’s […]

The deteriorating relationship between radio and the music industry during the past several years has been a mystery to me.  We used to refer to it as symbiotic, but psychotic might be the better term. Seldom have there been two major entertainment entities that have needed each other more than radio and, well, records.  Yet, […]

I’ve been to a number of these Convergence conferences put together by Eric Rhoads and the Radio Ink team.  From Deborah Parenti to Ed Ryan to Lois Chooljian, these events are always on-point, fresh, and seamless. This year was no different, and while I was only able to attend the first day, I kept wishing that […]

Who’s the most local of them all?  And does local even matter? That’s a good question as many in radio rapidly move to a more syndicated model, featuring national entertainment and information.  The rationale, of course, is that great entertainment works whether it comes from your hometown, Hollywood, or New York City. And while that’s […]

We have two dogs – a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who is fun and frisky, and a big brown bear-like mutt that we refer to us as our “rescue dog.”  Koko was found tied up outside one of the local humane societies, and she instantly became a fixture in our home. I wish there was a way […]

“Slow down, you move too fast.” – Paul Simon from “The 59th St. Bridge Song” We are all doing too much, too many things, and way too fast for our own good.  As studies are now beginning to tell us (as we read them on our iPads while we’re texting on our phones and watching […]

This post has taken a circuitous route. It started with a tweet from social media guy C.C. Chapman with a link to an Inc.com article, “6 Habits of Truly Memorable People.” I read it, enjoyed it, and retweeted it. A couple days later, the always charming Angela Perelli retweeted my little message, indicating her high […]

The RAB recently told us something that just about everyone already knows – the up arrows for revenue generation for radio are in digital dollars.  Now to make sure you didn’t miss it, I have literally framed it up for you: Now I know there have been other big stories this week that may have captured your […]

In radio, we are beginning to see more stations and personalities “get” the power of visuals.  The popularity of channels like Instagram and Pinterest, along with the changing nature of Facebook through “Timeline” is cementing this idea. For radio people, however, this is something of a leap.  That’s largely because most of us were brought up […]

Please take the time to remember those who have served and those who continue to serve our country.  Wishing everyone a safe weekend.  We will be back on Tuesday with a new post.

As regular readers of this blog know, Pandora has been a hot topic for the past few years.  In our new Techsurvey8, we included several Pandora questions that attempted to get to the heart of the real issues for broadcasters and pure plays alike – and what it all means to the people who count […]

I was being interviewed the other day about what else?  Best practices in social media for radio. And the question revolved around an old theme – ROI.  It seems that in these times of rapidly depleting resources – human and financial – the same questions continue to be asked about whether social media has definable, […]

So a couple of weeks ago, I gave a well-deserved shout-out to my alma mater, Michigan State University. This week, it’s my “other alma mater,” the University of Michigan, where I received a Bachelor’s of General Studies degree back in the early ‘70s.  (You can look it up, Yahoo board – it’s a fact.) It […]

OK, so the IPO got off to a rocky start, but the Facebook viability debate rages on.  A recent feature on NPR’s cool Planet Money series, “For $75, This Guy Will Sell You 1,000 Facebook ‘Likes’” typifies the challenge that Internet mega-players like Facebook have in their efforts to portray themselves as a credible advertising vehicles. One […]

Sometimes I am guilty of thinking about actors as the roles they became famous for.  It was hard not to think Archie Bunker when Carroll O’Conner showed up on screen.  Same with Jim Nabors on Gomer Pyle, Michael Richards as Kramer, or James Gandolfini who simply was Tony Soprano. And for Ashton Kutcher, I suppose I’ll always […]