The Jacobs Media Blog

Life has to be good for Pandora, right?  They are rapidly becoming one of the most popular web radio/music discovery services.  At roughly one million listeners daily, Pandora’s unique web vehicle for creating "radio stations" based on your taste in music is truly a breakthrough idea.  If you’ve never visited Pandora, it’s a simple and […]

Jacobs Media’s Keith Cunningham weighs in on what you can expect from Nikki Sixx at this year’s Jacobs Media Summit 13 in Austin, Texas: What Nikki Sixx knows about branding and the rock audience that you might not, is what we aim to find out when he joins us at Summit 13, on September 18th, […]

R&R sent me this year’s ballot for their annual awards.  First, congratulations to everyone who has been nominated this go-round. But here’s an observation about the Alternative awards:  To no one’s surprise, KROQ has been nominated as Station of the Year, and Kevin Weatherly is once again on the ballot for Program Director of the […]

As more PPM markets come online, we are all going to learn more about how our stations actually perform.  The July PPM data that was just released contains some interesting nuggets.  One is that 7% of Arbitron’s PPM panelists do at least some streaming (the lowest that number will ever be), but only a handful […]

At today’s Arbitron Consultant Fly-In, there is some great news about the "Cell Phone Only" conundrum.  Our Tech Poll back in ’05 brought the problem to light, and it has only intensified during the past few years, as more and more consumers – especially younger ones – dump their land lines in favor of cell […]

As more broadcasters struggle with "the digital thing," it becomes critical that there’s strategic vision in the boardroom.  There’s too much at stake, and too many silos demanding funding.  From where should radio’s investment in digital technology be siphoned?  At a time when stations are starving for promotion, marketing, and content dollars, how to best […]

It’s amazing how accurate a sample of 31 people can be.  The name of today’s entry is a quote from "The Bedroom Project" – and we were surprised to hear it back in February of last year. I frequently reference that ethnographic study in this blog, and recently, a JupiterResearch study confirms a key finding […]

In a new brief filed at the Supreme Court by some of the most influential people in broadcasting – Former FCC Chairmen Newton Minow and Mark Fowler, along with former FCC Commissioner Jim Quello – the FCC’s attack on indecency has been referred to as a "Victorian crusade."  Along with other top legal and regulatory […]

Just when you think the musicFIRST coalition couldn’t come up with more outrageous arguments, they use the Clear Channel $24 billion sale as a rationale to extract more money from the radio business. Their Executive Director, Doyle Bartlett, offers this original argument: "Without music, this deal would be impossible.  Without music, Clear Channel’s radio empire […]

AOL has released its fourth annual survey about email, and there’s a whole lot of addiction going on.  Nearly half of respondents say they’re hopelessly hooked on email (up from 15% a year ago).  One in five say they check email more than 10 times each day. How bad is it?  About a fifth say […]

Well, Jacobs Media, in cooperation with R&R, is asking that question in a different way at this year’s Summit 13 in Austin, on September 18th.  We’re assembling a group of nine industry luminaries to give us their best prescription of what radio needs to do during these challenging times.  We’ve put together a forum that […]

I’m writing this blog at 35,000 feet on a Northwest 757 heading to Seattle.  When I land, I’ll email it to the office, where it will be proofed and posted. In the not-so-distant future, I’ll be able to accomplish all of this from the plane.  That’s because Delta Airlines (which is buying Northwest) will have […]

  With less than 200 days until the television we know and love goes all-digital, it is becoming clear that the conversion campaign has worked.  Are there still older people who don’t get it and are panicked about the changeover?  Of course.  But in the main, the Digital Transition Coalition has done a masterful job […]

At the recent Arbitron Radio Advisory Council meetings in one of my favorite places on earth, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the RAC Chair Chuck DuCoty made some tough observations about the diary system. As we know, many markets will never see PPM, and many others won’t be metered for several years.  As DuCoty noted, diary sample […]

What does the presumptive Democratic nominee for President and the nation’s most successful Alternative station in the country have in common? They are both getting screwed by the companies that provide ratings to measure their relative competitive positions.  In Obama’s case, it’s all the pollsters that dutifully conduct survey after survey, providing the American public […]

Jacobs clients are well aware of our emphasis on at-work campaigns, starting with a vengeance after we read and absorbed that groundbreaking 1997 study from Arbitron and Edison that illustrated the large scope of listening at Rock stations.  More than a decade and scores of Workforce-type promotions later, the value of branding stations with a […]