The Jacobs Media Blog

Well, you may have been getting the kids ready for camp, starting your gardening/around the house projects, and shopping for Mother’s Day gifts. But the odds are also pretty good that you also watched online videos in May – and a lot of them.  According to comScore, Americans watched 12 billion (that’s with a "b") […]

Bill Jacobs weighs in on the implications of Internet usage surpassing time spent listening to the radio.  The Internet is indeed a runaway train. A recent study released by The Media Audit finalizes the inevitable – web usage has passed time spent with radio for the first time.  (TV still has the lead, but it’s […]

Trying to make sense of the digital transition is on everyone’s minds and plates these days.  What is the digital application?  And how can traditional radio stations figure out the best way to pull it off, utilizing existing content and smart digital tools? So at Summit 13 in Austin, we’re consulting with the doctor – […]

With all the talk about Jay Leno leaving, Conan O’Brien taking over, and Jimmy Fallon getting started, an interesting detail has been missed by many media observers.  Instead of simply throwing Fallon to the wolves on "Late Night" (remember how critics hated Conan at first), NBC will actually start his TV hosting career online in […]

We know a lot of radio broadcasters who are frustrated with their inability to effectively monetize their new digital offerings.  While some stations and clusters are making progress, it’s a process trying to move dollars over to digital. I recently participated in a fascinating day-long seminar with big players in newspapers, magazines, and television discussing […]

Today Keith Cunningham lets us know that conducting artist interviews can be fun, entertaining and informative for your listening audience. If you missed Rush’s recent interview and performance on The Colbert Report, you missed some very entertaining television.  You can watch it below, or visit Colbert’s site to see even more.  As you watch this, […]

In a story with resonance to those of us in radio, Nielsen has announced that it is dumping its phone-based sample for its paper diary samples, and is transitioning to a system that uses addresses instead. Why?  Because of the swift decline of TV homes provided by the landline telephone sample frame.  Nielsen indicates that […]

More than four years after Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" at Super Bowl XXXVIII (it was actually a great game, but only Patriots fans remember that part), a federal court has dismissed a fine against CBS.  So much for the FCC’s "take" on the incident, which even surveys at the time indicated was not a big […]

As we saw in Tech Poll IV, 84% of the entire sample say they’re planning on voting in the upcoming Presidential election.  That’s an amazing number, and while turnout will not be that high, the response is indicative of major league interest in the race and its impact on the country. Our recommendation to most […]

With all the research and web marketing flying into our email boxes every day, it’s no wonder we sometimes get confused.  Oftentimes, these news alerts seem to contradict one another.  It’s as bad as finding out that red wine is good for your heart one day, and will kill you the next. A case in […]

Paul Jacobs weighs in on how radio can use the digital space to better augment traditional on-air commercial inventory: As radio moves toward providing posting to advertisers, we can learn some lessons from how television is dealing with this situation.  ABC-TV has come up with a novel – and effective – method of providing advertisers […]

In most radio clusters these days, the poor guy in the production studio is a harried, hassled right-brainer with the thankless job of trying to crank out commercials for as many as 5 or 6 stations in the group.  It’s an impossible job, of course, and more often than not, the output is simply good […]

If you saw our "Bedroom Project" (Arbitron & Jacobs Media’s ethnographic study) at the NAB and also Jacobs Summit last fall, you know that one of the big headlines had to do with radio’s growing "location" problem.  As we saw with many of the young people in our survey, they often don’t have a radio […]

In today’s blog from Paul Jacobs, he advises radio about what it must do to increase revenue by focusing on new digital strategies: While radio revenue continues to struggle to stay even year-to-year, online expenditures by the auto companies are expected to rise more than 21% this year, surpassing $3 billion.  The Detroit 3 (they’re […]

Today we have a guest blog from Jacobs’ Digital Director Tim Davis, recounting his Disney experience: I recently had the pleasure of spending a few days in the wonderful world of Disney – Disney World to be precise. From beginning to end, it was a delight.  From the moment you arrive in Orlando and head […]

On Tuesday, USA Today featured several articles on HD Radio in both their Money and Life sections.  For a media moment, HD Radio appeared to be on an equal footing with iPods, hot new phones, and other media gadgets. But when you study the various articles, the source of the buzz is HD Radio content.  […]

Respected newspaper columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. recently had an epiphany about his business and the Internet.  In a revealing column, he essentially threw in the towel over the issue of saving the newspaper industry, and said "We must blow it up instead."  If that sounds a bit like Jason Calacanis' take on radio at our […]