The Jacobs Media Blog

As I write this blog on June 15th, the Detroit Tigers have just won their 43rd game of the 2006 season.  Big deal, right?  Well, it so happens the Tigers are in first place in the AL Central, and own the best record in Major League Baseball. But that’s not why this odd milestone in […]

In the week when Paul McCartney turns 64 years-old (June 18th), it’s announced that Signatures Network has just inked a licensing and branding deal with the guys who own the Woodstock name.  Translation:  look for branded Woodstock merchandise; everything from clothing, sportswear, accessories, and even home decor.  They’re targeting Boomers who lived in the midst […]

We’ve been on the streaming bandwagon for years.  Yesterday, the key streaming data from the 2006 Jacobs Media Technology Web Poll was released, and it looks good.  My favorite chart is the one below, which shows that "streamies" are spending more time on their P1 stations’ sites than Internet sources like AOL Radio. Why the […]

The research is in.  The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that the Ford Taurus is the least stolen car in America.  Now if you drive one of these cars, you’re happy.  You’ve bought a vehicle so bland that not even thieves want them in their driveways. But if you’re the Ford Motor Company, you […]

A number of years ago, we coined the phrase, "Retail Radio," a consultantese rip of "Retail Politics" – the fine art of working the streets to win votes.  As we learned from Edison’s Larry Rosin, the results of political races are often determined by a factor as simple as whether voters meet a candidate in […]

Yes, you’re reading that number correctly.  According to Agence France-Presse, one billion people have Internet access worldwide, and of them, a quarter has broadband connections. This only reinforces the notion that with all these Internet surfers, all those iPods being sold, and everyone checking sports scores and stock prices on their cell phones, how can […]

It is amazing to watch radio adapt to change, especially as it concerns integrating technology into radio stations that used to think about equipment upgrades as buying new CD players for the studio. And as technology moves at a breakneck pace, it’s interesting to note how our vision about the future has changed – quickly.  […]

As many of you know, ours is a unique perspective on the radio business.  While not technically working for anybody, we essentially work for just about everybody.  As they say, we could write a book.  But there wouldn’t be a lot of readers.  Hence, this blog.  So as we near the halfway point of this […]

From the "Cell Phone Only File" comes a report that more and more colleges are yanking landlines out of dormitories.  Why?  Because nine of ten students have cell phones, making landlines superfluous. According to reports, most colleges are considering saving the money they spend on landlines and investing it in other technologies.  Case in point […]

Today we welcome Beau Phillips with a guest blog talking about how he pulled together WFNX’s and Snapple’s "Summer Free For All." After years of living and breathing radio, I now represent advertisers.  Let me share what I hear from them:  The clutter is brutal.  If "less is more," you can’t tell by listening to […]

In one of those less-publicized findings from our Technology Poll, we learned more about the power of radio to expose new music to its audiences.  Overall, more than half say they hear about new music first on FM radio stations.  While that’s #1 with a bullet, as we used to say, we don’t know whether […]

Joining us for a guest blog today is Jacobs Media’s Keith Cunningham: After reading Russell Smith’s Globeandmail.com column “Hyped about Hyperreal,” (paid subscription required) allow us to introduce you to the new term that may be buzzing soon, “Hyperreal.”  It’s the combination of hyper and real and it’s being used to describe the next wave […]

You have to admire those execs at Turner Classic Movies.  They realize that Cary Grant and Fred Astaire aren’t going to deliver advertiser-friendly demos.  And if they don’t do something to broaden their reach, they’ll end up like…WCBS-FM. So, give them some credit for trying something different.  They’re using late night hours to bring in […]

Many of you have read the recent Pew study about "cell phone onlies" versus those with landlines.  Depending on who you talk to, this study may confirm Arbitron’s conclusion that CPOs aren’t all that different from everyone else, and that once you apply "weighting," the differences become even less significant. Of course, we beg to […]

If you were a reader of Superman comics back in the day, you may remember an odd spinoff character, Bizarro.  Created by Superman’s nemesis, Lex Luthor, Bizarro was a flawed copy of the Man of Steel who did everything…. well, oddly.  There was even a Bizarro World, a planet where everything worked opposite of how […]