The Jacobs Media Blog

Leave it to the geniuses who produce "Family Guy" to make the ultimate statement about the FCC and indecency (click to watch).  You have to love the way these guys push the envelope.

The Holy Grail… That’s how MTV’s Van Toffler refers to cell phones.  MTV now has access to one billion cell phones worldwide, allowing them to deliver all sorts of content to consumers.  Citing research conducted by MTV, Toffler notes that young people value their cell phones ahead of laptops, video game consoles, and MP3 players.  […]

One of the realities of this most recent March Madness season was the huge number of office workers spending time on office hi-speed Internet connections – doing just about anything online other than actually being productive.  Our Tech Poll II shows that 90% have access to hi-speed somewhere, so listening to streaming audio and video […]

I’ve just come back from viewing a perceptual study for WMMR/Philadelphia.  One of the more amazing findings in the research is the incredible popularity scores for afternoon drive legend, Pierre Robert.  Pierre has been on MMR since ’81, and at this point, could be phoning it in.  Yet, he stands above all others because of […]

Over the past several years during market visits and discussions with radio programmers and GMs, many have mentioned that they personally own stock in XM, Sirius, or both.  Why?  Because they secretly feel these new media companies are good investments, and they want to "hedge their bets." Against what?  The demise of commercial radio as […]

And then there’s the news that Clear Channel will introduce six regional news and talk channels for XM, including programming from their terrestrial stations, such as WLW and WSIX.  For one thing, this regional coverage would seem to go against the FCC grain of how satellite programming is supposed to work.  But more importantly, why […]

Over the past couple of weekends, I’ve been catching a variety of "March Madness" games on local sports-talk radio stations here in Detroit.  One thing that has jumped out at me is the number of commercials for satellite radio on these terrestrial stations’ radio networks.  Whether the pitch is a part of an appliance store […]

Your eyes do not deceive you.  The people of Kazakhstan may get passive measurement before U.S. radio stations do.  That’s the subject of a new press release from Arbitron, announcing their PPM technology will be used to measure Kazakhstan television, replacing their antiquated diary measurement. Not sure where Kazakhstan is located?  We’ve inserted this handy […]

Your eyes do not deceive you.  The people of Kazakhstan may get passive measurement before U.S. radio stations do.  That’s the subject of a new press release from Arbitron, announcing their PPM technology will be used to measure Kazakhstan television, replacing their antiquated diary measurement. Not sure where Kazakhstan is located?  We’ve inserted this handy […]

Unfortunately, FM radio hasn’t been getting a lot of positive feedback and word-of-mouth lately – especially Alternative stations.  That makes it even more special when a station – like KROX in Austin – starts receiving lots of e-mails like this one: Hey man,             I just wanted to say that I think […]

Cultural linguist and writer, William Safire, writes a weekly column for The New York Times Magazine each week that examines how the modern-day lexicon is ever-changing.  In a recent article, he examined the term "rock star" – now being used quite commonly to describe people in various fields who have emerged as true icons and […]

It’s been an interesting day, as both Media Audit and Arbitron are continuing the dialogue about the "Cell Phone Only" problem, brought to the surface once again by our recent Tech Web Poll. Both Media Audit and Arbitron are clearly addressing the problem in their passive measurement systems, and we applaud them both for recognizing […]

It’s been an interesting day, as both Media Audit and Arbitron are continuing the dialogue about the "Cell Phone Only" problem, brought to the surface once again by our recent Tech Web Poll. Both Media Audit and Arbitron are clearly addressing the problem in their passive measurement systems, and we applaud them both for recognizing […]

…They will hear it. We are in the process of compiling information from the reams of data being generated from our second annual Tech Poll (visit Jacobsmedia.com to see the first two reports on Howard Stern and Cell Phone Only Users).  This time, a record 79 Rock stations took part, and 25,000+ respondents participated. Among […]

As readers of this blog know, I stepped out in early February to talk about the Arctic Monkeys, a new Brit band that sounded exciting to me.  They were breaking sales records across the pond, I listened to the single and a couple of other tracks on their site and was impressed.  I liked the […]

As readers of this blog know, I stepped out in early February to talk about the Arctic Monkeys, a new Brit band that sounded exciting to me.  They were breaking sales records across the pond, I listened to the single and a couple of other tracks on their site and was impressed.  I liked the […]

Way back in August, Dave Beasing put out a great memo to Jacobs Media clients, urging stations to consider on-air and outside marketing campaigns that are listener-generated.  We’ve touched on this topic several times in this space as well. In the best spirit of NeoRadio, the idea was to engage the listeners to do some […]

At a time when some Alternative stations are being shut down, Tim Pohlman & Chris Maguire’s Riviera Broadcast Group did their homework and saw the opportunity for a new one in Vegas – and it’s generating quite a local buzz. Why? In true NeoRadio fashion, Area 108 is instilled with listener-generated values that had been […]

If you think the NBA is smart, keep in mind that brackets to pick hot babes is something we’ve been doing in radio for years.  For this March Madness season, the NBA is using online voting to help pick the best Dance Team.  Jacobs Media clients have used NCAA-style bracketing for everything from choosing the […]

As Matt Ragas, author of "The Power of Cult Branding," told us at the 2003 Jacobs Media Summit, cult brands are being formed every day.  In that speech, he pointed to Google as a great example.  In a recent New York Times feature article, Trader Joe’s has now entered cult brand status. Maybe it’s not […]