How The "Ballmer Bonanza" Can Change NPR (And Public Radio) If you won the lotto, would you immediately have a plan in place about how you'd save, spend, and invest those millions? That's not unlike the situation now facing NPR after receiving a $113 million g...

What would you do if your station was gifted ONE (hundred thirteen) MILLION DOLLARS? jacobsmedia.com/how-the-balm...

Can Radio Ever Play A Major Role Again In New Music Discovery? New music discovery, once a radio mainstay, has now been fragmented across thousands of entertainment brands all over the Internet. And now an airline has jumped on the new music bandwagon, begging th...

Showcasing local artists isn’t going to change the Internet or radio’s trajectories, but it can strengthen broadcasters’ connections to local communities.

jacobsmedia.com/can-radio-ev...

Your Number's Up The saga of a song about chasing an elusive girl, trying to get her phone number, is one of those iconic "stories behind the song." In this case, it's a one-hit wonder released 45 years ago that has b...

Something you can hold on to jacobsmedia.com/your-numbers...

Working On A Radio Mystery Most radio talent do their best to expose their brand to the widest listening audience possible through personal appearances, charity and community work, and creating highly visibl profiles all over s...

The mysterious machismo of masked makers and MCs jacobsmedia.com/working-on-a...

Local Doesn't Scale This will come as no surprise to many of you—especially you avid JacoBLOG readers—but I've been on a "local kick" lately.

“At the local level, publishers need to move beyond tech platforms, which were never their friends, and serve their communities." jacobsmedia.com/local-doesnt...

The Politics Of...Everything It may not be a favorite topic, but much like death and taxes, politics is becoming unavoidable. The events of the past decade and the last year have crystalized its seismic impact. As radio continues...

We've learned that even many self-described “news junkies” say they need “a break from the news.” But the real damage is impacting specific demographics. jacobsmedia.com/the-politics...

Would Warren Buffett Invest In Your Radio Company? You can learn a lot about business trends by studying the smartest players in the investment community. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made a $300 million play in a certain media company stock. W...

Would the "Oracle" open his wallet for you? jacobsmedia.com/would-warren...

"Understanding audience nuance is a full-time job." Broadcasters are solving this by giving consumers more choices in unique ways. jacobsmedia.com/afternoon-de...

Something Hopeful Today's blog post marks the last new entry of 2025. Today's message is a positive, hopeful one for radio broadcasters.

Getting in the right mindset for a successful 2026... jacobsmedia.com/something-ho...

Do Famous Deaths Really Come In Threes? Last week marked another of those odd phenomena where three iconic media/music celebrities made their exits from this world within days of one another. You might say it was a coincidence except these ...

A tribute to three amazing humans jacobsmedia.com/do-famous-de...

Why Radio Needs To Follow The Crowd Industrious radio stations in 2025 look for opportunities to connect with fans cost effectively. Thanks to new research data, we have the beginnings of a road map designed to help stations better prom...

A key finding is that a sizable percentage of core listeners want to see their favorite station more visible in town: jacobsmedia.com/why-radio-ne...

What IS NPR Thinking? 2025 is proving to be a difficult year for radio, but for public radio, it's been more of a nightmare. Caught in the crosshairs is NPR, once the gold standard of radio programming and content, but now...

The hard questions about NPR’s future
jacobsmedia.com/what-is-npr-...

Welcome to Bro Radio As analysts continue to break down what happened in the 2024 election, the "bro vote" is often attributed to swinging the results in the red direction. And in the world of old and new media, these now...

Can young men listen to the radio and still find the music, voices, and moments that feel relevant, cool, and worth talking about the next day? jacobsmedia.com/welcome-to-b...

Radio's #1 Challenge For 2025? 1A It may feel like business as usual in radio as Q2 results are being released. But after last month's "claw back" of public radio funds, and the subsequent shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadc...

Why the CPB/Public Media cuts are bad for the entire radio industry jacobsmedia.com/radios-1-cha...

The Receptionist Over the weekend, the radio community lost another icon. But I can guarantee none of you reading this post ever had the opportunity to work or hang out with her. Loni Anderson, "WKRP in Cincinnati's" ...

A tribute to Loni Anderson, who played WKRP's receptionist Jennifer Marlowe, a woman who directed the room, calibrated the tone, and ran the radio station with the arch of an eyebrow. jacobsmedia.com/the-receptio...

For Radio, Do All Roads Leads To LOCAL? More media brands across the spectrum are investing and engaging in what I call "the local opportunity." But in radio, there's a greater likelihood we're still debating the value of "being local" or t...

There's one concept a former MTV VJ, Christian radio stations, and a local TV station are embracing. jacobsmedia.com/for-radio-do...

Radio's Rising Costs Of Burned-Out Employees Wearing All Those "Hats" During this economically unstable period in time, many companies are struggling to figure out what's most important. One variable that often is ignored is employee burnout. And much of it is caused by...

Could employee burnout be costing your company? The stats behind the theory. jacobsmedia.com/radios-risin...

Radio And The Power Of The Parasocial Seemingly every day in the trades we read about research studies trying to prove the value and impact of broadcast radio. In today's post, ironically, it's the research maven with a "real-life story a...

A success story that should be in radio's political deck in 2028. jacobsmedia.com/radio-and-th...

Want To Watch Videos On Your Apple CarPlay? Buy An Aston Martin When you consider how media platforms have evolved over the past couple decades, the one that has perhaps moved at the highest rate of speed is dashboard entertainment. As radio's #1 listening locatio...

A "Radio" button on Apple CarPlay -- that actually connects to a broadcast tuner?

jacobsmedia.com/want-to-watc...

Father Of Mine Father's Day 2025 is now in the books. But in todwy's post, I get a bit personal, talking about my DAD, the guy who had so much influence over me and my brothers, our careers, and our lives. Fathers a...

Guess who called the Detroit Tigers' manager at Yankee Stadium to give coaching advice? jacobsmedia.com/father-of-mi...

The Highest IQ? AI Or A DJ? The growing number of AI platforms in the wild are learning as you read today's JacoBLOG post. And yet, you might be surprised to learn the average IQ scores many AI models actually have. In fact, man...

Are you smarter than an AI bot?

jacobsmedia.com/the-highest-...

Who's Got It Better? Talent In Commercial Radio vs. Talent in Christian Music Radio Today's post picks up where yesterday's left off. It was all about our new air talent study presented at the Christian Music Broadcasters' Momentum 25 conference last week. On-Air Pulse takes a deep dive into the brains of Christian radio talent in the U.S. And in today's post, I'll A/B it with our most recent commercial radio talent survey, AQ6. So, grab a cup of coffee (and you're excused if you want something a little stronger), click READ MORE below, and let's go.

A Christian radio DJ. A commercial radio DJ. Their opinions about the industry differ quite dramatically. jacobsmedia.com/whos-got-it-...

It's The Christian (Radio) Thing To Do I'm back from Momentum 25, the annual conference put on by the Christian Music Broadcasters. As is the case year after year, 700 attendees made the trek to steamy Orlando to learn, share, commune, wor...

Why is Christian radio in growth mode? jacobsmedia.com/its-the-chri...

Is It Time For Radio to WAKE UP?! For a half century, I've conducted research designed to better understand the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of the radio listening audience. Some studies address highly complex questions where...

What time is your station's morning show "at full function" and is that too late? Edison research has the answers. jacobsmedia.com/is-it-time-f...

Turn Up The Radio (If You Can Find It) A major focus for broadcassters these past two years has been the long-awaited legislation to lock in AM radios in every U.S. manufactured car. But these days, that story is just the tip of the iceber...

Is the automobile-radio marriage on the rocks? jacobsmedia.com/turn-up-the-...

Who At Your Station Would The Audience Like To Have A Beer With? Thinking about your radio station or the ones you've worked for in the past, the truly great, successful ones very likely had a "standard bearer," that one personality who stood out above the pack. In...

Every station needs that one on-air personality who feels like a buddy you’d grab a beer with—because that’s who listeners actually connect with.

jacobsmedia.com/who-at-your-...

Lessons For Radio From The Recent Google Home Outage Have you heard about the Google Home glitch that prevented most radio streams working - for weeks? Neither had I until consultant James Cridland surfaced the problem in his "Radioland" newsletter over...

What is your company's protocol to ensure all of your digital platforms are working? How would you know if one is down? jacobsmedia.com/lessons-for-...

"It Was The Dumbest Contest In Radio History" In an overloaded competitive media environment, it is especially challenging for any local radio station to stand out and get noticed. And that brings me to perhaps my most rewarding consulting experi...

Did you hear the one about the worst radio promotion ever? (This is not made up) jacobsmedia.com/it-was-the-d...

5 Lessons For Radio From The Apple Watch This spring, Apple's Watch - now the most successful tech wearable in the world - celebrated its 10th anniversary. Like so many digital innovations, Watch has already had several iterations, but none ...

The Apple Watch is now 10 (!) years old, but it wasn't a slam dunk. There are lessons radio can learn from the watch's evolution from meh to must-have. jacobsmedia.com/the-apple-wa...

The Exponential Value of Nurturing Radio Superfans Across the World Wide Web, it has become more and more valuable to focus on core fans rather than a broader group of more casual users. And now a new research study amplifies the value of "superfans,"...

"It is of critical importance to understand what your core fans are doing when they’re not listening to the radio. And it’s especially valuable to know where they are" jacobsmedia.com/the-exponent...