Fred Jacobs: Survey Says...

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound of podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
Fred Jacobs has been consulting radio stations for over 40 years. If you ask them, it's been the last 10 years that have been the most interesting. The two things I really like about what they do at Jacobs media is Fred's blog, which arrives in my inbox daily. Generally, the subject matter is something I haven't considered or am in the process of trying to figure out. The other offering is largely free, and that's the research and surveys they do annually, including two which we're going to focus on today, tech survey, which has been going since 2004 and surveys, p1 radio listeners through radio station databases, if your station would like to participate this year, there's a link in the show notes. The other one, which I find fascinating is the AQ study, which is all about on air personalities. It's unveiled annually at Morning Show boot camp. Both of these are great studies. One gives a look inside the radio station, and the other outside the radio station. With all that said, I somehow found it necessary to talk about Fred's recent decision to back away from the social media platform X and marvel at the success of those Detroit Lions. And now Fred Jacobs joins me from Bingham Farms, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. Fred, it's good to see you again.

Fred Jacobs  1:27  
Good to see you. Matt, how you be.

Matt Cundill  1:30  
Things are so different now in the world, I'm taking a look at the NFL standings, and there are the Detroit Lions who will not ruin Thanksgiving this year. Doesn't

Fred Jacobs  1:39  
that tell you that the world has changed in ways that we never could have envisioned. It's crazy. You know, when I sit down to watch a Lions game. I mean, I think everybody probably knows I'm from Detroit, and was born and raised there, but we don't know what to do with our emotions, honestly. I mean, we we don't know how to cope with this kind of team. I mean, they're not just competitive, they're dominant, and it's just off the charts. Weird. Great.

Matt Cundill  2:08  
So glad that I don't have to spend Thanksgiving getting on x and complaining about the Detroit Lions and then in the process, hurting your feelings. And for two reasons. One, Detroit is good, but also, you've made a departure from x

Fred Jacobs  2:23  
Yes, I have. I won't even have to read whatever insults are there. But yeah, after much consternation, really, over the past year or so, I finally reached my breaking point, I guess, and pulled off the thing. And honestly, my life hasn't changed in iota. I don't understand algorithms, and don't pretend to. Clearly the algorithm changed on that thing. I mean, all I was seeing when I opened Twitter X was Elon Musk's stuff. So, you know, there was clearly that, but the other side was that I really felt it was not having much of an effect on our blog in terms of views and stuff like it used to. I mean, Twitter used to be a really effective way of marketing the blog, and truth be told, it was my favorite social media platform. I got on in 2008 I had a mass more than 10,000 followers. And, you know, to my knowledge, they were all real people. And yeah, it's just a shame. I miss it, but I don't miss what it's become. I miss what it was.

Matt Cundill  3:38  
I think if Twitter were a radio station, it would be cluttered, a terrible listen. There'd be too many commercials, too many pitches, a lot of yelling and screaming, too many callers on the air, and eventually, I think the audience has left. At least for me, my audience I feel is leaving or has left.

Fred Jacobs  3:59  
Well, you know, I mean not to get too in the weeds on this. But I think when a brand loses sight of why people are there to begin with, what it is they want to get out of it. And when a brand, or more to the point, I guess it's leadership, just doesn't really understand why people were there in the first place. It's, it's a shame. But every brand has its life cycle, and the really great ones find a way to, you know, we see this in radio. I mean, there are some stations that have survived multiple ownership changes, and yet there's still the essence of what they were at the beginning, it is very difficult to do that, but it can be done. And I think Twitter sadly lost that. So I'm on blue sky.

Matt Cundill  4:52  
I am too. I'm enjoying it so far. If you can, by the way, attach your domain. That was a tip that I got. Oh,

Fred Jacobs  4:59  
that's a good one. Yep, thank you. Take it back

Matt Cundill  5:01  
to San Diego in the summertime. AQ six, one of my favorite studies that you put out. You go to Morning Show boot camp, and you present this big study to air personalities, about air personalities, and there's new questions every year. How was it received? Were people paying complete attention to this like no other.

Fred Jacobs  5:22  
Yes, this is the best presentation I make all year, not because of what I do, but because of the people in the audience. I mean, you know, there's 500 posts and few producers and people like that, and they are not on their phones. They are taking notes wrapped attention. I mean, this is their lives. They're looking at on pie charts and stuff, and they take it really seriously, and they're engaged, and the questions are excellent. So I know I'm hitting goal from the standpoint of giving them something that has value to them. You know, the overall trends on the thing are kind of grim. But, you know, the whole state of the world for air talent is obviously gone through massive change in the past few years, even since we've been doing these studies since 2018 so, you know, it's a different world out there, and I'm just trying to give them the information that they need in order to better understand what the conditions are around them. But you know also that security that comes with knowing, hey, I'm not the only one going through this or feeling this way or that type of thing, and we know emotionally, how valuable that is. So I would love to tell you, there's a whole lot of profound brand new findings from this year's study. Unfortunately, it just keeps tracking the way it's been tracking the last few years. It's tough out there.

Matt Cundill  7:01  
Yeah. So one of my favorite graphs is the one that goes back to 2018 when people said, Oh, we really come to radio stations for personalities first and then music second. That was the year of the intersection, when the personalities went ahead of music, and it's still that way. However, I think the one thing you pointed out was it hasn't moved since 2018 it's 61% of radio listeners who come back and say, I come to my favorite radio station for personalities, but yet

Fred Jacobs  7:27  
it hasn't moved no and, you know, we don't actually have the exact connective tissue there to go. Ah, here's why. So we can only speculate, but I think some of the speculation that we've come to is probably pretty accurate. I mean, we're seeing more people complain that my favorite personalities are no longer with the station that I listened to or listened to, or I don't have a favorite personality out there. So I think some of this has kind of been expected in terms of the overall environment for air personalities has clearly deteriorated, and I think there's a certain number of listeners who are feeling that. I mean, how many times can you say goodbye to a beloved personality before you, you realize, Hey, what the heck is going on with the radio industry? Why do they keep getting rid of people I love? So there's that. And you know, one of the areas that I've been critical of with broadcast radio companies, and obviously I'm not winning this argument, but I understand why there needs to be cuts, and our company has been victimized by them, too, more than you know. But my advice to a broadcast leader, if they ask for it, is find a way, if you can, to cut people who are not audience facing. So that would be maybe sales managers or back end people at the station. I mean, you hate to make these decisions. It could be the promotion budget, it could be the consultant, but I think when you're blowing out afternoon jocks or entire morning shows or that kind of thing, eventually the effects are going to be felt by the rank and file listenership. And I think that's part of what is going on there. Matt, why we're kind of stuck. You know, right around 60% it should in a perfect world, it should be going up, but this is not a perfect world.

Matt Cundill  9:39  
Very difficult to move all these numbers when we have all this churn in talent, and I think that's also going to be the same when we talk about the number of women who are in radio. We flag this at every conference. We'd like to see the numbers go up. Yet in the last three surveys that you've done, the numbers really haven't changed in terms of proportion. Of women versus men in radio

Fred Jacobs  10:03  
No. And until, I mean what I have come to believe, and I've had a number of people talk to me about this as well to educate me, particularly women, but until there are more women program directors, there really aren't going to be demonstrably more women air personalities. And I think that's absolutely true. It's a different mindset. It's a different priority. Men think about things differently. You know, the other thing that is pretty identical isn't just there's the same percentage of women on the air and radio as there was six years ago, but men are so much more likely to believe that women have as good a chance to succeed on the air as men and women obviously feel very differently about that, and that isn't moving at all either. So it's kind of like one of these situations where we're aware there's a problem, and I think many people in the industry would acknowledge there's a problem, but it's not getting fixed. It's not getting solved. And I honestly believe radio would be a better place with more women running stations and more women on the air. I think we would sound more like the country, or countries as the case may be, because your country is probably not dissimilar from mine.

Matt Cundill  11:27  
No, correct. We are not, by the way. Thank you for reminding me of that slide. That was a slide that I just came back to me now, when I think back to the presentation of, you know, men not identifying that, you know, there's a problem as much as women. And I thought, Well, why is that? And it sounds to me like that's a communication thing inside the corporate structure, or the radio station altogether, where not everybody is, you know, sharing the problem.

Fred Jacobs  11:54  
You know, I was that guy. I mean, I was that program director. You know, I was taught by somebody at some early point that you don't want women back to back on the air, and that you don't want women artists to play back to back on the air. And honestly, I don't think I ever pushed back on that, certainly in the early years. I just accepted that is another rule of the radio road. And you know, when that kind of mindset, that kind of philosophy, is handed down over the years to generations of program directors, it just becomes the way it is. And that's the problem, at least a big part of it. So it really took some time for me to be enlightened, and I don't think that happened until I was at a fairly ripe old age. I mean, I'm even riper now, but it took a while for me to see that. It really wasn't until we started doing these AQ studies that some of this really became of importance to me, or at least strong awareness to me so and I like to think of myself as being open minded and fair minded and all of that. And look how long it took me. So you can only imagine where we actually are as an industry. And unfortunately, the study backs that,

Speaker 1  13:17  
speaking from my own personal experience, when I worked at chorus in 2012 there were probably about 25 or 30 program directors. Only one was female. That's recent. So this is, this is not ancient history.

Fred Jacobs  13:31  
No, it's not. And I'm in rooms today like that, where we are invited to speak to a group. And yeah, there's 25 men in the room and one or two women, and that's kind of the way it is. And again, everybody in the room acknowledges, but it doesn't change. And you would think, I mean, I don't know the Canadian landscape, obviously, like I do the American landscape, but we have a lot of women in the C suite here in the US, in a number of cases, CEOs of their companies. And yet, even many of them have not been successful or effective of kind of changing the equation. And I think in a lot of cases, it's not because they don't want to. So I think, yeah, a lot of the stuff is really ingrained. You know, like any kind of heritage beliefs are, and it takes a lot of work to really shake those biases. But if we want our business to change and be more relevant to more people, I think this is one of those areas where we're consistently dropping the ball.

Matt Cundill  14:43  
Another thing that came up that I thought, oh, that's, yeah, I get that. That's fairly typical. And that was that the morning show would have a Gen X male and then a millennial woman. That's what I hear. Well, here

Fred Jacobs  14:54  
we go. I mean, you know, it is very much role playing. And. It's not just radio. I mean, you look at television broadcasts and it's a male anchor and a female anchor, and usually he is older, although they are effectively sweeping out all the old people from TV because they're making too much money. And so we can bring in millennials to be on the anchor set and pay them a third of the amount that we were paying the old guys. But, yeah, I mean, you know, there's all these cliche roles in entertainment. I mean, look even, look at the late night talk shows. I mean, it's a guy, he's sitting behind a desk. There's two chairs off to his right. I mean, even the angle is the same. So we're all creatures of our media environments. I mean, it's not just radio. We're all kind of stuck in convention. It's just, I think we're at a point now where a lot of the old beliefs, I think, are really kind of rising up and making it pretty obvious that they are out of touch, they are no longer relevant, and we need to rethink a lot of things. So hopefully we do and

Matt Cundill  16:07  
that also came out of the study, because a lot of people said, My radio station is not keeping up with the tech, and maybe they are doing something in another room, but it may not include the people who are on the air. But this has been an age old problem for radio, and that's they're really unaware of what is going on around them. And this happens every year where James critland will stand in front of radio people at Radio Days North America, and he will show them a tool like the script that can be very helpful for a newsroom, and the oohs and the ahs that will go up. I said, Well, this thing's been around for five years, but nobody's really told them about it. It seems like radio is allergic to innovation or tech and North American radio too. Well,

Fred Jacobs  16:55  
there's no doubt. And I mean, you know, we've asked about AI now the last couple of years in the Air personality study, and we're asking about it in our tech surveys as well, but in the air personality studies, I mean, again, it's only two years of AI, so it's, you know, early days, but still, many air personalities are not using it, either personally or professionally. I think part of the problem is exactly what you say, they're not being trained up by their companies in a meaningful way. But I think the other part is, I think the radio industry got off to a really weird and rocky start with this technology. I mean, it was almost from day one. There's going to be aI disc jockeys, and it's going to take your job. And there was obviously a lot of ink about that, a lot of noise about that. And I think, not surprisingly, it freaked a lot of people out. So I think that is part of the aversion to the technology. But there is a disconnect between companies training their people, and, you know, air talent being up to speed with what's going on in technology. You know, you mentioned innovation, that's another area where, unfortunately, I think a lot of the people working at the station level are not being particularly innovative. And there's a couple of reasons for it. One, they're wearing too many hats so they can barely get through the jobs they are carrying around, which are we see, it's more than it's ever been. But I think you know, maybe the other side of it, in terms of why it's just not being accepted in any kind of way is that companies are not asking their employees to be innovative. They're just asking them to just keep it on the air. You know, keep it you we got to make q4 here. We've got to make our goal here. And we are not asking our people to be innovative. And when you don't ask people to come up with new stuff, they're more often than not going to and I worked for John fuller many years ago. I may have told this story before on one of your podcasts, so I apologize if I have, but when John was the market manager of the greater media cluster in Philadelphia, he ran these innovation contests every year, and you could form a team. It was open to anybody in the cluster, so not just the jocks or the program directors, but the traffic manager, the receptionist, the engineers. And you could form a little team. And the idea was to come up with two innovations, one of which you actually had to do. So it had to be something realistic that didn't cost a fortune to pull off. And then the second one was more of a down the road theoretical kind of thing. But the bottom line was, we discovered a lot of innovation from people who you would not think stereotypically would be the types of folks who would actually come up with cool new stuff. And. And it was an eye opener, I think, to everybody involved, whether you were a judge like me or you were one of the employees of the station, but it was just a wonderful experience, and everybody enjoyed it. And the bottom line is, John squeezed innovation out of people who were ordinarily not, you know, asked to be very innovative. And there's no reason why that kind of thing couldn't happen anywhere, you know, whether it's red deer or Spokane or, you know, whatever the case may be. So we just don't work hard enough at that kind of stuff. Unfortunately,

Matt Cundill  20:38  
I got a little excited. One of the slides, Fred in AQ six was the one about marketing and how shows are being marketed. Often it's the morning show, the question you asked was, is your show being marketed at all? And lots of response from the media market stations. But I was a little disappointed to see that the big market stations, not so much.

Fred Jacobs  20:59  
No, isn't it weird, but the whole big, middle, medium, small stereotypes that you and I grew up with are pretty much out the window. I mean, most people don't want to work for a big company, sad but true, including people who work for them. More people aspire to work for a medium sized company, and we were not specific with company names. We used those kinds of generic descriptors because I didn't want to go there and start naming names. It's not cool, and frankly, I think it biases the survey. But yeah, I mean, back in the day, I mean, I don't know about you, but I there were companies I knew I wanted to work for, and there were markets that I wanted to work in. And, I mean, we all sort of had that, you know, hierarchy of where we wanted to be, and that's out the window now. I mean, that's, that's a whole different deal. I think the prevailing logic. And again, not everybody feels this way, but I think a lot of people feel, you know what, I would be just fine in a not major market, but where I can actually have an established career, have some longevity, create my own connections and ultimately, my own security, as opposed to taking my chances and rolling the dice with one of the big Companies in a top 10 market. It's a shame, but again, that's the world in which we live.

Matt Cundill  22:26  
A lot of people said they got into radio because they wanted the community attachment. You're probably going to have more success doing that in a medium sized market and a medium sized company, exactly.

Fred Jacobs  22:36  
I mean, it's just, frankly, easier. There's a smaller geographical footprint. It's easier to get to know the movers and shakers in the community and all the nooks and crannies. I mean, I look at a market like Detroit, I mean, our geographic footprint is just huge. I mean, it is such a hard market to cover, and that's one of the reasons why it's had a lot of economic instability over the years. It just takes an incredible amount of money to keep this place running. But yeah, when you're in Omaha or Jacksonville or more medium sized markets, it's just more manageable, you know, you you can work it better, and you're also not competing against all these other media outlets. You know, when you're in Chicago, you're not just competing against major radio stations, you're competing against TV and newspapers and the list, you know, even great newsletters and stuff. So, yeah, I think the competitive environment for radio is more natural now in the mediums and the smalls transcription

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Matt Cundill  24:13  
a little point of frustration, but we were there together in 2018 when we began to see in Philadelphia, specifically, a lot of radio stations come into the podcast ecosystem. Take a look. Maybe kick few tires, start some things up. We saw companies like CBS intercom. I think they bought cadence 13, Rogers in Canada, bought Pacific content. They started the frequency Podcast Network, but now we're beginning to see some of these companies as they get into their restructuring that's beginning to affect the podcast side of things. How can you look right now at radio and their infiltration into podcasting?

Fred Jacobs  24:56  
It's really been checkered. There's no question about that. It. And I think there's two issues, Matt, the degree of difficulty of producing a great podcast is really high. And I think back in 2018 there were a lot of people who mistakenly felt that not only was the barrier to entry low, but hey, we're radio people. We've been making great audio forever. We know how to do this stuff. It's like, well, there's a difference between, you know, having a good afternoon drive music show and a an award winning podcast that attracts a big audience and they can be monetized. So I think a lot of people in radio underestimated just how hard it was going to be to succeed in that space, and even buying an existing podcasting company is no free pass to profitability. I mean, you didn't mention NPR, or many of the other public radio stations that similarly invested heavily in podcasts and didn't have it work through so I think podcasting is, unfortunately, a really good example of a digital initiative that a lot of people just, sort of, you know, followed the lemming trail and jumped into without really understanding what they were getting into and we have developed as a company. I mean, it's not just podcasting. I think one of the things that marks maybe the last 10 years of radio committing to digital as an initiative it needs to embrace is what we call doing random acts of digital where it's like, okay, we need to be more digital. What are we going to do? I know. Let's do a podcast. Hey, anybody got a good idea? Yeah, I do. Let's do a podcast about this. It's like, Oh, okay. Well, you know, you think you could do a few episodes? Yeah, I absolutely could. And we're off to the races. And again, the reality is, is that we may not be equipped to be able to do all the things we have to do in order to be successful. So we've developed a 17 question checklist. I'd be happy to send it to any of your people you know 17 questions you ought to ask before you dive into the next Digital Initiative, and they are frighteningly basic. I mean, there's nothing in there where you go, whoa. I never thought of that, but yet it is kind of a regimen that most people don't even bother to think about. And I think that's why so many companies, or that's at least part of why so many companies have gotten in over their heads in the digital space. You know, the the other part is, you know, as cliche as it is, you got to fish where the fish are. And we see this in all of our tech surveys, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40% of core radio listeners never listen to podcasts, and another 20% listen less than monthly. So, you know, I add those two together because basically it's about six of every 10 people who just don't have much to do with podcasts. And then I look at some of the other stuff that people actually do, like read newsletters or play Wordle, and I start thinking, you know, I mean, some of these areas may not be as sexy as a great podcast, but they're a hell of a lot easier to develop and put together. They're easier to monetize, and more people actually have an inclination for proclivity to do this stuff. So again, I think so much of it, Matt, is that we're not asking ourselves the right questions on the front end, and then the next thing you know, we're hemorrhaging money. And damn it, podcasting doesn't work. Podcasting works just fine. If you're one of the few who has actually figured it out and you got in early enough, and you were talented as hell, you're Joe Rogan and life is good, but for everybody else, it's a tough slog. Man,

Matt Cundill  29:14  
yeah, it is. And I think one of the things you mentioned that is really key that a lot of radio stations just don't have is a newsletter. And it's actually fairly obvious. What's not so obvious is how you get people to open it and the content you put in it. But you know, if you're in Canada, you should have a newsletter, especially if you've got a government that passes legislation that it's gonna, you know, put little restrictions on your Facebook page because you are a news outlet, it's a great way to get people in front of you and engage one on one. And, you know, I thought, Oh, well, the newsletter for me is an afterthought. Well, the newsletter has more opens than I have downloads on this

Fred Jacobs  29:54  
podcast. Well, you know, there's another aspect to, you know. It's not just usage, but it's what we call digitizing the audience. So you know, when you do a podcast, you can have 20,000 downloads to it, but you don't know who those people are. I mean, they're just listening to your podcast, and that's it. When you do a newsletter, in order to get the newsletter, you got to give the radio station, or whomever, your email address. And once you've got the email address, you are on the road to data. I mean, there are all kinds of things you can do with that data to be able to turn around and make it work for you, learn more about how your newsletter is doing and market these people to your advertisers. Again, assuming you asked for the right permissions, we're really beginning to do a lot of research now where we're jumping into the database, which you know we've been in forever with tech survey, but what we've learned is that a lot of radio stations have no idea who's in their database. It's just kind of something that sits there on the side, and they use it to send email blasts out, you know, for the special block party weekend, or, Hey, here's a coupon from an advertiser. Or here's where we'll be. But the reality is to be able to actually digitize your audience is huge, and that's something you can do with a newsletter that you can't do with some of these other digital tools. So we've got to think it through more strategically. We we are competing against mega brands. I mean, you know what Evan Shapiro calls trillion dollar Death Stars. I think that's the phrase, you know, like Apple and Google and Microsoft and everything else. And, you know, here we are a little radio company, you know, kind of trying to compete for eyeballs and ears with all these big brands. And the only way we're going to do it is to be smarter, to be more local and to lean into the unique personalities that we have. This is not brain surgery.

Matt Cundill  32:09  
I did not mention NPR when it came to podcasting because I had that in a separate question. And how's the public radio space? Because all we really hear about in the trades is a lot of the commercial radio space, but how is public radio faring in comparison?

Fred Jacobs  32:25  
This has been the worst year ever for them, and as we're recording this podcast, I think there's a lot of questions out there, especially with the new administration coming in. I know you hate to date these podcasts, but this is a moment, you know, and it appears that Representative Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia is going to be involved in this House Committee on looking into government waste and spending on allegedly inane projects. And she's got NPR earmarked as one of the first places she wants to go. So you know, even though this news is one day old as you and I are recording this podcast, I think the reverberations of that announcement are going to follow us in to 2025 but economically, this has been the year where the bottom kind of fell out for public radio. It turns out many of them are losing millions of dollars, millions, not hundreds of 1000s, but millions of dollars. And a lot of them are really kind of refocusing, you know, their points of view on Okay, let's go right back to the fundamentals here and try and figure out what we're supposed to be doing, but it has been just a gut wrenching year for public radio. So who's happy you ask Christian radio, yeah. And you know, what's weird about them? That's a bad way to put it.

Matt Cundill  33:57  
I liked it though. I got it. I got it.

Fred Jacobs  34:00  
I mean, they get it, you know, and even though they've got some of the same problems that commercial and public do in terms of its radio so the audience is aging, the difference is that I think they are more emotionally connected to the audience than any other form of radio that we know about, and COVID was clearly an important moment for all of us, but certainly for them in that obviously, a lot of people went into that and came out of the pandemic in pain and not feeling good about anything and having a lot of angst, and when they listen to their favorite Christian radio station, they feel a sense of relief. They feel inspiration. It is all about faith, and these radio stations respond emotionally to them. You know, what's really interesting is that when you look at the sloganing on commercial and public stations. It's always what we do. We're the country station, we're the news talk station, we're the hip hop station, and even in public radio, we're the smooth you know, we're the jazz station, or we're the NPR news station. But when you listen to Christian radio, they don't say we're the Christian radio station. They say uplifting and spiritual and how you're going to feel when you listen to their radio station, and that emotional delivery of the goods really sets them apart from other radio. We do a lot of focus groups for Christian radio, and I'll tell you, Matt, it's the most amazing thing you talk to the average Christian music radio listener, and most of them have this story, and it varies a bit, but the basic storyline that listeners have is, you know, I was having the worst day, you know, my boss screamed at me, and Meanwhile, I'm arguing with my spouse and my kids, I've got all kinds of problems, and we owe all this money, and man, it all just piled up one afternoon, and I got into my car, and I thought I was going to scream or cry, and then I turned on the radio and I heard this song with these lyrics, And it was the right thing at the right time, the Lord spoke to me in the most fundamental of ways through my radio speakers, and it inspired me and changed my life. And this is not a one off. I mean, most people have gone through that emotional roller coaster with their favorite Christian music station, and where else is that going to happen? You know, so in some ways, they're the right place at the right time for a lot of people, and I think that's one of the reasons why they're, they're doing pretty well. You know, all things being equal, they're, they're the only ones buying all these radio stations. I mean, it still works for them,

Matt Cundill  37:02  
and buying my favorite radio stations too, and flipping them,

Fred Jacobs  37:06  
in many cases, that's exactly what they're doing. And you know, what's interesting is, because so many of these stations are networked, you know, they'll go and buy a radio station like WPL J and you know, they'll hire two or three people. It's all they need. I mean, you know they don't need staff of 45 or 70. You know, it's all coming from somewhere else. Anyway,

Matt Cundill  37:32  
I'm very excited for tech survey, and right now, I believe you're soliciting for radio stations to be a part of it. If anyone is listening to this now, and they have a nice email database that can reach out to the listeners. This is a great way to get p1 radio listeners engaged about what matters in radio. And I think that's a great slide that you brought up earlier, just talking about podcasting. And how many podcasting nevers there are where you combine people who never to I might listen to this, and then I can't find it, but you really get the feeling of what highly engaged radio people think about your station. And I think the ask here is just the email database. Is that right?

Fred Jacobs  38:13  
That's pretty much it. There's two ways to go with the study. You can pay a small fee, and the small fee is a few 100 bucks, and with that, you can participate and you get your local data. So if you get whatever 400 completed surveys, you can actually see that for your radio station and compare that to your format data. But if money is tight and you just don't want to spend the 400 bucks or whatever it is in that neck of the woods. You can just participate. And yes, all it costs is your database, and we don't see any of it. The station sends out the email solicit. We don't touch your database. We don't communicate with your listeners. You do, and there's value there. I mean, you know, when you're saying to your listeners, we care about your opinion, it really matters to us. Please take this survey and help us better understand you. I mean, that's a plus. So yeah, we're we're hoping we get a big turnout this year. It would be nice. And yeah, the ask is not really much of anything. But I think the results you get from it, in terms of learning and insights from your audience, is really important. I'm

Matt Cundill  39:28  
just a podcast guy now, I get a lot out of it. That's one of my favorite ones every year that you release. Well,

Fred Jacobs  39:34  
you're a student of the game, you know, and everybody should be, because the game is changing. I mean, if you think you understand what radio is, and maybe more important, what media is and how people are entertaining and informing themselves, and you're working inside a radio station, you're you're really a shelter person. I mean, that's why we go to CES every year. I mean, I don't. Want to say it's not fun, because it is fun. I would go. Whether we were schlepping around a bunch of broadcasters on our tours, I would still go. But it's not an easy thing to motivate for on january 3, after you've been through the holidays and you're ready to go back to work and the fly to Las Vegas and hang out with 180,000 of your best friends in a quest to see everything that you're not going to see. It's not easy, but, man, it has been so important to our continuing education. I don't know where I would be in this industry if I hadn't been doing this since I guess, around 2009 and you've got the tour going again this year. Yeah, we got a couple of them. It's interesting. We're changing it up this year. Up to this point we, I think this is our seventh year. So the idea was, we're going to curate a tour so radio people can really get the most out of going to CES because there's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of crazy stuff. Some of it's fun and what they call serendipitous, but a lot of it is going down weird rabbit holes. So you know, our job, my brother and I, Paul, is to curate a tour that is relevant to broadcasters. So that has meant stopping at a number of auto companies in particular, and staring at dashboards because, you know, the car is still radio's number one listening location. And you know, the usual stuff this year we're kind of going, you know what it is about AI. And the weird part though about AI is that AI isn't a device. It's like oxygen. It's like atmosphere. There is no AI exhibit at CES, but AI is in everything. And so what we have tasked the team at the Consumer Technology Association who they're the ones who run CES and they sponsor our tours, is we need AI innovation from companies that you might not expect it from, that radio people would look at and go, Oh, isn't that interesting? Walmart is using AI, and they're doing it in a really novel way that actually has relevance and pertinence to what we do. So that's what the tour is about this year, and I think it's really going to be cool. So I'm excited. It's going to be a good one.

Matt Cundill  42:34  
I know why you do it. It's a radio people don't go back to their general managers, and when they say, well, we sent you to CES what'd you would you learn there's a magic toilet?

Fred Jacobs  42:43  
Yeah, for $6,000 by the way, that magic toilet, but yes, it will analyze your urine. So that's so important that you know this every time you take a leak, right? Cheese,

Matt Cundill  42:55  
we've talked about buffalo before. It was related to, I think, the edge at one point. But I want to tell you about something that happened at the Buffalo Bills game week three, and they started to play. They're up by like 40 points against Jacksonville, and they play the killers, Mr. Brightside, the entire stadium busts into song. And now, every week, they play the song, and this has become their anthem. And I thought, why this song? And I think it's age. I think it's the classic alternative coming of age. We see a few classic alternative stations rolling out across both our countries. I thought, why would they like this song? It's a song about being cheated on, and no franchise has been cheated on more than the bills, at least, if you ask a Bills fan. So I thought that was a moment for classic alternative.

Fred Jacobs  43:43  
So I think this Mr. Brightside thing started at the Big House in Ann Arbor with University of Michigan that they're the ones credited for this. And I it's funny. I just went to a Michigan game there a few weeks ago. We lost. Of course, this is what happens the year after you win a championship, the whole thing falls apart. So I went anyway, because I I love going to the big house. There's nothing else like it. And sure enough, between the third and the fourth quarter, this spontaneous thing happens in the whole stadium is singing the song. And I'm thinking to myself, Wow, who started this? This had to start with one person. I wonder what the back story is on how this started. But then the other thing I started thinking about is, why aren't there more radio stations, especially in markets like buffalo or Detroit, playing this song in rotation? And I actually talked to a program director about this, and you know, the reaction was, well, you know, we tested it, and they, you know, and we're back down that thing. And look, I'm a believer in music research. I'm a believer in research period. But you know, sometimes when a song achieves some degree of recognition in the culture. Yeah, I think you have to acknowledge that. You know, music isn't in a vacuum. People get music from a lot of different sources, and the good news is it's not Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. I mean, we've moved on, Matt, this is good. We've gone from 60s, oldies to classic alternative in just a couple of years. So I'm grateful, actually,

Matt Cundill  45:21  
Fred, I want to thank you again for being a part of the show and doing this. It's great catching up with you. It

Fred Jacobs  45:27  
is such an honor to be here. I don't even I feel like I'm Steve Martin on laughing or something. You know, where I've made so many appearances on this podcast, we've lost count. Maybe that's in my mind, but I feel like you and I have sat here on a number of these, and I hope you get a lot of downloads on this. I promise, even though I'm not on Twitter anymore, I will promote the shit out of this. So thank you. The sound

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  45:53  
off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Kendall, produced by Evan sir Minsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai