DEEP DISH TAKEAWAYS FROM “JACOBS TECH SURVEY 11”

The good folks at Jacobs Media [LINK] have just released JACOBS TECH SURVEY 11. This highly praised ongoing series of reports monitors of trends in the usage of radio and digital media. The Jacobs reports are becoming an industry standard. You can download the entire report at [LINK].

Jacobs also does similar research about public radio listener’s media usage.  The next report in that series will debut at the Public Radio Programmers Conference in September [LINK].

The release of JACOBS TECH SURVEY 11 has been widely covered by industry news sites.  I’d like to focus on a few of the factoids that probably won’t be headlines.

[NOTE: I have several questions about the methodology used in this research.  Scroll down to see more.]

SLIDE ONE: TOPLINE DATA

SLIDE TWO: THE MAIN REASONS 

PEOPLE LISTEN TO RADIO

SLIDE THREE: PEOPLE LIKE TO FEEL CONNECTED TO A COMMUNITY

NOTE: "LOCAL" means different things to different people.

SLIDE FOUR: PEOPLE DON’T LIKE

COMMERCIALS ON ANY PLATFORM

 I was pleased to see that lots of other people feel the same way about Pandora as I do.  Their commercials are speed bumps and the transitions from song to song are clunky.  Some hours of Pandora end abruptly -- sort of like an old 8-track tspr -- because the automation demands a cutaway at the exact top of the hour.

SLIDE FIVE: PODCAST USAGE 

CORRELATED BY FORMAT

This slide shows that most of the in-tab respondents listen to commercial music stations.  Commercial AAA is a close cousin to NPR News in the higher than average use of podcasts.

SLIDE SIX: RADIO IS THE PLACE 

FOR NEW MUSIC DISCOVERY

QUESTIONS ABOUT METHODOLOGY

I’ve included the Methodology as it appears in the report below. 

• The report does not say if noncommercial or public radio stations, or their listeners, were part of this survey.  This is important because the primary way people were contacted to participate in the survey was via station e-mail lists.

• The formats shown in the report seem to mainly be commercial radio music.  So, the results may be skewed.

• The report does not separate Canadian respondents from US respondents.  There may be differences between the two groups.  Not stratifying this data could lead someone to believe there were a larger proportion of Canadians in the in-tab than the population warrants.