One month until my New Radio Conference -- details here.
Now Ron Jacobs is gone.
It seems like they are falling like flies from the second great golden age of radio.
Paul Drew several years ago.
The great Bill Drake.
My friend Charlie Tuna.
Robert W. Morgan way back.
John Rook, the other day.
And many more.
Ron’s credits include “Boss Radio”, “American Top 40”, “The Elvis Presley Story” (he was the first to make popular Elvis impersonators), “The History of Rock and Roll”, the CRUISIN’ series albums that sounded like a radio station because these albums included commercials and jingles.
Ron may have been as old as 80 – there is evidence he was born in 1936 but with Ron you never know.
He was crazy.
And I say that with love, admiration and much respect.
I told him this as early as 2002 when Clear Channel was suing me for $100 million. They didn’t like my exposes about them in Inside Radio, which I founded. Randy Michaels was CEO of Clear Channel Radio at the time and a real dirty tricks artist.
Ron hated him. Thought Randy was bad for radio and he spoke up and took the bully on publicly. Keep in mind life was lonely for me then (until I won my $125 million countersuit settlement) and few people publicly crossed Randy.
Ron had cojones.
Ron was one of the greatest programmers of all time or as I told him – the greatest because he was nuts.
He was the program director all of us wanted to be – crazy like a fox for our listeners and an advocate for less bullshit.
KHJ, the Los Angeles iconic station of the 60’s with Bill Drake and Ron Jacobs was a combination of – well, both discipline and total lack of discipline.
Today’s radio sucks by comparison because there is no passion in it. You can tell the suits have taken over and turned even good people into robots. But Ron Jacobs was no robot. He was crazy.
Ron until his dying day was programming an Internet station of native Hawaiian music. And I loved that. Who better to do something that worthwhile than Ron Jacobs.
A lot will be written in the weeks ahead about this true genius of radio who called out bullshit when he saw it and came down on the side of the audience all the time.
His stations were alive with personality and yet structured to deliver on expectations.
After all, that was the Drake way.
I couldn’t carry Ron’s briefcase and I told him so but as a major market program director I channeled his wildness. One station I programmed during a recession I gave away jobs like they were vacations or trips to the Caribbean. Yes, jobs! Good jobs. And the cume audience skyrocketed in several months from 400,000 to 1.1 million.
And I’m going to bring this up at my April conference because if we want 18-34 year old Millennials then we have to be more like Ron Jacobs.
Ron once sent me a picture of his beautiful daughter of whom he was so proud. He was making a rare trip back to the mainland to attend her graduation.
He loved Hawaii and lived not in splendor but among the beauty of Maui.
We’re losing a lot of great PDs from the second golden age of radio but I plan to keep them alive --- their philosophies, their edge and humor, their dedication to audiences.
Ron was a good radio man, an advocate for the audience and there is no higher compliment I can offer.
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