When you find a job that you not only enjoy but feel passionate about, great things can happen both at work and among your peers.
Recently, Fred Jacobs received an industry honor from his peer group like no other. The Jacobs Media and jācapps founder has been elected to the National Radio Hall of Fame by a voting participant panel comprised of nearly 1,000 industry professionals. Jacobs becomes the first radio industry consultant to receive this honor.
Jacobs is a former WRIF-FM program director and a leading visionary for radio, mobile and the connected car. He was also creator of the Classic Rock radio format in the early 1980s, Jacobs and his company Jacobs Media emerged as a driving force behind the continued evolution of the medium that Fred began working in 1977.
“You don’t plan on this type of honor, but it is both humbling and exciting,” Jacobs says. “It’s amazing to be mentioned in the same breath with radio icons I grew up listening to and long admiring.”
He joins a list of iconic Detroit radio personalities inducted in the Hall, including J.P. McCarthy, Ernie Harwell, Dick Purtan, Casey Kasem, and Paul W. Smith. WAXQ’s Jim Kerr – also a Detroit native – will be inducted in the 2018 class as well.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Jacobs began his career after earning his master’s degree at Michigan State University as a Project Director at the Frank N. Magid company. Two years later, he returned to the Motor City to join WRIF as Research Director.
In 1981, he became Program Director, and is credited with helping build one of the strongest radio stations in Detroit radio history. Detroiters remember “Baby,” and other iconic bumper stickers, the Bruiser Band and other legendary moments that occurred during his tenure at the station.
After leaving WRIF, Jacobs formed Jacobs Media in 1983 and began converting radio stations across America to a new format: Classic Rock. Since then, Jacobs Media has become a leader in the radio industry, including championing radio’s place in the dashboard with its local DASH conferences, as well as radio’s move into mobile applications with the creation of jācapps in Bingham Farms in 2008, which has now developed more than 1,200 apps worldwide on both the Apple and Android platforms.
The induction ceremony will take place in New York City on November 15th.
