James Cridland is Managing Director of media.info, and an Australia-based radio futurologist. He is a consultant, writer and public speaker who concentrates on the effect that new platforms and technology are having on the radio business. Find out more or subscribe at http://james.cridland.net

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James sends his weekly newsletter with this note: I’m looking forward to be at Radiodays Europe next week in Amsterdam – and then a couple of days in London before making my way back to Australia. I’m particularly looking forward to judging the first RadioHack, which is my first job after stepping off the plane. I hope to see you there.

James Cridland’s articles:

• My weekly column – What Volkswagen can teach us about radio’s future
• Happy twelfth birthday, streaming radio apps on mobile phones! Launched last week in 2005. One of my proudest launches; in the same month, we launched the first daily podcast from a radio station as well, incidentally.

United States

• 4 Lessons I Learned on Creating Podcasts as Managing Editor of NPR One – these are great, and once again highlights the benefit of using data to back up your hunches. My most-shared tweet this week by a long way, and for good reason.
• Great write-up of promotions genius Paige Nienaber’s talk last year at the UK Next Radio Conference. By itself, this posting serves to highlight “making the most of your content” – Thomas has sat on this for six months, rather than rushing to post a scrappy version the day after the conference.
• Raspberry Pi radio player with touchscreen – this looks like a fun project. (More than that – an opportunity for an enterprising organisation to re-think the awful user interfaces on these devices.)
• Talk Radio in the US is learning from Donald Trump, according to this article. Naturally, when I tweeted this, hundreds of eggs told me how bad Trump was and what a bad man I was for tweeting about him. Since I’m going to the US in May, I have nothing but good things to say about him and all Americans.
• Singing posters and talking shirts: UW engineers turn everyday objects into FM radio stations – let me be the first to say that I have no idea what this piece is about
• “Sorry, Apple, the headphone jack isn’t going anywhere“
• Random drive-by #lazyBugglesheadline starting this article about real-estate penned by Erik J. Martin. This is the kind of lazy crap that, if we cared enough, we’d fight.
• An Amazon Echo and a PPM Ratings Surge in Tampa. Good piece from Fred Jacobs (though, wow, sample sizes)
• Google launches an original podcast, joining Spotify, NYT and Amazon making these things.
• Music and imagination – the olden days of AM radio. Nice piece, if overly sentimental
• Niche podcasts now need their own niche network to let people find them
• Anchor appears to be ‘reinventing radio’ with a new build of their app. Social audio, like Audioboo once was.
• Some nice stats from Sean Ross about smartphone usage in the US for radio

United Kingdom

• What the future holds for next-generation radio – Michael Hill explains
• How Many Ads Are Too Many? Some useful data and research in this posting from David Lloyd. For five years, I wrote radio commercials for a living; and for a few weeks I also scheduled them. The lack of research on effective scheduling astounds me.
• Trint – a transcription service for podcasts and radio interviews. Quite cheap, seemingly. Transcription is the key to get your great audio content found online.
• Long-term Ford Fiesta review. Month 3 – it’s got a rubbish confusing digital radio in it. Audiences care about UX.
• Why marketers should take note of Facebook and Amazon’s moves in digital audio – and awful #lazyantiqueradio pic. I think Campaign is taking the piss with accompanying every story about radio with a 1950’s set. It’s embarrassing, does our industry no favours, reinforces a “yesterday’s medium” narrative.
• Record breaking year for UK radio revenues – very good news for all. Congratulations. This piece illustrated in RadioToday with a #lazyantiqueradio
• UK newspaper company Newsquest has just axed more sub-editors. Here’s the result – ouch, embarrassing (and no doubt, deliberate)
• Radiocentre welcomes new Government initiative on terms & conditions – this work is very good, and welcome for radio.
• Union JACK reaches 3 million song votes in first six months – adding interactivity to music radio appears to work nicely. It’s Futuri Media’s LDR product powering this, by the way, though the press release doesn’t say.
• Some lovely old clips of BBC Radio in 1990. Fun little video.

Australia

• In a rather gloomy but probably quite accurate opinion piece, Peter Saxon explains why were all doomed and why robots will take over all our jobs.
• Australian ABC to lose 200 jobs by June in latest round of cuts. I actually don’t know how many people work at the ABC, and therefore how big a cut this really is; but they’ve said the money saved will allow them to hire 100 new positions, mostly outside of Sydney/Melbourne. The organisation reminds me of the BBC fifteen years ago, and some rationalisation and commercial awareness could be of benefit, as could some confidence. (Disclosure: client)
• Life after radio for 612 ABC Brisbane’s Spencer Howson – writing a newsletter. Newsletters will never catch on. Only idiots write newsletters <- amusing English self-deprecation
• Nice new logo for 2CH – but I’d personally have put “1170am and digital radio” on it. In SYD over 25% use DAB weekly
• Podcasts – the revolution overturning the old world of radio (good overview, despite the antagonistic headline)
• Myth: nobody listens to the radio in the summer holidays. Fact: people listen to more radio, it seems. Here’s the CRA’s research.

Elsewhere

• Canada: Streaming is full of useful data for radio, says CBC Radio #lazybugglesheadline
• Canada: Nice new TV creative from CKNW – highlighting the kind of content you get, rather than just a positioning statement.
• Norway: The government have published a bunch of English stuff about their decision to switch from FM to DAB. I’m hosting a session at Radiodays Europe (Tuesday 10.00am, the main auditorium) about DAB+ in Europe, focusing on the Norwegian decision. Hear from public and private broadcasters, and discover whether anyone is still listening to the radio after #FMexit.
• Netherlands “on track to rollout DAB”. Sales up 33% year-on-year! Yay! Only 6% of Dutch households have it. Oh. The head of the Netherlands DAB action group will also be speaking at that Radiodays Europe session I just schilled.
• India: Delhi – Nobody killed the radio star… he’s alive and he’s an Urdu poet. This is a really lovely piece, despite the #lazybugglesheadline
• Sweden: Spotify’s growth, in a few numbers. Impressive.
• Ireland: Following UK Radiocentre’s lead, an Irish MEP is now trying to get terms/conditions simplified for radio.