James Cridland, the radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference. He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.
James Cridland’s articles
- What is a radio, anyway? And what’s a smart speaker? – my weekly column. Also in RAIN; and also an almost-decent audio version.
Worldwide
- 2018 Internet Trends: that Mary Meeker thing that comes out every year. Very good read. There’s no mention of ‘podcast’; but a few mentions of radio – you’d like slide 96, which says that Americans spend 13% of media time with radio, yet it only gets 9% of ad spend. That means radio gets about US$9.3bn less than it ought to, Meeker appears to be arguing: at least, she argues similar for mobile. Incidentally, this is a 294 page slide deck, but it is meant for reading: so don’t worry about the video you might see elsewhere.
- Ramadan in Saudi Arabia: peak radio listening, and no music allowed
- Consistency is a major reason for any media’s success. The Economist knows that. How many radio stations have a style guide, I wonder?
United States
- This could happen to you – a website hack taking your site offline. Boo to the hackers of KBOO’s website!
United Kingdom
- BBC predicts all-IP future, says it will evolve into an internet broadcaster says an excited article, quoting the nice Matthew Postgate. It’s also showing the World Cup in 4K, but “only a limited number of spots available”, because the future isn’t very scalable. Data point: 9.3% of all radio listening is via IP.
- Radio 2 listeners revolt over new drivetime format – this story is from the Daily Mail, so is probably bullshit, but even so, I’ve not heard many good things about the enforced pairing-up of Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley. (I’ve not listened). I think Mayo’s a great broadcaster, and his days on Radio 1 breakfast were a good and well-executed multi-host format, so it’ll probably get there.
- Clever marketing for Dave Berry’s new Absolute Radio breakfast show
- I guested on BBC Radio Scotland earlier this week, in a slot about the new BBC Radio Scotland podcast The Doorstep Murder ▸.
Australia
- Newly-arrived Brit Christian O’Connell has had a party thrown in his honour; there’s a marketing campaign; and he was introduced to his new studio by cheering station staff. I never got any of this when I moved here.
- Interesting to hear that 4BC are running some short, five second ads, for one client the other day. They work quite well.
- Apple kicked out an Australian podcast re-publisher last week. Interesting idea, mind you.