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.
Worldwide
- Smart Speakers are having their 2004 iPod moment – there are some interesting ideas here for content strategy (scroll down to ‘Conclusions’ for those). They’re just as valid for radio broadcasters.
- Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus now have support for FM radio (in some countries as I understand it, the wireless chip is apparently different in some territories)
- A set of podcasts about the future of radio, by Martin Heer (as part of a university project). Worth a listen!
- Popular podcast app Castbox altered RSS feeds and is still removing links – the wild west of podcasting’s distributed nature, once more
- How much is a broadcasting licence worth? Canada’s Corus reckons… $1bn less
United States
- When talk radio was a kinder, gentler world – a nice look back. I wonder why ‘nice’ radio isn’t around as much as it was?
- In the beginning of a trend, the above link is blocked for people accessing this from an EU IP address. I’m an EU citizen, yet I can see it. Should I alert the authorities?
- Denton TX – a 67W FM community radio station. As the article says, lightbulbs often use more power.
- Spurious study showing that apparently people prefer longer ads. This research will probably be used by dumb people, and that’s a worry. Trust me on this: they prefer GOOD and ENTERTAINING ads. Not longer ones. (However, some longer ones do have more space to be good and entertaining.)
- Significant growth in smart speaker use among radio superfans in the US/Canada; doubled in a year.
- Google Launched a New Podcasts App. Is It a Game Changer? – Seth doesn’t share my enthusiasm, but I think much of that is to punish Google for its previous transgressions.
- Entercom is pulling its radio streams off TuneIn, in favour of its own platform. (I think this is a mistake – watch AllAccess later this week, and I’ll tell you why)
- Why Radio Host Bobby Bones Ran Negative Ads Against Himself – a good and quite humble read.
- Scout FM brings its personalized podcast experience to CarPlay and Android Auto – this is a clever way of reworking the podcast-in-car experience.
- In the US, fewer women and people of color worked at radio stations in 2017 than 2016, a new survey shows. Will not make political point, I’ve got to get into the country in a few weeks.
- Slate’s Facebook traffic has dropped by 87 percent since 2017. Goodness. I know of plenty of radio stations who’s websites are essentially driven by Facebook referrals rather than organic traffic. Good luck to them.
- Nielsen posts some interesting growth figures for streaming media
United Kingdom
- The new BBC radio and audio and podcast app, BBC Sounds, went live. It’s UK-only (but, since digital rights management merely punishes the technically illiterate, I have it). It looks nice, and has some nice touches – some editorial “buckets”, as the lovely Ben Chapman unromantically calls them, which bring together BBC programming under a common theme; the graphics and imagery is good and uses the new BBC online font. It’s an MVP, and lacks downloads and Chromecast support; I’d personally have called it a beta to have deflected some of the whinging. I’m also disappointed that on-demand radio programmes aren’t properly topped-and-tailed; but the BBC have only had 16 years to fix that, so perhaps I’m being a little impatient.
- BBC News weighs in on BBC Radio 2’s drivetime show. It must be difficult doing a show under this kind of pressure.
- Someone (presumably the Advertising Standards Authority) has told Capital, in the UK, to justify their “number one hit music station” strapline. Someone had to write this genius explanation.
- The World Cup is having good effects on UK radio listening, apparently. And yes, this was even before England inexplicably scraped through.
- How Much Should we Care about Commercial Radio Localness? – David Lloyd blogs sense, as ever.
- Happy birthday to BBC Radio Leeds – which was, for a long while, my local BBC radio station. As a station, I fear it’s lost its way.
- Fascinating changes to how the UK chart is put together. And literally a Lazy Buggles Headline.
Australia
- How ABC iView (BBC iPlayer equivalent) came to be. Interesting read.
- Lazy Buggles lede in this story… sigh. I’ve left a comment, but really, I’m not the radio marketing board.