James Cridland’s Future of Radio: BBC Sounds gets launched, longer ads apparently preferred, and Bobby Bones

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.


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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.

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James Cridland