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
- Do you need a radio station building at all? – it’s been interesting watching the feedback from this one. It seems too difficult for the older US engineers frequenting Facebook to get their heads round the concept of a radio station without an actual building…
United States
- New audio consumption data from the US, including smart speakers and AM/FM radio, from AudienceNet. There’s a very interesting split of age-group in Tom Benson’s writeup. Very much worth reading.
- We’ve had a radio station in a cafe, a radio station in a pub… now, a radio station in a hairdresser. Plays the best cuts, obviously.
United Kingdom
- The Audio Content Fund is an interesting concept, and good news from the UK.
- Breaking: Simon Mayo’s leaving BBC Radio 2. “Circumstances change”, he writes. Good luck Mayo. Mayyyo. Daylight come and we wanna wake up.
Australia
- Sacking a lawyer is not always wise. This probably won’t end well for anyone.
- It’s a shame to see Michael Mason – a good man, and great thinker – leave the ABC. I hope he stays in radio. It must be difficult for those within the ABC right now, with so much change and such concentrated criticism from the press. I look forward to the corporation coming out the other side.
- These kids’ school burnt down. This is how to do local radio. Well done, Nova 106.9.
- “Australian radio industry unites to grow podcasting” – interesting protection play from the incumbent radio broadcasters in the country. The CRA’s press release claims there are no standard measurements in place for podcasting, yet the IAB v2 standards are quite well understood, if not uniformly used. Specific Australian podcasting measurement standards won’t work for a global industry (and most Australian radio companies sell ads for global podcast companies). Oddly, there are no radio measurement standards for global radio, so… Also – not including independent podcasters is a mistake, in my opinion: invite them in, don’t close the door on them.
- Australian radio is to pilot hybrid electronic/diary measurement for radio listening. “The current radio survey system is still the most accurate way to measure radio audiences, but if we can incorporate insights from electronic metering and streaming data to enhance this measurement, then we are keen to explore that”.