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
James Cridland’s articles
- Radio Engineers Need To Talk Too – my article in AllAccess this week
- Community Radio in Australia Highlights Benefit of Remote Access
United States
- How Silicon Valley sees radio… also read the replies. I think much of this is deliberate denigration, but it does explain much. What’s radio going to do about it, I wonder?
- Tesla is launching a streaming music service, for some reason. Not sure I understand quite why.
- Here’s the gruelling tour artists make to visit radio stations – a reminder of the importance of our medium
- Good overview from Pew Research about audio and podcast consumption in the US
- Radio Has a 100-Year Head Start On Digital Competitors. Does It Matter?
- FM Radio in Smartphones – some numbers showing activation of the chip in the US
- Interesting – Alexa now plays SiriusXM (for subscribers). Seems an obvious next move.
- To benefit from Alexa, US radio stations ought to sort out their crappy streaming experience, says Sean Ross
- Are Standalone Internet Radios On the Way Out?
- US public radio has yet to fully understand the power of a consolidated brand
- Surprised more audio folk haven’t been more critical of the horrid (undefeatable) dynamic processing on the MacBook Pro’s inbuilt speakers. Just saying. Not sure you could use these for any proper work.
- The death of local radio? WNBZ doesn’t seem in good shape.
United Kingdom
- All presenters disappear from Thames Radio. With over 120 stations available in London on DAB, the trick appears to be getting the marketing right.
- A look inside BT Tower – quite a fun tweet. /via Ian Deeley
- BBC News At Ten: if you’ve not already seen this, here’s what went out last week on the BBC’s flagship news bulletin. It’s surprisingly calming. (And also: nice to know that playout systems go wrong for telly, too, which is what happened here. The entire bulletin was played out manually from hastily-commissioned edit suites across the building.)
- Ed Miliband did a week’s worth of shows for BBC Radio 2 this week – he’s done radio before, in case you hadn’t realised. Here’s a nicely-edited and amusingly-visualised clip (watch full screen).
- Boris Johnson Blunders His Way Through Painful Interview With Radio 4’s Eddie Mair
- Nice new look for Chromecast listeners on Radioplayer.
Australia
- A Technical Look at DAB+ in Australia (useful for the descriptions of how the multiplex owners work)
- This is a nice little video, of two stations moving into a brand new building. Broad smiles remind us that working conditions matter.
- A must-do (free) webinar for Australians interested in radio and audio: tomorrow at 11am Sydney time.
Elsewhere
- UAE – the power of radio: a lovely little card sent to this presenter
- South Africa: Seeing radio differently – a talk by the UK’s Clare Bowen for Primedia.
- Telephone audio on the radio, still? – Tommy makes a good point. Telephones sound rubbish.
- Ireland: Newstalk get close to a lazy Buggles headline
- Afghanistan: The female journalists defying taboos and braving death threats
- Denmark: What Should a Kids’ TV Channel Show When Kids Should Really Have Gone to Bed?. What an utterly lovely idea.