James Cridland’s Future of Radio: Lazy Buggles Headlines, how to never go into the station again, and radio is not dead

james cridland canvasJames 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

United States

United Kingdom

  • Celador moves all Anglian programming to Norwich – five stations now sharing programming. These stations all compete with Heart and Capital, who share most programming out of London (with regional breakfast/drive); and, of course, the national BBC Radio 2. Disappointing, but as Heart/Capital/Radio 2 shows, “local” isn’t a reason to listen.
  • Eleven times radio stations have made a beer – the radio blog Earshot knows how to get me to link to one of their stories. Splendid research: I wonder if Steve taste-tested every one?
  • The BBC releases their Interim Annual Report: there’s a summary and comment here from David Lloyd

Australia

Elsewhere

  • South Africa: At Radiodays Africa this week, there was a talk on podcasting for niched audiences and advertisers. It’s very clear that podcasts, particularly, benefit from narrowcasting to communities of common interest. (It’s one of the reasons I launched podnews.net to monitor the goings-on in that space: have you subscribed?)
  • Germany: SoundCloud slashes 40% of staff as financial reality hits hard – very sorry for these folks, and hoping they pull through. A contact tells me that SoundCloud is particularly popular with black artists, and tries to tell me that it’s Silicon Valley’s inbuilt racism. Not sure I agree, but it’s certainly a viewpoint.
  • Norway: Six months in, some stats on Norway’s FM “switchoff”. Radio is still holding up nicely: and weekly 2.1m Norwegians listen to new stations that aren’t carried on FM (with a 22% share). Population of Norway is just over 5m, to put that in context. I’m concerned about cars: only 38% have DAB installed. That’s a lot of potential lost listening.
  • A German website decides to hop onto the #lazybugglesheadline bandwagon

James Cridland