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 articles
United States
- “Twitter’s changing device ecology” Jean Burgess has done some great research on what people use to tweet. Spoiler: lots and lots of devices. Which, coincidentally, is similar to how ‘radio’, in all its forms, is being consumed these days.
- Things like Netflix, etc, mean that there’s more great TV being made today than ever before. And, once more, there are parallels with ‘radio’, in all its forms: lots of great radio being made on podcasts and on new, digital-exclusive, stations.
- Is Terrestrial Radio Facing Its Judgment Day With Fierce Digital Competition? – an interesting article in Billboard. Sure, if you define radio by the platform its on, the US industry is in a particularly – and unusually – bad spot. The concern is that this piece could be interpreted as a view of global radio, and that would be dead wrong. US radio, the black sheep of the radio family, needs to sort itself out.
- Podcasting rapidly moving to streaming, not downloading. This says a lot: both about the changing consumption patterns of podcasting, but also about the availability of fast-enough data everywhere. Incidentally, I listened to half my podcasts last week near-on-demand (marking specific episodes to download while waiting at an airport gate).
- 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound. Why you should be transcribing your stuff and, for Facebook, adding subtitles.
- “I just want it to work.” One man and his quest to listen to the radio. And the data behind why.
- Build your own radio with… a pizza. Yum!
United Kingdom
- I love how Eagle Radio has a ‘breakfast gang‘. That’s very British.
- Aiir signs new SVP of Product Innovation – clever signing, and well done to Andy Buckingham
- Free podcast on how to be a better voiceover from expert producers Tadah Media
- 20% EU quota for Netflix content. More meddling and not-that-helpful EU regulation?
Canada
- Could CPA Replace [CPM] on Traditional Media Buys — and What If It Does? – thought-provoking piece about sales from Jeff Vidler. I’ve noticed, with interest, that the radio station 97.3FM in Brisbane runs “97-minutes of non-stop music” but with spoken advertising over the intros of some songs. These are solus, powerful, and in the UK would be entirely illegal, but they sound great.
Norway
- A 32-Hour Webcast of Norwegians Reading the Fine Print – nice stunt, and, once more, using the power of audio – you can’t quickly speed-read audio, so this gets the message across quite nicely.