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
- Meine wöchentliche Kolumne ist jetzt bei RADIOSZENE in Deutsch – besser als dieser tweet übersetzt.
- OMRI – how radio apps might get better (my weekly column from last week, in audio form)
- My weekly column covers Southern Cross Aust’s rebranding to TripleM and Hit – the right thing to do, in my opinion.
- I review the Pure Elan E3 digital radio (and I love doing thorough reviews like this)
Next Radio sessions (for free!)
It seems many weeks ago that Matt Deegan and I put together Next Radio, our radio ideas conference. It was only on the 19th September. I promised you some more – here are the rest of the entire day. Save this email and come back to it for your lunch breaks every day, and you’ll learn tons, I promise.
- Why has radio missed social talent? – fascinating 9 minutes from Cliff Fluet. Some jaw-dropping moments of realisation that actually, radio’s missing some key influencers
- How to get YouTubers to work on your radio station – in the same vein, another nine minutes from Josh Divney, sharing his experiences of getting a new generation of talent interested in radio
- VRT Startup is building new products for its radio stations – Floris from the Belgian broadcaster VRT with some fascinating talk of innovation and start-up culture within a public service broadcaster. Nine minutes.
- The BBC Minute, and appealing to young audiences – Steve Martin and Nisha Lahiri with the thinking behind the BBC’s new news bulletin: some good research behind this. Nine minutes.
- Great radio promotional ideas from Paige Nienaber, wearing a canine shock collar for some reason. Some fun ideas. Wait – some shocking ideas. Ha! Shocking! 18 minutes.
- Commercialising your podcast – Claire Powell from Audioboom highlights the ways to earn money from a podcast. Nine minutes.
- Making more meaningful connections with your audiences – Richard Huntington from Saatchi and Saatchi gives a passionate plea for media to stop faking it and make more meaningful connections with audiences. 18 minutes.
- Where data meets creativity – Chloe Straw talks about how data can help radio programming. Nine minutes.
- Skills sharing in the indie sector – David Prest says we need to take a new approach to radio skills. Twelve minutes. Twelve.
- From the Sky News centre – Andrew Bailey on what radio can learn from news TV, and the other way around. Nine minutes.
- The power of words – David Lloyd on watching your language when you’re on the radio. No, not swearing: more subtle than that. Nine minutes.
- Live streaming video: reach your young audience again – Ben Bowler from chew.tv explains the technological and societal changes which drive today’s young audiences. Nine minutes.
- Going local with Bauer – Steve Taylor from Bauer Media says how important local is. Nine minutes.
- Object-based editing: the future, now – Dan McQuillin from Broadcast Bionics highlights some of the new creative tools at our disposal. Eighteen minutes.
- Podcasting: the next ten years – Tom Webster from Edison Research talks about the potential and challenges of podcasting. Eighteen minutes.
- How the music industry is changing – Sam Potts from Columbia Records on how the music industry has adopted a start-up ethos to engage with an ever diverging audience. Nine minutes.
- Jon Holmes – in conversation with Matt Deegan, a great interview about his radio career. Doesn’t include the latest news about The Now Show, mind you. Eighteen minutes (but feels like seven).
United States
- Salon has decided that one company’s reorganization means the end of an entire medium; ignoring the evidence. This is possibly the laziest of all lazy articles about radio I’ve read for a long while. The question is: what will radio do about it? Do we care enough to tackle this nonsense head-on?
- A fascinating stat via John Naughton about the length of soundbites
- Spotify exec: ‘Radio is of the past. It’s not relevant.‘
- Good overview of Wildfire Radio, a NJ-based internet radio station
- The very first jingle on radio, apparently. For a breakfast cereal. Frankly, it could have done with a bit more drums.
- Stats: How much data US mobile users are using, broken down into WiFi and cellular
- Brian Lehrer: Behind the Scenes – a nice video showing how this WNYC show works /via William Turrell
- Why The Future Of TV Isn’t TV (exactly the same could be said about radio, incidentally). Nice quote: “I now need to select my remote before I decide what show to watch. I need to remember the 13 perfect button presses to watch Jon Oliver on demand. We have SVOD, AVOD, streaming, stored content, broadcast — it’s messy.”
- After a small shortage, delighted to find a new Lazy Buggles headline to add to the shame-list.
- Notes from the big public radio conference in the US. Refreshing to read lots of discussion about content.
- Interesting new personalisation for radio – do you want *****ing swearing or don’t you, *****er?
- Bob Lefsetz on Spotify’s (excellent) Daily Mix
- YouTube Claims 2 Million Debate Viewers – significant numbers being generated with YouTube Live.
- Hot Pod is, as ever, required reading for those interested in podcasts.
United Kingdom
- The appointment of James Purnell as BBC Radio chief is worrying to Steve Hewlett – and it’s hard to disagree with what he says. Nonsense of an appointment.
- Stats: A Deloitte survey of how UK folk use their smartphones. Includes top ten activities. Radio gets mentioned twice as an aside.
- Interesting new product from iHeart. Looks like MyCapitalXtra has made others take notice.
- A 90 year-old radio show on BBC Radio 3 – Andy Walmsley looks at (and listens to) Choral Evensong
- The BBC launches (an online news operation) in Canada. Notes from the launch here /via tradingaswdr
Australia
- Must read: strategy of ABC Radio (Australia) over the next five years. This is excellent – I never saw anything like this at the BBC. Particularly of interest: they see their growth coming from podcasting and on-demand content, rather than live radio
- A really nice “storify” from Kylie Sturgess of one session from #ozpod2016
- Podcasts ‘could die’ from programmatic push – and this is the worry about programmatic in some markets, that it just attracts poor quality ads. “No one will accept an ad, no matter what the platform, if it’s contextually irrelevant.”
- Of all the radio station buildings I’ve seen, this is by far the strangest! 2BH looks like an antique radio… https://www.flickr.com/photos/62459458@N08/15866879520
- Radio Lollipop: The songs that provided a fun distraction for sick children in 2016
- I get a nice mention 20 minutes into the Mediaweek Australia podcast. Thanks Dan Barrett
- Nice piece about Kinderling Radio – my daughter’s favourite radio station. Useful business model ideas.
- Here’s why I always use caution when telling the “radio is lifeline in emergencies” story… with one point of failure, sometimes it isn’t