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:
- Norway switches from FM to DAB+ – facts, coverage and opinion (from my newsletter last week)
- Is it all over for live overnight radio? – my latest podcast
- US invests in overnight radio as the UK turns it off – Westwood One shows BBC Radio 2 how to do it
- Ten New Programming Formats for Digital Radio – including NewsRadioUK, Fun Kids, and Coles Radio
United States
- How NBC’s “Today” invented morning TV
- In-House or Third-Party Radio Transmission? – for those that have a choice, this is an interesting piece. Focuses on the US and the UK.
- Fascinating. Here’s how much each streaming service pays musicians, and their relative sizes. Spotify is massive. Would be interesting to do the comparison with radio in various parts of the world.
- US invests in overnight radio as the UK turns it off – Westwood One shows BBC Radio 2 how to do it
- Lazy Buggles Blue Nail Varnish
- The NYT’s strategy for their newsroom over the next few years.
- Another attempt at podcast curation, this time by RadioPublic, a podcast app.
- Music’s Weird Cassette Tape Revival Is Paying Off – I didn’t even realise this was a thing
United Kingdom
- The year ahead for radio: this ‘dead medium’ has never been so alive – this piece is worth highlighting because it is from an advertising agency (MediaCom), not from a radio company. Also interesting to see the author’s job title – “Head of Audio Investment”.
- Some good thoughts about BBC Radio 2’s axing of live overnight radio programming from Richard Duncan Rudin.
- If you want to work on the future of radio, then working for Amazon’s Audible would be an awesome job. Here.
- The Future for Podcasts – and also free money for audio documentary makers. This is open globally, I believe.
- How Voice-activated Technology Makes Radio More Relevant Than Ever
- LBC “is just a clickbait factory”, says this radio review, rather missing the point
- A nice tool to assist community radio broadcasters find an FM frequency in the UK.
- Is it all over for live overnight radio? – my latest podcast
- Michael Smethurst calls for organisations to be not “open” but “porus”. I heartily agree.
- Advertisers wasted over £600m on non-viewable ads last year – not “non-viewable ads” as a radio ad, I hesitate to point out, but as hidden ads on computers.
- More UK consolidation: Celador Radio (596k weekly listeners) buys Anglian Radio (218k weekly listeners)
- Making the most of your content – now BBC Radio 4 is publishing stuff to Medium, too, including transcripts and other things. Good plan.
- Audio: Helen Boaden in conversation with Wendy Pilmer (a The Radio Academy event in the NE that might be interesting)
- Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port to leave Absolute Radio – very sorry but very happy for Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port. I hope they appear somewhere else soon.
- The Wilcox-Gay Recordio: how people in 1940 recorded radio – on vinyl discs. /via Danny Baker
Australia
- Podcasting Down Under: Tom Wright on how Australia is innovating with audio
- New Sydney breakfast show for 2DAYFM – presenters will live in Melbourne and do most shows from Melbourne. Gosh. For those uninitiated in Australian cities, Melbourne and Sydney aren’t best of friends. The presenters know Sydney well, though – it’ll be interesting to see if it matters.
- ‘It’s essential’: outback workers fight ABC decision to ditch shortwave radio
- This is a nicely-produced spoof of The Office… – not too sure it’s good marketing, but it’s quite amusing
Norway
- Live coverage map show how Norwegian radio has switched off FM in a region of the country – nice graphic.
- How much it costs (listeners) to stream radio on your mobile; of course, it costs broadcasters, too. It’s interesting that there’s one network in Norway which is offering zero-rated data for Norwegian radio services in those areas where FM switchoff has already happened. They say it isn’t against net neutrality laws; the regulator doesn’t appear to agree.
- Norwegian Radio Listeners Are Still Negative on Recent FM Switch-Offs – always interesting to read this news through the prism of the US radio industry.
Elsewhere
- South Africa: “Innovation in broadcasting will come from presenters who evolve” – this.
- Good looking job in New Zealand, working for the largest radio software company in the world