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
- Shout To Me promises to get listener voices on-air – this is a neat product idea
- Inside the BBC’s Audiofactory Encoding Farm – my article for the Radio Magazine
- Radio in smartphones to get better – I cover the OMRI work for AllAccess
- A review of the Pure Elan E3 digital radio for media.info – it’s really good, it turns out
Next Radio sessions (for free!)
The radio conference that Matt Deegan and I put together was on Monday. Missed it? Here are just some of the sessions: watch @thisisnextradio for more, or subscribe to the YouTube channel. More next week probably.
- The power of sound – Sam Crowther from AMillionAds was an awesome opener with an 18-minute crafted presentation delving into sound’s power for advertisers
- Insights from Australia’s top radio talent – Craig Bruce, Australia’s most respected talent coach, with 18-minutes of learnings from Australia’s biggest radio names
- How record companies use the data Spotify/Apple send them – Brittney Bean (“from the internet”) highlights the use of consumption data. (9 minutes)
- How students listen to, and study, radio – Julia Hayball with what I felt were some worrying trends about radio’s place with students. (9 minutes)
- Making friends with radio engineers – Ann Charles tells us why producers and radio engineers should work together. (9 minutes)
- Radio breakfast show secrets revealed – quite a highlight for me, showing some interesting real-time data on content-testing. Francis Currie and Niklas Nordén. (18 minutes)
- Getting listeners to call in – Graham Mack with a masterful 9 minutes, showing how he gets listener voices on-air.
Australia
- Brand consolidation: lots of old-style Australian heritage brands to disappear in favour of TripleM and Hit.
- “Station too successful… closes down” – bewildering decision.
United States
- “Radio needs to decide whether it is in the transmitter business or the audio business” – it’s refreshing hearing this from a US person like Steven Goldstein; a point I made a few years ago at an NAB Futures get-together.
- I do enjoy these articles about niche community radio stations, like this one in Washington state.
- Some interesting new podcasting data from Bridge Ratings – podcasting gaining interest and use
- Shout To Me promises to get listener voices on-air – this is a neat product idea
- Another NPR One wannabe, 60dB launches. Looks interesting but hard without lots of content. Just ask the now-pivoted Stitcher.
- Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years – oops. Still, not as if they’re selling on that figure. Oh. Highlights the benefit of independent metrics.
- Worldwide project to collect radio recordings gets its start in Missouri – it’s nice to see multiple projects going on trying to collect radio stuff for posterity.
- Nice review of the NPR One app – important to keep an eye on NPR One as it continues to develop. Mark my words, this is where radio is going, and I’m keen to keep an eye on it
- Radio in smartphones to get better – I cover the OMRI work for AllAccess
United Kingdom
- Will Manning from Capital records a nice YouTube video about how his radio show is put together. Sounds like a lot of hard work.
- Technology vs culture: it took 91 years after the invention of the car for the first out-of-town shopping centre in the UK. I like this stat, because it highlights why radio is still so popular – the inertia of our radio habit insulates it from technological change
- The Radio Today Programme reports from Next Radio. A nice overview.
- The Future of Radio – a British Library podcast, with marked lack of futurologists though I do get a namecheck
- Inside the BBC’s Audiofactory Encoding Farm – my article for the Radio Magazine
Elsewhere
- Panama: Strange tablet computer + radio set goes on pre-order for just US$100. Software-defined radio like this could be a good experimentation ground for new radio UX.
- Russia: On their own wavelength: Russia’s only radio for the mentally ill
- Slovenia: DAB+ transmissions have started