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
Radio futurologist James Cridland will be a co-host at RAIN Summit West on April 17.
James Cridland’s Articles
- Glass half empty? How Dublin will lose a radio station this year, in AllAccess.com and also in audio
United States
- KGO, a radio station in San Francisco, has had its programming slashed and lost many staff. Here’s a piece called “KGO and the death of radio“, amply highlighting the damage that US radio is doing to itself. Perry Michael Simon looks at the fate of AM and heritage stations everywhere. And an alternative point of view – Radio Industry’s Fake Outrage Over KGO – includes some interesting points, not least that “there is no future in being heritage”. I think there can be, but you need to be damn clever to make it work. Incidentally, I was (here’s a first!) accused of doom-mongering by linking here. I think it’s important, however, not to underestimate the difficulties that some US stations and companies are in.
- “So much of the great content created by (WTOP) is missed by 90% of our audience“, realises a US talk radio executive, and excellently told in this story from Steven Goldstein. I talk, repeatedly, about getting best value from the content of your station. I’d love more people to ‘get’ this. It seems really strange to me that we’re happy to program the same song 6 times a day, sometimes, but only air the unique content we create once. It’s almost as if the transmitter mindset says that we’re there to feed a hungry transmitter. Also on the subject of WTOP is this article from Jacobs Media getting down and dirty with their web team. While none of this is particularly revolutionary – except, perhaps, the concept of ‘editions’ – it’s a useful overview on a good operation.
- Podcasting: “A Boxing Lesson for Public Media Podcasting” from Ernesto Aguilar is a nice read, telling us that we [‘radio’] have much to learn from the small, nimble, independent podcast makers. It’s notable in this independent podcast promotional writeup: “never longer than 30 minutes!” – good to see respect for listeners’ time: many podcasts I listen to are long, rambly, and poorly subedited. From podcastmovement.com comes this interesting podcast with Steven Goldstein, in spite of the Buggles headline (c’mon, man!) – and interesting to note the investment into podcasting from The New York Times. This article kind of ignores the great prior work from The Guardian, but, you know, America.
- Larry Gifford listens to US radio for ten hours. “What I encountered for most of my 10 hours of sensory assault was racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, thoughtless garbage” – much, he writes, “is the worst that radio has to offer“. Ouch.
- Even in digital era, we still love baseball on the radio – a nice, affectionate, look behind the scenes at WIP-FM. UK readers might change ‘baseball’ to ‘cricket’ for this article, and it’s just as good.
- Some interesting ideas from the Washington Post, including subtitles for embedded audio. This is a really nice piece that gives interesting ideas on how you might use audio to enhance a written piece.
- Very interesting video about the artificial voice you hear in the Google App on your phone, and how it’s made.
- Business Insider Survey Neglects to Include Radio – and Fred Jacobs rightly calls them out
- Once more, I’m grateful not to live in a country which uses PPM, if this article is anything to go by
- Another newsletter you might like – The Audio Signal by Dana Gerber-Margie, with podcast recommendations
- Right-wing radio key to Ted Cruz’s lead in Wisconsin (and a good interview, too, which makes Trump sound petulant).
United Kingdom
- Web Audio Weekly by Chris Lowis – good and interesting techie newsletter for people who do audio on the web
- How to not mess up your work experience placement – BBC producer Tim Johns has some brilliant tips. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to do work experience.
- The company my radio offers me isn’t a luxury – it’s an essential. Love story for radio, in this piece from Grace Dent
- From 2006, but probably worth reposting: here’s why the UK chose not to use electronic measurement for radio
Elsewhere
- Uganda: the nation in love with country music, according to BBC News. Some lovely images here. I think that the programme this webpage is promoting, The Why Factor: Radio Requests, is one that I contribute to. It’ll appear here on 15 April, and this page neatly also includes the local time it’ll air.
- France: Bellanger’s future of radio: IP and DAB together – nice to hear the CEO of a large EU station with a vision.
- Australia: ABC job title or some random words: can you tell the difference? Genius piece of work. I bet this would work just as well for the BBC as well.
- UAE: 500 staff to be laid off from Al Jazeera – sad to see more belt-tightening, alongside The Guardian, BBC, Fairfax etc