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
- Is it time for the media to show a little respect? My weekly article asks for audiences to be treated as intelligent. Audio version
- How the Solent Wireless Mini-Mux Works — And Lessons for the Future. My piece for the Radio Magazine – fascinating how this works behind the scenes
- How the iTunes Podcast Chart works. And why it isn’t a chart.
- Olympics TV viewing figures down in multiplatform era – and internet figures not fully understood, given a TV working group has released entirely incorrect numbers
United States
- 5 Things Streaming Music Data Can Teach Marketers That Top 40 Radio Can’t – according to Pandora’s data journalist. Some interesting thoughts in here. Also interesting that Pandora has a “data journalist” – I think there are plenty of stories to be told from the data we already have on audience behaviour.
- Jeff Smulyan talks the future of radio. (Great man, and good for the industry.)
- “Closing the podcast gap” Ian Ownbey outlines an interesting automated editing system for recording mini-podcasts
- “No, Bloomberg, the Olympics didn’t stumble because of Millennials. It stumbled because of NBC.” Brenton Henry writes an excoriating piece about the uselessness of NBC (and, being fair, the historical shackles that put it in this position)
- An Open Letter To Magazine Editors Who Woke Up Without A Job This Morning (you could also read this for radio)
- Have an anonymous TED Talk? We want to hear it. – interesting idea: using audio. of course.
- Major Brands Are Betting Big on Podcasts, and It Seems to Be Paying Off, says AdWeek. It’s probably more relevant that it’s AdWeek saying this.
- Twitter paying its users to create videos – US only for now, though
- Pair Of Small Town AMs Go Dark – I suspect we’ll have a steady drip-drip of these type of stories from hereon in
- Dr. Joy Browne, Long-Running Psychologist of the Airwaves, Dies at 71
- A good piece about (the app) NextRadio’s Paul Brenner. I’m a big fan of NextRadio, and I hope it succeeds.
- A lazy Queen headline? Goodness.
United Kingdom
- You must support this book by Annabel Port – if it’s 8% as good as the radio show, it’ll be ace.
- Govt Digital Service Under Threat – this is so disappointing. Genuinely world-leading service, and one that, oddly, makes me quite proud to be British: the state of every other country’s internet services compare poorly to the UK, and they now appear to be throwing this all away for nothing other than a short-sighted power struggle.
- “If It Was My Band” – how to make money from music (and how to get played on the radio). Good book from Emma Scott
- Facebook Live for Radio – Aiir proudly avoid a Lazy Buggles Headline by using “Sound and vision”. Props to them!
- For fans of Star Trek and God (I’d love to see the Venn diagramme). Premier Christian Radio to go into space
- “What the main-stream-media won’t tell you…” – Francis Wheen does a good job destroying this meme…
Australia
- ARN’s Duncan Campbell says “Radio Networks Have To Pay Announcers Huge Salaries Because There’s So Few Good Ones“
- This is a great piece of talkability for a radio show – though it looks disgusting
Canada
- CBC disappointed by CRTC decision to halt Radio 2 ads. Radio 2’s the music service from CBC, though I’ve always found it a little confusingly eclectic and inconsistent. Anyway, the CRTC is punishing the CBC for not investing enough in its radio services by removing one way for the CBC to get revenue to invest in its radio services. Which is, um, interesting.