James Cridland, the radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference. He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.
- I wrote some predictions for radio in 2019.
- Canada: Vista Radio Raises in excess of $1.6 Million Dollars for Local Charities – I’m really proud to have been involved with this company for the last two years. Good luck to them: small, local radio stations making a real difference in the communities where they live and broadcast.
- Australia: NOVA Entertainment’s Group Program Director Paul Jackson on Radio – now and the Future.
- Australia: Radio welcomes ACCC recommendations for greater oversight of digital platforms. If you asked me, Australian radio should be campaigning for relaxation of broadcast rules, rather than welcoming attempts to regulate Facebook and Google.
- Australia: Interesting to note this idea of a virtual TV channel entirely made up of on-demand content. I believe it’s very applicable to what radio should be doing on mobile.
- UK: ‘CarPlay killed the radio star‘ – a report on a new survey showing that 15% of drivers now listen to on-demand stuff from their mobile. A ludicrous example of a lazy Buggles headline – 15% is a tiny percentage, and has taken five years to double. A man from Nissan breathlessly says that by 2030 you’ll no longer need a car antenna. The full survey results haven’t been circulated by Nissan, and the press release (in full here) mysteriously doesn’t actually mention what the most popular audio source is in a car. Is it because it’s, rather inconveniently, the radio?
- US: Edison Research have published their rather more useful research about commuters in the US (for Pandora; release). Video analysis of the drivers showed that 68% of them listened to AM/FM radio, and that figure’s down from 2015’s 83%. Pandora was used by 32%.
- Australia: Do the ABC and SBS (Aussie public service broadcasters) undermine media’s level playing field? No, says a review commissioned by the government.
- Czechia (the place you thought was called the Czech Republic): some advertising for DAB on billboards
- US: In the UK (and Canada), you have to pay for music in your shop even if you just have the radio on. In the US, you don’t. But David Oxenford urges caution.
- Italy: a nice YouTube video (in English) pointing out that with radio, you’re never alone – even at Christmas.
- Ireland: Interesting to notice that RTE’s news TV channel often takes shows from RTE Radio 1, their news station.