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: Norway Tests DAB+ on the Water. A set of great photos from Gunnar Garfors.
- Processing Your Audio Right for Digital – in my article for Radio Magazine I chat to Ken Rayner about Jazz FM
- My weekly column: NPR One – making news radio better. Find an audio version as a podcast (search for my name), or read it online.
- Not my work, but a great little 10-minute radio documentary about the future of radio. With me, Sara Cox and Pete Morgan.
Canada
- CBC/Radio Canada asks for $400M in increased government funding to go ad-free. This isn’t as insane as it seems at first. It would result in a bigger slice of the pie for commercial broadcasters, some realignment of programming from the CBC as to not compete as effectively, and clarity of purpose for the organisation.
- Meanwhile, the government is looking into what happens to news reporting without newspapers, which is a distinct possibility.
- Toronto: Another big success for a podcasting conference
United Kingdom
- Last week there was a good techie radio conference, TechCon. Here’s a write-up of the event from David Lloyd.
- The excellent Stephanie Hirst shares her radio secrets: tips for submitting a demo tape…
- Nice article from RAJAR on the different types of radio measurement in the world that I’ve just stumbled upon.
- The Guardian has moved to HTTPS – and the reasons are worth reading. (My sites are, too.) I’m rather surprised that BBC News isn’t there yet – it’s trivially easy to inject advertising into their pages as well as, worse, change the editorial content; and the BBC is particularly paranoid about this happening.
- An excellent piece of radio from LBC and James O’Brien. The mere fact I’m sharing this highlights the benefits of sharing video on social media.
- Get excited about (radio) engineering – Ann Charles with a nice post, pointing out that engineers are your friends and just as creative as your programme-makers. I once said the same about web designers and programmers while working at the BBC, and was soundly told off for doing so.
- Find a weekend champion for your radio station – nice blog from Keri Jones. I do think weekends are criminally neglected at many stations.
- Great little 10-minute radio documentary about the future of radio. With me, Sara Cox and Pete Morgan.
- Why voice control could be the next big technology trend in radio – Michael Hill with the future (?)
- The changing landscape of radio – stats and more from the British Library.
- Another bitesize piece of great radio. This time from talkRADIO in the UK. Not entirely sure of the video treatment, but this is a pretty good clip anyway.
- Processing Your Audio Right for Digital – in my article for Radio magazine I chat to Ken Rayner about Jazz FM
- Gillian Reynolds disparages “radio futurologists” in this (subscription-only) piece in The Daily Telegraph. For the record: I believe I’m the only person in the world who calls himself a radio futurologist, mainly because the word ‘futurologist’ is made-up and doesn’t exist; and while I believe personalisation is the key on a connected device, it isn’t on broadcast radio and that’ll be the predominant medium for many years to come. And I’ve met Gillian Reynolds and she’s nice.
- How podcasts are reinventing music journalism – interesting. This should be radio’s territory, surely
- The Capital Jingle Bell Ball 2016 Content Strategy. – surprised to see an open personal blog from someone at notoriously-secretive Global.
United States
- Preserving Audio That’s on Cassette – something we should be doing soon, or else they’re unlikely to remain playable
- US Radio Station Bans “Piece Of Crap” Kanye West’s Music
- Their name might be “iHeartRadio” but they clearly don’t heart radio much: launching a competitor to it in their very own app. Here’s a review in RAIN. I cannot for the life of me understand why a music station would willingly promote the iHeart app on-air when it contains such a potent competitor.
- In 2010, the US gave a patent to a system of playing movies from the cloud. Sounds like YouTube – launched 2005. Um.
- NBC Chimes: Behind the Scenes with the First Trademarked Sound – great piece on 99% Invisible this week. And the first time I recognised a friend’s name, who’s one of the contributors.
- Spotify highlights unusual listener data in new marketing campaign – nice or creepy, you decide
- IAB Digital Audio Buyer’s Guide – great piece of work about online audio from the IAB and Jennifer Lane
- NPR Board approves donations from overseas NPR One listeners – interesting move. I suspect that might be more revenue-generating than they think.
- Westwood One look at the latest Edison Research Share Of Ear study. Some good stats and interpretation in here.
- So, Jimmy Fallon has a piece about podcasts on his show now. Podcasting getting more mainstream…
Australia
- SCA partners in podcasting with PodcastOne.
- IAB Australia Audio Council endorses US Podcast Metrics guidelines – a sensible move. I find it rather frustrating that radio has no global measurement, and that countries are so different in how they measure it. Did you know there’s no ‘weekly cume’ figure in Germany, for example?
- Great news – silly station names like “612 ABC Brisbane” to go; nice names like “ABC Radio Brisbane” to come. Good, since frequencies are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the multiplatform world of radio, and the word “Radio” is becoming an important label to explain what a product actually is.
- Very techie (but quite interesting) full DAB+ scan of the Sydney airwaves, with slideshow and more.
- Good grief, 2016. stop it with your rubbishness. Just announced: Hamish and Andy are quitting radio at the end of 2017 – and, indeed, until March, listeners will just hear a really very long best-of show.
Everywhere else
- South Sudan: Solar Powered Transmission – run that expensive transmitter from the power of the sun.
- Germany: Government Rejects Proposed Ban on FM Radio sets (for now)
- Norway: Norway Tests DAB+ on the Water. A set of great photos from Gunnar Garfors.