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
- Radio’s Pokémon Go strategy – my weekly column. Also available in audio form on YouTube.
- PRS For Music and PPL plan one licence for community radio
United States
- Audio killed the video star. (Couldn’t resist). Audio now bigger than video online. – kind of, if you discount Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon video, but include every possible source of audio you can. The more interesting news is that audio online is growing faster than video online (again, ignoring Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, but even then, it’s an interesting stat).
- A radio DJ is quoted in the computer code of Apollo 11. Burn, baby, burn! comes from “Magnificent Montague” from KGFJ in Los Angeles. Also, this piece is good for the photograph of NASA’s Director of Software Engineering for the project, who doesn’t look like the typical mid-50s moustached engineer you’d expect.
- The Looming (US) Engineering Age Crisis – interesting. I didn’t think that Europe suffered from this (not least because European stations typically don’t run their own transmitters), but it seems from comments that I’m wrong: there is a skill shortage in engineering in the UK and also in Australia, it seems.
- The “Second Golden Age of Audio”? Podcasting. Notes from the Podcast Movement conference in Chicago, which seems to have been a great success.
- Why one Anchorage radio station’s been playing the same Bill Withers album 24/7 for more than a month – not a stunt, more an attempt to keep the licence
- “Mobile doesn’t mean just apps” Ricki Lee: either a bleedingly-obvious or incredibly informative post (delete as applicable). I’d hope it’s bleedingly-obvious to subscribers of this newsletter.
- Another online-exclusive radio station closes down, unable to pay the bills
- Amazon Wants People to Pay for Podcasts (good idea, if podcast publishers want to give it a go.)
- Millennials Aren’t Very Interested In Traditional Radio Any More, according to this Forbes piece. Things you need to know about Forbes columns: they’re paid by the page impression, so clickbait is de rigeur; and this one appears to conflate “radio” with “a radio”. Still, I’d probably agree with much of it.
- Spotify’s answer to Beats 1 is a series of artist-hosted radio shows, says The Verge. When was the last time you heard anyone talking about Beats 1? Thought so.
- NPR stations to join iHeartRadio (makes great sense for both parties). Meanwhile, two months in: here are four things NPR has learned using Facebook Live
- On Nice, Orlando and all that – Larry Gifford reminds radio that it’s good to talk about stuff.
- BitTorrent Launches Streaming News Network at Republican Convention; because we needed more live news outlets
- Journalists hate their audiences. Same can be said for some radio stations. Interesting piece.
Australia
- Why Don’t National Radio Shows Work In Breakfast? Nova’s Paul Jackson discusses why (but lessons here for other markets)
- Classic FM boss hits back at ‘automation’ claims. Looks like producers are angry about being asked to use RCS G-Selector.
- Technorama, a conference for community radio engineers, is this weekend
- Hear Here: Nice campaign from ABC Local Radio for their breakfast show presenters and their app.
United Kingdom
- Trebles all round! PRS For Music and PPL plan one licence for community radio – and others? They’ve gone and cancelled current licences for 31 December, without actually agreeing a new licence with the Community Media Association: but at least this one will be cheaper, right?
- UK: more young people use Spotify than radio, says a study, apparently, though this report is scanty on the details.
- Global postpones staff party after Brexit decision – seems a strange decision but clearly management can read the runes and are worried about the future
- Why Sir Cliff Richard is right to sue the BBC – an opinion piece from ex-regulator Martin Campbell
- “Leavers Led Us Off A Cliff, Then Legged It” – James O’Brien is livid. Great radio. (And great shareable video).
- After John Wittingdale left, here’s what we know about Karen Bradley, the UK’s new Culture Secretary. Not a lot, it seems.
- Record Labels Need A Change Of Culture In The ‘Dashboard Era’ – from Next Radio speaker Samuel Potts
Canada
- AM/FM Radio Still Leads Music Discovery
- Fun new tech – “Iceberg Audio“, a first from boom 97.3 in Toronto, an audio processing treatment that lowers the temperature by a few degrees to make you cooler just by listening. Of course it does.
Elsewhere
- Austria: commercial stations are keen on DAB+ to help them compete against public service broadcaster ORF, which has a large (and perhaps unhealthy) market share.
- South Africa: Good, up-beat article about why radio’s working well
- Denmark: Very good and informative PDF from RadioAnalyzer with actionable info
- Mexico: Survey finds Mexico loves Spotify, but is lukewarm on streaming radio
- China: This is nothing to do with radio, but “61 Glimpses of the Future” Jan Chipchase is a fascinating post about China and its immediate surroundings.
- Netherlands: Klarafy – a neat idea from classical radio station Klara FM, which takes your Spotify playlists and produces classical music it thinks you’ll like. Clever!