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
- Review: Richter DAB+ WAKE Digital Alarm Clock Radio
- Radio should be where the speakers are. My new theory. Thoughts?
- The Man Behind 1 Radio News – if you’re producing news on your station, you should look at this app.
- Monetize Your HD or DAB Subchannels – I wrote this, about Coles Radio, Australia’s largest radio station by cume. (The largest radio station in the UK is, of course, Asda FM: and here’s coverage from 2010 in The Guardian of that).
United States
- New study dives into public radio habits of millennials
- Have you ever wanted to record your own radio show? Here’s your chance, says this article. It’s a community effort called Here Channel.
- The Messy, Confusing Future of TV? It’s Here – a growing feeling for TV that all these different apps are really difficult to navigate around. The benefit of something like Radioplayer has never been more obvious.
- Recommended: Sound Firsts – great podcast episode of 20-thousand Hertz for audio historians.
- TuneIn isn’t going away any time soon: it’s raised $50 million for content expansion.
- Last week was FM radio’s 80th birthday.
- If radio is all about breaking news, someone ought to tell these podcasters, who produced additional episodes to deal with the departure of Bannon from the insanity in the White House.
- Pandora smart speaker listening up 282%, motivating new Edison Research study. This is in spite of Pandora no longer being in growth. And here’s more smart speaker stuff. It’s the future, I tell you. Possibly.
- Radio Station Hands Out Free Backpacks for schoolkids – nice giveaway, I thought, though on clicking through it seems that they’ve just found a bunch of backpacks from companies, rather than some decent branded ones. Surely having a branded thing in someone’s hand every day aids brand recall?
- Radio Kingston to hyper-localize WKNY – story about a licence moving out of national, commercial, hands to a local group. This looks good news for listeners, if they can keep it monetised.
- NYC Radio: Scott Shannon Number One: Again – hot oldies (normally confined to AM frequencies in most markets, for reasons I don’t quite understand) are doing extraordinarily well, particularly when done with personality.
United Kingdom
- The BBC’s new typeface BBC Reith is designed to improve legibility on screen. It looks nice. Sky News also has its own typeface, which also looks good on screen (though, oddly, it isn’t used on Sky News Australia, which looks really very old-fashioned as a result). And here’s the Australian ABC’s font, launched last year, which looks brilliant and different on a TV screen.
- Formerly of Absolute Radio, Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port return to podcasting this week. For fans of Geoff, he was also on BBC Radio 5 Live this week, sitting in for Danny Baker; he’s also on SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel.
- Will radio kill the internet star? – a #reversebugglesheadline and a good article with a set of useful data.
- AM radio continues its slow death-spiral, with the BBC beginning to switch off more AM transmitters for BBC local radio. David Lloyd has his say about it. Should be worthwhile reminding non-Brits that BBC Local Radio is mostly simulcast on AM, FM, DAB and TV in many areas, so this is not as massive as it could have been.
- The Radio Times asks: Is Fun Kids the way to get your children into radio?
- Global Radio cranks up the volume on video monetization – interesting to note how big video is for the UK’s largest commercial radio broadcaster
Australia
- My local Fairfax Media website is getting a redesign. Really clean, less ads, impressive-looking. If there are any trends to be noted in websites, it’s this – a removal of clutter and nonsense, and a focus on the content.
- Tiny, racist Australian political party gets an apparent deal for far-reaching laws to fiddle with ABC and SBS from government. Australian politics would be quite good if they got some adults taking part.
- Nightline kills the radio star, oops. Also an actually accurate Buggles headline.
- iHeartRadio Australia launches new station Radio Dead with Steve Penk – there’s no escape from Penky! Definitely an interesting format, and good to see it in more places.
Elsewhere
- Hong Kong: Sad to note that RTHK Radio 7 – aka BBC World Service, 24-hours a day – is to cease in Hong Kong. I’m personally a little amazed it lasted as long as it did.
- In German: producing sound for headphones should be different than for loudspeakers.
- Dot-radio domains go on sale this month (and also covered on the Radio Today podcast).