James Cridland’s Future of Radio: Radio should be where the speakers are – and behind Australia’s largest radio station
James Cridland
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
