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
United States
- Want to buy an iPod? You can’t any more.
- Radio “is notoriously lacking in diversity”. Podcasts “are turning that around”. Not sure I agree with either of these two statements, to be honest.
- MTV didn’t kill the radio star! #lazybugglesheadlines
- American Sounds: The Old, Weird Days of National Public Radio
- While I’ve written about radio stations launching beers in the past few weeks, New York station WPLJ has branched out into a new ice cream flavour.
- CNN posts a history of the radio – in terms of design.
United Kingdom
- RAJAR released their quarterly radio listening figures last week. Some of the highlights as I saw them:
- Global’s spinoff station Heart 80s posted impressive debut figures.
- LBC breaks 2m listeners for the first time. I like the consistent growth of their audience.
- It’s also nice to see Radio X posting record figures. Chris Moyles’s show is sounding sharper and funnier.
- Not all of Global’s plans work, though. Juice FM Liverpool’s last RAJAR figures showed total hours at 1.9m. It rebranded to Capital, and has lost half its time spent listening as a result.
- Record figures for BBC Radio 4, but BBC Radio 5 live has declined since Salford move. This isn’t a great advertisement for moving a national station out of London.
- Meanwhile, it’s an undoubted juggernaut, but BBC Radio 2 seems static since 2012.
- BBC Radio London excitedly shouted about their record figures (for reach). Last quarter, though, their figures were the lowest for ten years; and overall, the station’s figures don’t have the appearance of a station increasing their audience. This looks much more like a blip than a trend.
- It’s also good to see an increase for talkRADIO, and in particular for Iain Lee’s late night show, I understand.
- Matt Deegan’s RAJAR analysis. highlights a few of the larger trends.
- Adam Bowie also picks out some interesting information.
- UK radio advertising spend starts 2017 in growth.
- UK children’s radio station is world’s biggest kids podcaster
- BBC Radio London presenter Vanessa Feltz’s appraisal accidentally sent to all staff (wow. Wow! Wow.)
- They’re using old analogue TV frequencies to do broadband in Wales.
Australia
- Omny Studio partners with Spotify to distribute Australian podcasts
- Nice overview of a station on the Sunshine Coast of Australia
- Another Aussie newspaper is surprised to discover that plenty of people listen to the radio.
Elsewhere
- Germany: the Inside Story Of SoundCloud’s Collapse. It has new investors – a bank and a Singaporean investment firm.
- Canada: 107.1 Juice FM – a brand new VISTA Radio station in Stratford went live a few days ago.
- Malaysia: 97.2% of all Malaysians listen to the radio. It’s a vibrant country and a great, joined-up, commercial radio industry.
- Uganda: Media research for Uganda (Q2 2017). Uganda’s number 1 surveyed station? Capital FM. (Not that one.) Also high in the charts: XFM and Galaxy.
- Sweden: data on Spotify’s subscriber numbers. Not just larger than Apple Music, but growing faster, too. Meanwhile, Spotify has got a bit quieter. Here’s a long article explaining why. Contains LUFS.
- Slovenia: Social Media Goes Massive For Slovenian Radio Hosts
- Russia: The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run
- Norway: Ipsos poll for a newspaper in Norway: over 60% of people aren’t happy with the enforced DAB switchover. I dare say that if I ran a poll asking people if they’re happy about having to go out and buy a new radio, they’d probably tell me they weren’t, too. Radio listening doesn’t appear to have been too affected by the change, I understand – at least, from the figures I’ve seen.