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:
- Where is the best-sounding radio in the world? – where I probably annoy most people in most countries
United States
- Trouble for Facebook Instant Articles. Publishers are pulling out. My own media.info does v poorly with these; given that the code is written, I don’t plan to pull them, but I’ll not be enhancing them further.
- ‘S-Town’ Attains Podcasting Blockbuster Status – downloads are eight times faster than Serial, though if you downloaded the entire series, you’d have downloaded seven episodes. I’m in episode 6 at the moment.
- Podcasters have found a new revenue model – charge people to watch a recording of a podcast in a theatre. In the UK, Iain Lee is doing this for his successful Rabbit Hole podcast.
United Kingdom
- ‘Golden age’ for UK radio as number of listeners hits record high and ‘New golden age’ of (digital) radio heralds review that could end FM – these articles are nice but a little strange: there hasn’t been any new audience releases for two months, so why is everyone suddenly writing them? One assumes that Bob Shennan, the relatively new boss of BBC Radio, is behind these: “a new golden age” is his phrase, oft-repeated in his speeches, but I wonder what’s behind the PR blitz… unless the next RAJAR releases are on track to hit the 50% digital threshold?
- Brian Matthew, the late-night voice for many (including me), died. Here’s The Guardian’s look back at who they called the real voice of the 60s
- Sean Keaveny celebrated ten years on BBC Radio 6 Music’s breakfast show. If you are turned-off from breakfast music radio because they’re all “Dingo, Crazy and Miss Giggles”, his is a very different show. Here’s a film to celebrate.
- Good sales opportunity – Sales Manager and Account Managers in North Wales
- Mentioned in a @mediainfo discussion – ‘How to build a radio station’ by Dave Walters is, I gather, very highly recommended by industry professionals.
Australia
- News Corp Australia sacked most of its photographers & subeditors to cut costs – specialism is increasingly anachronistic; companies are looking for good all-rounders
- Radio syncs with outdoor – ARN’s clever synching of radio and outdoor is a first for Australia, but not in the UK – here, Lucozade from 2015. Surprises me that Virgin Radio and Primesight didn’t think of doing something similar, when both were owned by SMG.
- Good, long-form article about sports radio in Melbourne. Includes discussion of the (temporary?) decline of SEN’s audience, and digital network EON’s apparently troubled launch.
- Anyone want to buy a radio station? Here’s one in the sun. US $230,000, for a station on the coast in Northern Queensland. Total population, however, makes it quite hard to earn from, by the looks of things.
Elsewhere
- North Korea: How media and the internet work – USB sticks as a network. /via Benedict Evans
- Doha: “We grew monthly Facebook video views 500% to 100M in six months. Here’s what we learned.” – Al Jazeera share their secrets
- Ireland: Oh, hooray. OnAir Coach has written a blog post especially for me. Ten points, Nails.
- New Zealand – any advertising or sponsor on New Zealand radio on Good Friday/Easter Sat/Sun means an instant $10,000 fine by the regulator. You’re not even allowed to reference any brand names. Personally, I quite like the idea of advertising-free days.
- If a company put censors in fridges, I hope they were wearing heavy coats. (This is a joke for literally one reader).