James Cridland’s Future of Radio: S-Town is 8x bigger than Serial, kind of. Plus the UK’s golden age of radio
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
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.
‘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.
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.
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).
