James Cridland’s Future of Radio: The secret to achieving a growing radio industry?

James Cridland, the radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference. He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.

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James Cridland’s articles

• I’m back from speaking in four different countries and taking twelve flights – including a fun 24 hours in Romania, a country I’ve never visited before. If you’re interested in aeroplanes or a rather dull travelogue, knock yourself out with this.
• I also wrote the secret to achieve a growing radio industry – possibly, at least.

Worldwide

• Canada: An interesting move by Corus: signing a well-known podcast to their platform, and getting to broadcast it on the air as part of the deal.
• Norway: the FM to DAB migration for larger stations… how’s that going? A view from the NRK.
• Sweden: advertising for a big radio station in the Stockholm subway. There are no frequencies here, nor any mention of “radio” – it rather hinges on someone knowing that Mix Megapol is a radio station. And I’ve no idea who the people are, not that it probably matters.

United States

• Be cautious with listener data. Some of it, at least…
• These surveys are nonsense (since both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are built-in to other companies’ devices), but Google is in the lead…
• Toyota is dropping Pandora from their in-dash systems
• Is the podcast bubble bursting? asks an editorial for the Columbia Journalism Review.

United Kingdom

• Missed the Next Radio ideas conference? Watch the whole lot, here, free, now – all in lovely video form. Yay!
• Five takeaways from Next Radio
• Next Radio Conference Finds Medium In Good Health
• Go team RadioToday UK, getting a mention on Iain Dale’s favourite podcast list… (though thankfully he doesn’t give me a critique!)
• Some great journalism grad school tips from Richard Horsman
• How is small-scale DAB changing the radio landscape? – interesting difference between DAB in the UK, which is open to everyone, and DAB in Australia, which is controlled by the incumbents (and therefore contains little which will challenge the status quo).
• Absolute Radio advertising in the London subway. Dave Berry was Capital breakfast so is well known to the small percentage of listeners who used to enjoy him there, I guess. Interesting choice of promoting “FM and online”; the out-of-London version that I saw promotes digital radio, and otherwise identical copy.
• The Herald in Scotland posts an astonishingly mysoginistic post. I have little problem with “hiring the best person for the job”, but this is something else.

Australia

• iHeartRadio Australia celebrates 5 year milestone – good to see its growth
• Interesting to note that Australian own-grown radio aggregator RadioApp now supports Siri. Presumably, your app does too?
• Breaking, as I compile this: Michelle Guthrie leaves her role as ABC Managing Director. Of the very limited information as I write this, it would seem not to have been her choice. Of my limited dealings with her, I was impressed at her attention to detail – the press and commentators have been harsh on her (possibly because of her gender).