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
- Is triple j’s Hottest 100 the Biggest Streaming Radio Event in the World?
- A Lesson In Radio’s Future From 1941
United States
- Triton Digital receives continued Media Rating Council accreditation for streaming audio measurement – as Facebook’s recent issues show, it’s important to have a credible measurement system for online radio. I’ve dug quite deeply into Triton’s: it’s a good, consistent, standard.
- Meanwhile, Facebook admits its 10th measurement mistake since September
- The Radio Diaries DIY Handbook – an interesting and detailed online publication on how to make story-based radio/podcasts. /via Matt Wade
- US stations have (less than) 45 days to switch their satellite setup – important news for US radio engineers. If you know one, forward this to them in case they haven’t seen it.
- Pandora has a fake listening problem – so do their advertisers /from Pierre Bouvard of Westwood One. I like Pierre’s willingness to call this problem out, and that he is doing it on behalf of all of radio.
- Resistance Radio — an event in early June (in Brooklyn) showing how to use pirate radio for political reasons. Don’t do it, kids, it’s illegal. 😉
- US: Interesting to see the arguments for and against having to have a studio in your broadcast patch. Some of the radio groups I’m in are angrily debating the pros and cons of networking programming – but this isn’t a debate about that: it’s one about whether we need radio stations to have a dumpy little room full of faders and a microphone in their transmission area. You can do outstandingly good local programming without one; and very poor non-local programming from your high street.
- SiriusXM to buy “struggling” Pandora? Would be a nice, complementary, fit: live and linear broadcasting merging with an algorithmic, interactive service. Also, note “struggling” Pandora.
- A Lesson In Radio’s Future From 1941 – will FM succeed, asked this journalist: and then gave a very good explanation of what would make it a success.
- “There is no such thing as the perfect length for a podcast.” – ranty, missed-point blogpost from Libsyn. As I’ve said before, a podcast should be as long as it needs to be – but no longer.
United Kingdom
- The quarterly radio figures, RAJAR, are out. Digital listening has increased, and digital-exclusive station BBC Radio 6 Music has, once more, posted record figures. As have newstalk station LBC: their new figures this week show they’re doing brilliantly. As ever, you’ll find all these fancy graphs at media.info – just search for the station you’re interested in.
- “How much is a Facebook partnership worth?” asks Matt McAlister – one of the most important bits is that one Facebook share means 4.5 pageviews on average. I’d have thought it was a bit higher.
- A donation of £10,000 will help visually impaired across the UK. I’ve done a little work with the British Wireless for the Blind Fund, and it’s a side of radio that many of us forget. Good for them.
- Back in February, Spotify dug deep into the UK’s radio listening figures (still relevant)
- Spotify now officially has more UK listeners than Radio 1 claims this pro-streaming website; though Spotify don’t actually release country-specific figures, so not quite sure how they can claim these figures are official. I also suspect that they are trying to conflate monthly active users with weekly Radio 1 reach, which is also not really comparing like with like: monthly reach is much higher. However, the point that music streaming is making significant inroads into broadcast radio is, in itself, true.
- BBC journalist learns how to make a sandwich – I’m still not quite sure I understand the point of this story, but then, my country seems a foreign place these days. And given British media is under heavily-regulated election rules, I guess sandwiches are safe.
- Video: if everyone talked like a BBC news reporter… – much amusement. Also see the Aussie one just below…
Australia
- Video: a radio presenter on a date – funny, and also highlights the need for us to use the same language as our listeners do
- A TV commercial for a radio station in 1985 – quite nice, though I still don’t really understand the station’s format!
- SURG FM makes it to iHeartRadio – interesting to spot Aussie student stations signing on
- Is triple j’s Hottest 100 the Biggest Streaming Radio Event in the World? (My article)
- ABC local radio has learnt some brilliant guaranteed listener-attracting topics from BBC local radio. (I’m joking, kind of – and actually this is quite interesting.)
- You’re not funny – the benefit of harsh (but fair) feedback.
- Not sure which I should be more annoyed about with this: a) a lazy Buggles headline b) future of media panel and I’m not in it
Elsewhere
- Ireland: Your Daily Radio Message (from a few Fridays ago) – via Nails Mahoney (you might subscribe?)
- France: Interesting to see Euronews move from 1 to 12 channels in different languages. I talk a lot about how technology has changed the way we make radio, and this is a good example (even if it’s TV).
- Germany: Second most popular Alexa skill? The German Radioplayer – natürlich!
- France: DAB Receivers in 12 Percent of French Households – which I found quite high, given that DAB (“RNT”) is not very widely used there
- Belgium: Even if my lapel mic weirdly stopped working just beforehand, it was great fun presenting live from Brisbane to Antwerp.