James Cridland’s Future of Radio: The FCC Main Studio Rule abolition is great. Plus, Global launch over 30 stations

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.

---

James Cridland’s articles

• The Main Studio Rule – U.S. radio’s biggest opportunity in years. Also in audio.
• Hybrid Radio: Methods to Achieve Switching From Broadcast to IP – quite a dry piece (from me) but some useful takeaways in it for every streaming radio station
• From podnews: Do you do a podcast? Here’s how your podcast show notes display in different apps

United States

• The biggest revenue-earning non-game iOS app is no longer Netflix. It’s… Pandora.
• The Main Studio Rule – U.S. radio’s biggest opportunity in years
• Hybrid Radio: Methods to Achieve Switching From Broadcast to IP – quite a dry piece (from me) but some useful takeaways in it for every streaming radio station
• How Smart Is Radio On Smart Speaker Growth?

United Kingdom

• Global quietly launch over thirty new radio services in their apps, reports Radio Today. They are all brand extensions of their existing ones. Stations include (unlimited?) skips, and programmes can be downloaded to listen-to offline.
• Backtiming Back In Time – James Masterton with an amusing look back at history playing a networked show on tape. Coincidentally, a job I also did for a few years.
• What’s the appeal of slow radio?, asks The Spectator
• Total radio revenue grew 11.1% year on year in Q2 2017
• Are You Wasting Your Time with Social Media? – David Lloyd’s post is one of his most popular, which does rather underline the massive disconnect I observe between many radio station programming and online teams.
• The smart speaker stuck on BBC Radio Guernsey

Australia

• Fab radio station building from 1971 in Inverell.
• Powerhouse Women In Media from the Radio Alive conference
• During the week, at the start of the Queensland election period, ABC Brisbane had a 15-minute phone-in with an Editorial Policy wonk on ABC rules. Clever idea – a surprising amount of calls, and I learnt quite a lot. Tackled quite a lot of stuff head-on, and was an educational listen. (Other Aussie broadcasters are not required to be impartial, even in an election period).

Elsewhere

• France: RTL is moving (after a takeover), and has donated the artwork from its old HQ back to the original artist.

• Ireland: Digital hasn’t killed the radio star #lazybugglesheadlines