James Cridland’s Future of Radio: The truth about online live linear radio; and Katz Gets It

Posted on by 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

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James Cridland’s articles

United States

  • Apparently NPR views podcasts as a way to get young people listening to the radio. At least, this executive does. At least, that’s what he’s saying in public in front of his member stations. Putting those excuses aside, there’s a reason that NPR isn’t called “National Public Radio” any more: it’s there to make a more informed American public however they choose to consume NPR’s content, surely? Doesn’t podcasting achieve that goal? (And there’s plenty of evidence that people aren’t switching on the radio when they hit 35.) All this seems a bit of “transmitter mindset” thought. NPR in many ways reminds me of the BBC: lots of bright people who totally grasp what the future will bring, but some old-think people near the top still strangling the organisation with public utterances like this.
  • Small internet radio station notes that it’s impossible to make much money from them but launches anyway. From the piece: The station says the playlist will include Johnny Cash singing in German, Billy Joel singing in French, Regina Spektor singing in Russian, Arlo Guthrie singing in Ndbele, and a rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night” in Yiddish. I hope he’s got a massive streaming server, because I suspect with a music policy like that, he’ll be swamped with listeners. :cough:
  • A Closer Look At The Future Of Radio – from Stacey Lynn Schulman at Katz in the US. Good piece and quite refreshing to hear from the US industry, as it highlights other ways to get the most out of radio station content other than a live stream. I like this bit: To be sure, digital consumption is leading the growth of the expanded media day – and that includes streaming media via Web and mobile apps (60%+ depending on the platform). But what is also “sure” is that digital growth is not coming at the expense of AM/FM radio. In fact, although TV suffered a slight loss (-1%), it’s fair to say the increase in digital behavior is barely impacting traditional broadcasters at all. Consumers are simply becoming better multi-taskers, availing themselves of technology that allows them to simultaneously consume various forms of content. – yes. Yes. This.
  • Amazingly detailed piece from Sarah Koenig about journalism and how she produced Serial. I found this fascinating: and shows that great content needs a large amount of work. It’s why Serial did so well; and why I find many podcasts consisting of three people round a microphone waffling on for far too long about tech news are rather unfulfilling. Not just me, either – Short Is Beautiful is a rather nice article making that point. Meanwhile, Podcasts: in search of standard measurement – this is the main thing holding podcasting back, and nobody seems quite to have understood how to fix it. The answer is probably open standards, I suspect.
  • Stop using Google Trends, journalists. Here’s how Trends works, and why you probably shouldn’t write a story on it
  • Nice profile of Acast, a podcast company, in NiemenLab. 49% of their users don’t listen to commercial radio, as one interesting data point.
  • Such A Seductive Thought – Doug Erickson has a word or two about over-reliance on music testing. Matt Deegan sniffily responds on Facebook, when I shared this, saying: “How seductive to think a radio station’s success comes from luck.” Ouch!

United Kingdom

  • When broadcasting fairness and balance isn’t fair or balanced – another piece on the issue of balance.
  • Bill Rogers reveals that News Corp’s purchase of Wireless Group was almost free money, funded by the collapse of the British pound after the Brexit vote. Hmm. Was The Sun’s campaign there solely to bankroll Murdoch’s purchase of Alan Brazil’s breakfast show?
  • A British Radio Play Is the Better Independence Day Sequel – a lot of Americans express surprise that the BBC still makes radio drama. This one’s interesting, because it was on BBC Radio 1, the top-40 format station; and it was, essentially, a great big advert for a new film. Probably safe to say that it wouldn’t have seen the light of day had the idea been dreamt up in 2016.
  • The BBC’s iPlayer Radio app is going global, reports Engadget. The very reason you’d want it – that you can download radio programmes in astonishing quality to play back later without using your precious mobile bandwidth – appears to have been taken out of the international model, though, probably because of rights.
  • Excitingly close to launch… Radioplayer Car to launch this quarter with live traffic info. More and more I’m thinking that the future of radio is “user experience”, the tri-offer of Content, Interface and Technology. I don’t think anyone’s yet cracked the Interface bit; and the Technology bit appears to be the raison d’etre of much of the radio industry: yes, we have broadcast, but it’s meaningless without the other two bits.
  • The BBC World Service has shrunk rather alarmingly. Between 2010-2015, it lost 1 in 4 jobs. I’m enjoying having it available 24/7 on DAB+ here in Australia, but its imaging has declined in recent years: it sounds much less confident, coherent and wordly-wise than it used to. I suspect the imaging people were one of the first to go: it’s very audible.
  • The BBC got a reorganisation again last week. If I understand the new BBC structure correctly, BBC Radio is now in charge of BBC Radio 5Live, rather than BBC News. And there’s still a BBC Radio division. That’s really jolly good news.

Australia

  • “smoothfm now a lifestyle destination” – NOVA Entertainment rewrites how a radio station website works?
  • ‘Radio needs to get back to the basics‘ – an element of truth in this, marred by a “consultants” jibe, and a bit too much of “things were much better in the old days”. It’s really easy to be rude about consultants: since they don’t employ you, it’s a no-risk, if lazy, crowd-pleaser. Some consultants do know their stuff, though. Hint.

Elsewhere

  • HD, DRM30, DRM+, DAB, DAB+ … what the world needs now is another digital radio standard. Step forward… China. Looks like they’ve invented a way of doing HD Radio (or DRM+ on FM) without the patent costs? Whatever, launching another standard is nuts.
  • Poland: Astonishing developments in Poland (in the EU), where the media is being gagged. If the EU has any chutzpah, perhaps it might tell the government there to stop.
  • Poland: pirate TV in the 1980s, as Solidarity hacked Polish TV. This is fascinating. (I seem to remember that TV was also ‘hacked’ in this way in the UK, too.)
  • Doha, UAE: The Future of Audio Challenge – strange new thing from Al Jazeera. You can give Al Jazeera a bunch of ideas to fix the future of audio. If you really think that’s a good idea.

James Cridland

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