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
- What should go in your top-of-hour ident to make people listen longer – by me. This has had lots of very nice feedback, which is nice, because I keep wittering on about it.
- Cars without radio are unsaleable, I say, in suspiciously fluent German.
United States
- Local TV and radio stations no longer required to have local studios – this is an excellent piece of news for radio listeners and radio companies; watch for my column this week in your favourite radio station website to discover why I think that.
- Doomed – “why the current model of (website) online advertising won’t survive” according to @AdContrarian
- Why Doesn’t Radio Have Better Displays in Car Dashboards? asks Fred Jacobs. Also noted, though not here, many radio stations broadcast, in their RDS signal, details of their jingles. “CUT 15 SLOW-FAST F STAGER” isn’t the world’s nicest piece of audience-facing information.
- Publishers might have to start paying Facebook if they want anyone to see their stories. Facebook denies this, but there’s probably a fair amount of truth in this. Certainly means you need to think carefully about your strategy. At Next Radio, their video boss was pretty clear that their plans are not to put their crown jewels onto Facebook.
- Audio: Goodness. Here’s how to handle a listener who doesn’t like the music you play and turn it into great radio. (Except it isn’t.) This is awful self-indulgent patronising rubbish, and the fact it was aired is just mind-boggling. Enjoy.
- What should go in your top-of-hour ident to make people listen longer – by me.
- Spotify May Have Killed The Radio Star, But WALT Lives #lazybugglesheadline. Contains a quote: “the voices of radio seem to have fled silently into irrelevance—broadcasting to a dwindling audience now more and more seduced by innovation and quick access.” I emailed the author saying “If Spotify has killed the radio star, why do 93% of Americans listen to radio every week? And why is this figure actually larger than it has ever been? Would it be too much to ask for some research? Or, indeed, a correction?” – naturally, no response.
- Video didn’t kill the radio star #slightlybetter #lazybugglesheadline
- Radio show helps addicts find new beginning
- The Joy of Finding Truly Local Commercial Radio – nice piece from Radio Survivor. If you read this and you know the folks behind it, please do tell them I think their blog is wonderful.
- Monetizing Online Radio: Stop, Collaborate and Digitally Listen
United Kingdom
- RAJAR, the quarterly radio audience figures, are out. Here’s how to see them. Some good blogs include Matt Deegan’s, where he’s making the not unreasonable point that we really ought to make a date for switchover and stop leaving the public guessing; Adam Bowie, where he’s managed to write an entire update without a chart; a simple but effective look at London from Paul Easton (and a rare look at quarter-hour figures). Adrian Fitch posts a fascinating graph showing what happens when you level the radio playing field and let commercial radio stations have more access to the airwaves. The newspapers were mostly full of top 40 BBC Radio 1’s breakfast show, which has its smallest audience ever; partly due to the fact, one suspects, that KISS and Capital are available nationally these days, but written up as if young people aren’t listening to the radio any more. They are. Meanwhile, satire website The Daily Mash claims that people find listening to static more preferable than Radio 1’s Grimmy; there’s no such thing as static on a digital radio, I’d boringly point out. And an interesting data point: Union Jack Radio, which this week started to sound a little better on DAB+ having been given a few more bits, now has 100,000 weekly listeners. Run by Futuri Media’s #engage platform, according to its release it’s now had 8m song votes in its first year. That is 1.5 votes, per listener, per week – a phenomenally high figure. (It’s a great listen, too).
- The preceding paragraph was long, wasn’t it? Other than RAJAR…
- “[if] you respect people’s attention and intelligence, you might be pleasantly surprised”: an awesome article showing things learnt while working at The Guardian in the UK, and plenty of learnings for radio, too.
- Work Beyond Radio – not heard of this event, but seems a very good idea to talk skills transferability from radio to other industries. We’ve a lot to offer.
- The BBC does a clever, simple, idea with big stars: it works so well, though. Take a look.
Australia
- Nice idea: a remix competition for @triplejunearthd – over 1,000 entries. The winner’s not bad either.
- How to consume media so you know what’s really going on. A nice piece, and I do wonder whether “how to consume media” should be something that people are taught these days. Along with “how to bloody use email”.
- ABC Calls for Submissions for its One Million Dollar Podcast Fund
- Think most voice over jobs are in radio? Think again.
Elsewhere
- Nobex works with Waze to bring real time traffic reports to stations. Nice use of tech.
- Media companies (and airports) being hit with new malware called Bad Rabbit, report @arstechnica
- Germany: cars without radio are unsaleable, I say, in suspiciously fluent German.
- Somewhere in the south of Europe: Catalunya Radio fans the flames of the independence movement in Spain
- Switzerland: they’re turning FM radio off.