James Cridland’s Future of Radio: Upload Radio launches, Apple renames podcasts (kind of), UK calls election
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
Upload Radio launches – now anyone can be on the radio, with this brand new business model. Yes, even I can make it on – be sure to tune in tonight at 6.00pm GMT, and you’ll hear me – under my radio name – doing a show.
United States
CEO Bob Pittman May Not Be Able to Save iHeartMedia From Bankruptcy. The most obvious point about iHeart’s latest financials are that the company now appears to freely admit that it simply can’t earn enough money to pay off their debts. Unfortunately, the US press sees this as radio being in trouble – whereas the reality, I think, is that companies gambled on an expansion plan that, ultimately, was too much. There’s no doubt that this failed gamble has meant less money to make great radio, worsened investor sentiment towards the medium, and has damaged all of US radio.
One of the best news podcasts out there: The New York Times on Bill O’Reilly and Fox News. The New York Times’s Daily is an excellently-produced show, and this one excellently conveys the buzz of a busy newsroom in a way that similar programmes from the BBC or NPR, for example, fail to do.
Apple rebrand podcasts: here’s what you need to update. Many commenters to this article on Facebook are a little depressed that they’ve stuck with the “podcast” name, and see it as just a little brand tidying. I suspect they’re actually phasing out the iTunes brand. Given the blurryness between a ‘podcast’ and a piece of on-demand radio content via iPlayer or Radioplayer, for example, it’s all getting a bit complex for consumers. David Lloyd on Twitter argued that we should take our cue from Netflix, etc, and just call it a “show”. And perhaps we should.
What You Need to Know About Radio StationID – interesting way to make radio appear better in-car. It uses song-fingerprints and some secret sauce to add station logos and now-playing information to the dash.
Interesting Kickstarter campaign for a little podcasting box fronted by Adam Curry to “optimise audio for voice”. I’ll be honest, I find his “No Agenda” show to be compressed so much it makes my ears go funny, but it should be something to watch, anyway.
The UK announced an election for June 8th. Some radio presenters discovered that’s when they’d booked their holidays. Election time in the UK Is fraught with rules and regulations – here’s a guide from David Banks, and for radio, a free General Election advice sheet for broadcasters from Devaweb and Paul Chantler. It probably doesn’t recommend that Parliamentary Candidates start their own, illegal, pirate radio station.
Meanwhile, at least one radio station excelled itself by playing a recorded news bulletin after the Election announcement which didn’t mention it. I don’t believe that it’s a bad thing to normally record news bulletins, but in this case, it destroys trust to knowingly broadcast something that was outdated. Worth learning lessons.
Is BBC Local Radio going to be mostly networked in future? David Lloyd is a bit worried it might be. Relaxation of regulations, as here, is a good thing assuming management use it positively. Unfortunately, BBC Local Radio management don’t have a brilliant track record.
Wonder when US media will question Donald Trump in same way Nick Robinson debated Teresa May on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme? Is the overly-deferential style of interview to blame for the country’s politics?
From 19’16” in his Radio Stuff podcast, Larry Gifford is impressed at BBC Radio 1’s visit by some royal guests
Someone at BBC News, weirdly, writes a piece suggesting podcasting is a bit like minidisc and doomed to fail. I was berated for suggesting that BBC News should toe the BBC corporate line, which I wasn’t particularly; I’ve seen too many pieces from BBC News that seem to assume that editorial independence means that they should ignore the experts in BBC Radio altogether.
British newspaper The Sunday Sport published this excellent story – “the curse of the BBC“. It’s a wonderful pastiche of the sometimes bonkers anti-BBC diatribe in other newspapers, though weirdly some media professionals appear to have taken it seriously.
I love this – BBC News in 1930 once decided, on a slow news day, that there wasn’t any news and just played the piano instead.
