James Cridland, 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.
Above: here’s what happens if you let TuneIn control the radio experience on smart speakers: you get a brand new radio station appear with an old logo. Bad TuneIn.
- An article from me about the Radio Alive conference last week.
- The new LBC News has just gone live, a 24-hour national rolling radio news channel for the UK. You can hear it over here. Oddly the UK has never really had a national rolling news service like this – the closest we’ve had was London’s “News Direct 97.3 FM” from ITN. Here’s a clip of that. The BBC did BBC Radio 4 News FM for two months in 1991 – here’s a clip of that. And there was also DNN in some parts of the UK, though I can’t find a clip anywhere.
- John Humphrys returns to radio as he joins Classic FM – clever move!
- Radioplayer makes it to Italy. Good news for radio!
- It turns out that Australian radio presenters have been historically given full protection against defamation cases. I find that surprising: I certainly wasn’t.
- Adam Bowie looks at the #RAJAR figures and pulls out the interesting stories, as ever
- 30.4% of radio listening in Australia is to DAB (in coverage areas). Surprisingly high, given no radio station appears to ever mention it here. I learnt lots about DAB in Australia at the #CBAAconf – here’s some notes.
- There are fewer new ideas in television. That’s official, according to UK regulator Ofcom.
- In Brisbane, “local” radio station 4BC (which rebroadcasts 2GB excepting news, travel and ads) is moving in with new owners Nine. On the plus side, that means I get a radio studio half a mile away from my house, at the top of Mount Coot-Tha. On the negative side, there’s probably no reason for them to actually build a radio studio. I hope they do, mind.
- It’s official – DAB means radio, at least in UK English. Ian Deeley has spotted something neat in the iPhone keyboard
- Key Dynamics Shaping Radio’s Future – Francis Currie’s thoughts are good, and worth a read