James Cridland’s International Radio Trends: Ransomware, Asia, and a radio station just broadcasting podcasts

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: How Australia listens to radio. The hard-to-find platform shares (which are valid only in the capital cities, still the only place where DAB+ is).

• Entercom was hit by a ransomware attack in September – it cost them at least $2.4m. They’re not the only ones, too – Cadena SER was also hit. Ransomware is a particular threat to radio, given our high reliance on computers.
• New research across Asia reveals radio is still strong – good to see these figures. Worth making really clear that the data is of people aged 16-39 – audiences who are, it seems, falling out of love with live, linear radio in Europe and the US.
• Who’d have thought it – online advertising doesn’t actually work. A useful long read, highlighting some things to know. In particular, stop paying for AdWords for your own name, which is a pointless thing to do.
• Britain is a nation of ‘desk jockeys’ with half of workers listening to music while they work – some useful research from Scala Radio. It should be pointed out that “music” doesn’t mean “Spotify”, it can also mean “radio”.
• BBC Sounds could be coming to Sky TV and NOW TV (and therefore, one would hope, Roku boxes). I was quite pleased to have been part of the team to get radio into iPlayer all those years ago, and it was disappointing to see its removal.
• The reaction to RTÉ switching off their DAB broadcasts has been quite negative. Ireland has a lot to lose from Government’s anti-RTÉ stance says an Irish Times commentator, making it relatively clear who they think are to blame (though also to blame are RTÉ themselves, and a commercial radio industry blinkered about the concerns of new competition, rather than thinking about expansion). I love that there’s pirate DAB in Ireland, doubly-so now. The market will show the way.
• Meanwhile, on DAB in London, a new form of radio broadcasting in London – a radio station consisting of nothing but podcasts. Riddle-me-this: podcasting is clearly showing an appetite for speech radio targeted at younger audiences. Yet where are the radio stations producing what consumers are wanting to listen to?
• And if anyone had any doubt about the contribution DAB has made in the UK, David Lloyd succintly makes the point: “Without DAB – the most exciting thing national radio would have had to boast about in (20 years) would be two AM re-brands.”
• Youth and Music – usage, curation and discovery. A fascinating presentation from #ASIradio2019 last week in Prague, and this one’s free to watch.
• A BBC Division Made Sponsored Content For Huawei – yes, this is BBC Worldwide content, and thus not available in the UK, but it still does the BBC tremendous reputational damage. Mind you, for many of us, the BBC is apparently just famous for Top Gear, if the output of its BBC Brit channel is anything to go by.