James Cridland is Managing Director of media.info, and a U.K.-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.nets
James Cridland sends us this week’s edition of Weekly Links fresh from attending the International Radio Festival in Zurich. “Lots of incredible people who make radio, all in one place,” he says.
Links by James Cridland:
- TuneIn adds ‘premium version’ – audiobooks, sports coverage, and 600 ad-free radio stations: big news
- Want ratings success? – do an older brand extension. All these folk have.
United Kingdom
- BBC-funded research finds out that people don’t like life without the BBC. This is being reported as news, inexplicably. However, the full report is an interesting piece of research, particularly the verbatims about radio. C2DEs loathe BBC Radio, from the looks of things.
- Options for mobile journalists when that big story crashes the mobile phone networks – a long piece in the BBC’s College of Journalism website. When that big story crashes the mobile phone networks, let’s hope you’re not relying on those mobile phone networks to get your station to audiences…
- Pirate radio: How today’s rebels have exchanged the North Sea for coffee shops and restaurants
- Is Apple Music the death of radio? Good piece by Northern Ireland’s Tibus
- Global boy’s radio – not a Global station, more a vintage, Japanese, transistor radio.
- How the Murdoch press has waged a relentless campaign against the BBC(and why it’s worked)
- Whittingdale says that the Tories have no desire to destroy the BBC. So that’s okay then.
- Unless you want TV by diktat, defend the BBC, says Armando Ianucci – though he actually wants the BBC as it was 15 years ago, not the BBC of today
- Does the BBC have a part to play in killing local newspapers? Someindependent research says… no. Ashley Highfield (ex BBC, now boss of local newspaper company Johnstone) tweeted to say the same research said the BBC is killing local papers, quoting “There is no doubt that a new supply of licence fee funded local news gathered by the BBC will significantly increase the challenges faced by local newspaper digital services”. The research was behind a paywall, so possibly quite useful to cherry-pick responses. Well, not any more: here it is in the open; Jim Hawkins pulled out the following unequivocal quote on Twitter: “We consider the disruptive effects of online on the news business model to be a far greater issue for local newspaper publishers than any impact from BBC activities.”
- PRS for Music takes SoundCloud to court – ouch
Australia
- Someone posts in an Aussie Reddit subreddit, and 612 ABC Brisbane spots it as a story. Nice research!
- How news works: not checking a bad news story, and blindly republishing it because it sounds too good to be true. (Another ABC Mediawatch classic story)
- New Head of Digital Design for SCA – interesting to see radio taking digital design seriously in Australia
- “You’ll miss it when it’s gone: why public broadcasting is worth saving” – interesting piece about the BBC and ABC
United States
- A Video History of the American Radio Personality – twenty two minutes of US radio jocks on video
- Ten nice tips for decent managers, from Julie Zhuo
- Data showing most popular songs on Spotify from year of release. Do radio stations ever use this? If not, why, I wondered on Twitter. Some point out that yes, they do use Spotify stats. Some point out that it doesn’t take into account anything to do with burn. Which seems fair.
- How to license music for your podcasts.
- If people really like what you do, they make parodies of you. Like this parody of NPR
- WWL Radio – so good, the BBC has written a six-chapter love story about it.
- Logos – obvious enough it’s for a radio station? Larry Gifford makes a good point… – and the situation’s even worse in Europe, where we don’t even use FM frequencies any more.
- Heads up – ad blocking (coming soon to iPhones) blocks more than just ads
Other places
- Belgium: Interesting idea as VRT helps their young audiences with job hunting
- Indonesia: What I learned about mobile usage in Indonesia – lots of interesting thoughts