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.net
James Cridland sent this week’s edition of his Links from Kuala Lumpur, where he spoke at the Asia Media Summit.
He also sent this photo with an explanation: “Kuala Lumpur’s Hot FM, on a TV channel this morning here. They were playing a pre-recorded telephone interview, and therefore there was nobody in the studio. Great distribution. Not so great experience.”
Here are James Cridland’s links for this week:
Africa
- Statistics about radio, and internet, in Zimbabwe. New stations launched, but all have links to government.
- Here’s the South African radio policy – no FM switch off, and can we have DABand DRM30 please, too? That’s a bit, um, unfocused. (§1.10f) In response to this, someone contacts me and says they should be doing DVB-T2 Lite. Hmm…
United States
- Audible is doing a Netflix and beginning to make its own audio content. More great opportunities (and some threat) for radio folk.
- Lazy Buggles headline in first line of this ‘secrets behind video marketing‘ article. Apparently radio died in 1979. Better tell the 90% that use it each week.
- A small piece about Voltair and PPMs, which I think will be the biggest US radio story this year. If you’re in a PPM market, like Sweden, Norway or Denmark, this is worth a read.
- Survey: News orgs are prioritizing mobile development and placing less emphasis on paywalls
- Growth in mobile advertising is opportunity for audio, says Jennifer Lane
- Embrace the disruption, says Perry Michael Simon – this is what I’ve been saying for decades, and it’s great to see others.
- VuHaus – pulls together filmed music performances from some US radio stations. Nice way of working together.
- The more you listen to Spotify, the more free Starbucks you can have. (Why hasn’t radio done a similar loyalty scheme?)
- FCC to iHeart: “We will fine you… (Dr Evil voice) ONE MILLION DOLLARS“
- Broadcasters and online video companies form ‘Video Advertising Bureau‘. Radio: there’s a hint – are you ‘radio’ or ‘audio’, and would it benefit to be working together to promote audio advertising across all platforms?
- Radio engineers – how will you cope with the leap second? There’s one coming on June 30th. At midnight. Good luck.
- NPR One, “the Pandora of News”, opens an API to make it easier to produce NPR One experiences on a variety of connected devices
United Kingdom
- The latest UK RAJAR figures came out last week. Radio 1 had a bad book – it’sbetween a rock and a hard place, says its controller Ben Cooper, writing in the Huffington Post. Paul Easton has how each London station is doing. media.infohas full RAJAR figures, including – for example – this amazingly successful radio station growth chart: congrats to Planet Rock.
- Capital and LBC owner Global Radio advised stations to drop HSBC story, say The Guardian. Blogger Newsmutt weighs in about Global Radio’s apparent suppression of the HSBC story. This is disquieting. What’s also concerning is that the large news organisations are simply rewriting a Private Eye story, rather than investigating whether this story has any merit. If the largest commercial radio company, which is family owned, is censoring the news for family reasons – as is alleged – surely this is worth more than a cursory rewrite?
- Shutting Down Pirate Sites – actually doesn’t work, and makes life harder for content owners, says this EU report
- Absolute (and Smooth) close an AM transmitter. What took them so long? And why only bother with one?
- Heh. BBC Radio 4 goes all Portuguese for a minute.
- Well, this device looks pretty smart and clever – nice simple way to enjoy radio and podcasts in the home. I reviewed this rather cheaper cousin last year…
- Excited to signed copy from David Lloyd of his new book How to make great radio. Valerie Geller gets early mention…
- How London’s NTS is helping to redefine live radio – including lazy Buggles intro
- The man-only panel is bad but the token-woman panel is worse – great Grace Dent piece highlighting why I hate panels at conferences
- BBC to open up their /programmes API for public use later this year
- Could Spotify Podcasts Finally Make Money From the Medium?, asks James O’Malley (I thought this about Deezer)
- If you’re using social networks to help you produce and research news stories, you should read this from Claire Wardle