Radioland, with James Cridland - radio futurologist

It was interesting seeing one of the pieces of news coming out of Radio Alive, the radio conference in Australia, recently: the Australian radio industry are putting together a Podcast Working Group “to spearhead the development of the growing podcast industry in Australia”.     Their press release says: “Broadcast radio is highly regulated and audience measurement is tracked through the independently audited GfK Australian radio surveys. In contrast, the podcast industry is currently fractured, with no standard measurement system in place.”   Well… that’s not entirely true. I write a daily newsletter for the podcast industry, Podnews, so perhaps I can help demystify things a little in terms of podcast measurement.   Podcasting does have a standard measurement system in place. It rejoices in the name “IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines v2.0“ - normally shortened to IAB v2 - and it essentially monitors downloads of podcasts in a standard way. It’s been broadly agreed by podcast hosts and advertisers alike. Both major Australian podcast hosts, Whooshkaa and Omny Studio, use IAB v2 metrics to report to clients.   IAB Australia’s Audio Council - of which Commercial Radio Australia are a part - have also recommended that IAB v2 be used in the Australian market as well, and have released some guidelines reinforcing some of the work. The idea is that all podcast hosts should be measuring using IAB v2, and should theoretically return the same numbers.   To be fair, downloads are limited in usefulness. Some podcasts are downloaded but never listened-to; raw download numbers don’t give demographic information, either. But there’s a global standard.   It’s worthwhile comparing podcast measurement with broadcast radio’s research.   In Australia, there are three sets of broadcast radio research, not one. Commercial Radio Australia mentions GfK, who are used for the metro areas; but they also produce other sets of research using Xtra Insights. Community radio isn’t in either of these, so they have to commission additional work using McNair Ingenuity Research.   All three sets of Australian broadcast radio research return different numbers, and are compiled using different methods. And they’re not compatible, either, with radio research conducted in other countries. Indeed, there’s no global standard for measurement of radio listening - “a listener” is one that listens for five minutes in some countries, fifteen in another, “listened yesterday” in a third; Germany has no weekly figures at all; Ireland averages over the past twelve months; the UK averages over the last quarter, six month or twelve month period; Canada and the US have two systems; many markets aren’t even measured.   The global radio industry is fractured - disastrously so, when you consider that Apple Beats 1 or Spotify have one global measurement standard to sell against them. The lack of standards means it’s hard to compare different countries.   So, while podcasting has an agreed global standard, broadcast radio’s research is fractured and there is no standard measurement system in place.   Perhaps we should try to establish a Radio Working Group to see if we can fix this, and...

I still remember my first look round a radio station. In spite of writing to Signal Radio in Stoke-on-Trent and being ignored (shame on you, Signal), Radio Aire in Leeds held an open day, and I got to look round the studios. I remember being amazed by the equipment, and was astonished at how great the jingles sounded on the decent studio monitors; and the equipment everywhere.   Do you need an on-site playout system? The BBC’s ViLOR solution for their local radio stations keeps the fancy studios, but moves all the playout equipment into a few regional centres - so, as a presenter on a local station, you’re not pressing “play” on a computer in the basement any more, but one a few hundred miles away. The benefits here are obvious - easier maintenance, more efficient air-conditioning, cheaper studio facilities.   Speaking at Next Radio, RCS’s Philippe Generali unveiled a cloud-based system called Raptor, that moves all of the playout software for a typical radio station into “the cloud”: so RCS look after the racks and the transmitter link, rather than your radio station.   Do you need a music library? OmniPlayer’s playout system uses Spotify (as well as your local audio) so you’ll have access to any song that you need, almost.   Do you need expensive soundproofed studios? A few years ago, I wrote about Vista Radio, a company that I’ve been proudly working with for the last two years, who don’t have radio studios in their new facilities. Instead, their “open-air” studios are part of their office space. If you’re doing music programming, it’s unlikely you need the type of heavy soundproofing that legacy studios have; and if the only speech blocks are at breakfast, your office is quiet then anyway.   Do you need studios at all? For UK-based EDM station This Is Electric, their presenters are at home, using their own home studio (typically, a USB microphone into a laptop), controlling the playout software which is hosted for them by the UK company Broadcast Radio. The station is on DAB and on the internet.   Do you need offices at all? Google’s G-Suite or Microsoft’s Office 365 offers all the functionality for office work, alongside planning systems like WideOrbit or Aquira. For most jobs, there’s little need for anything other than a web browser.   The team at Aiir, who do radio websites, apps and many more things, don’t have a head office at all: and all work remotely from home. There’s no reason to spend all that money on rent and office space if your team are all remote workers.   I’m now hearing about FM stations in the UK who operate entirely virtually - no offices at all, presenters doing their shows from home (both live and voicetracked), and all back-office work being done by home-workers on systems based in the cloud. Many sales operations already work this way.   The discussion in the US earlier this year was all about “the local studio rule”, but, it seems the discussion for some forward-looking radio stations is whether they need a building at all. Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

New technology enables us to delight our listeners even more - particularly, radio operators are now offering more choice than ever before.   In Australia, Southern Cross Austereo have been doing a crafty job of launching additional brand extensions for rock and sport station Triple M, and top 40 channel Hit - so listeners can now enjoy Triple M branded stations playing modern rock, or classic hits, for example; while listeners who enjoy R’n’B Fridays on Hit can now find a channel that plays that music 24/7. The stations are available on DAB+ and online.   SCA’s work has resulted in 12% more audience for the radio company, in what they call a “brand-safe environment”.   104.6 RTL in Berlin, Germany, have also started doing something new just      last week that has helped offer more choice to their listeners - Arno and the Morning Crew, the live breakfast show from the station, is now available through their website and in their app with three different types of music. It’s the same live radio show that broadcasts on the #2-rated Hot AC station in Germany’s capital city, but now you can enjoy a version playing top 40 (“nothing but new hits”), or the show with a greatest hits format with songs from the 70s to now.   This is the first outing of this technology in Germany - Berlin’s “funniest morning show” plus three different music streams, all automatically stitched in.   In Vienna, Austria, Kronehit has a service within their app that allows you to listen to the station you enjoy, but skip songs or other elements that you don’t want to listen to. It automatically plays other, brand-relevant music, but continues to have the same presenters, weather, news and travel. They’ve been running this since June 2017.   And if you listen to Heart or Capital in the UK, you’ll hear a fair amount of national programming - but with presenter breaks that are occasionally local when they need to be. This method of “smart networking” allows a national presenter to still react to local events when they need to - from helping audiences with a power cut, to being able to promote their local breakfast shows when required.   New technology often has a bad name within radio chatrooms and forums: and there’s no doubt that poor voicetracking or networking is pretty obvious to listeners. But this new technology makes radio sound better and better able to compete against the world of Spotify and podcasting.   As Marc Haberland, PD at 104.6 RTL says, “radio’s strengths are music and the spoken word: presenters to move and entertain you, and news and information to keep you up to date and help you through your day.” Anything that helps keep radio’s strengths, but adds new choices to audiences, must be a good thing.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Why are you in radio anyway?   I had a conversation a while ago about FM RDS, that thing which tells you what radio station you’re listening to on a big screen in your car, so you don’t forget. For some reason, this US radio company that I was talking to didn’t have RDS. The fundamental question from the radio guy? “Yeah, but how can I earn money from it?”   There was an interesting article recently in a US publication - Can Podcasting Increase Your Ratings? - and another from Dick Taylor, asking What’s Radio’s Why? - in essence, what’s the point of radio?   For some reason, these two articles made a lot of things make sense. It reminded me of what drives people.   Some people reading this will think that they do radio to get ratings and revenue. That’s the reason why we do anything - ratings or revenue (and ideally both).   Others, though, think that they do radio for a different reason - and it’s a little simpler than “get ratings or get revenue”. Simply, we do radio (or a podcast, or a website, or a newsletter, or a conference, or any type of work) for one reason alone: to delight someone.   If we delight someone, ratings and revenue will surely follow. But I suspect that for many people, ratings and revenue isn’t why they’re in the business. They’re in it because they have an overwhelming urge to delight other human beings.   We can delight them by doing a good job covering stories they’re interested in. We can delight them by playing songs they love. We can delight them by being good company when they need it.   Global, the media and entertainment company headquartered in London, has an “Obsession Statement” rather than a corporate one. It’s a great thing, and I’ve been known to read it aloud in meetings where people are violently disagreeing or getting highly emotional about what they do. Because it’s OK to feel strongly sometimes.   Valerie Geller, when speaking at Next Radio about four years ago, said that our listeners’ health and safety should be our first priority. She didn’t say ratings and revenue (though she’s also seen plenty of that). Instead, caring for our audiences is number one.   Perhaps those who are in radio for the “ratings and revenue” lack the passion of those who are in it to delight audiences. And maybe, just maybe, that lack of passion results in some of what we hear on the air.   Are you in the business of ratings and revenue? Or are you in the business of delighting our audience?Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Some clips of some of the best speakers at the radio ideas conference.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

The secret to achieve a growing radio industry could be as simple as this   I’m writing this in London, where the doors are (as I type) just about to open for Next Radio, the radio conference that I run here with my friend Matt Deegan. It’s a positive radio conference with an uplifting feel.   Go to a radio conference in the US or Canada, and there won’t be very many smiling faces. There’s a general feeling in the US and Canada that radio is managing decline. But in other countries, radio is behaving differently.   The UK commercial industry has grown, over the past year, by 5.2%. It’s now a US $887m market.   Australian commercial radio has grown too - over the past year, metro stations growing 3.8% to a US $573m market (and there’s more from the regions, too).   Commercial radio in Finland is growing, too. Their figures are harder to decipher, but July grew by 6.6% over June; and June grew by 17% over May. The market’s comparatively small at about US $93m - but it’s doing better than the UK if you bear in mind Finland’s small population.   These aren’t the stories you hear from the US and Canada; and I’m often asked why.   It’s not an easy answer.   The UK’s seen relaxation of some regulations, and has a strongly multiplatform market (with AM/FM listening at under 50%). Brand consolidation has been an important part of the industry, as has national broadcasting.   Australia’s regulation has historically been quite relaxed, too, but it isn’t particularly multiplatform. Brand consolidation has occurred here as well, with great swathes of radio stations losing their heritage callsigns in favour of more straightforward national branding.   Finland has rejected digital radio, so isn’t multiplatform to any great extent. Much of radio is national, though there are a good number of local stations too. There’s no particular story of brand consolidation either.   So - at first glance, there’s nothing in common particularly to these markets. Except, I think, there is. And it’s probably rather more simple than you’d think.   In the UK, commercial radio has an effective industry body, Radiocentre. They promote the medium to agencies, lobby government, and sing radio’s praises. They’re really very good at it.   In Australia, commercial radio, too, has an effective industry body. It’s called Commercial Radio Australia, and they, too, promote the medium to agencies, lobby government, and sing radio’s praises. They’re tenacious and efficient.   And in Finland, their industry body is Radio Media. They lobby government, promote the medium to agencies, and market radio as well: to great effect.   Unlike North America, these industry bodies only look after radio. They don’t represent television broadcasters as well. There’s no conflict of interest here. Their only concern is a healthy radio industry. And they do that one job very successfully.   And, unlike North America, there’s one organisation doing everything from advertising promotion to lobbying and research. One, simple, straightforward organisation, made up of a membership of commercial radio broadcasters.   Perhaps one of the ways for a successful, growing,...

Talent plus brand = success? So, Chris Evans, the current presenter of adult-contemporary BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show - the largest breakfast show in Europe, by cume - has announced that he’s leaving the station later this year.   He’s off to Virgin Radio, where he’s going to do the breakfast show.   Side note: it’s the same “Virgin Radio” brand, owned by Virgin Enterprises, but not the same station. The original Virgin Radio was bought (and sold) by Chris Evans himself, but after a few more ownership changes, it was rebranded as Absolute Radio. The Virgin Radio brand is now licensed to News UK, part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Evans once described business discussions with Murdoch as “dealing with the devil”.   The current Virgin Radio is a station on DAB Digital Radio, and has no outlet on FM. It broadcasts - in mono - on a transmitter network that only currently covers 77% of households.   It’s a competitive market, too. It’s one of 44 national radio stations in the UK, and typically a radio listener will have a further fifteen or so local radio stations available too on their DAB set - and that’s before the obvious additional choices of Spotify and podcasts.   Virgin Radio has 413,000 weekly listeners (BBC Radio 2 has 14.9m).   So, why on earth would Evans make the leap?   It strikes me that there are a few questions here:   Is radio’s most important weapon the talent? Evans is a known presenter, and will pull in the audience: and this is why he’s been hired by News UK. Is music a differentiator any more? Stations can promote their music position as much as they like, but real music fans have Spotify for that, and the rest of us want music that’s okay alongside people we like listening to. Do talent these days want more creative freedom? Even during his time at the BBC, Chris Evans has wanted to shape his own destiny - running a passion project, a car festival, alongside his breakfast show (and then a relatively disastrous tenure at reheating Top Gear and TFI Friday). There is much more freedom with a commercial company than a public service broadcaster; and with the internet, much more opportunity still. Would Evans have leapt to work at a station called “The Badger” or “Hot 89”? I’d argue that the Virgin brand was fundamental - not just to attract new listeners, but to attract talent, too. News UK own a set of local FM radio stations across the UK (which, in total, are available to 6m listeners (and currently reach about 900,000 weekly). Would these be better served by rebroadcasting Virgin Radio, which recent rule changes would allow? News UK also own, of course, The Sun and The Times. There are some cross-promotion possibilities here. But how much money is News UK likely to want to invest?   This is real investment in radio - especially digital radio. I hope it works out for everyone concerned. Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Naming your own radio station: what’s yours?   “If you could own a radio station, what would you call it?”, posted a man called Nick in a radio discussion board on Facebook the other day.   Now, this Facebook group is mostly comprised of people complaining about how words are being pronounced in radio news bulletins, or photographs of car registration plates that vaguely look like call letters, so this was a welcome change of pace. I grabbed some popcorn and started reading.   Quite a few imaginary station names ended with “FM”. Some used a frequency, too. I’d suggest that neither of these are a particularly good idea.   Jacobs Media have recently done a study of public radio listeners in the US, and one of the findings lept out at me as being a good indicator of the changing world of radio consumption.   They asked respondents how they listened to their “home” public radio station. 69% of the time, listeners used a radio. 29% of the time, they were using some form of digital device (a “computer stream” being twice as popular, incidentally, as a mobile app).   Now, these are public radio listeners. The average age of the respondents was over 59. These are long-term, traditional, radio listeners - albeit ones who are internet savvy enough to complete a questionnaire on their favourite radio station’s website. But even these people are spending nearly a third of their time listening to the radio on something other than an AM/FM receiver.   So, I’d warn against using a frequency, or “FM”, in your station name if you can avoid it; since more and more listeners aren’t using either of those things to listen.   Back in the Facebook group, other people were coming up with interesting names. “The Pit”. “The Local”. “Vault”. “Planet Mate”.   In a book The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, he discusses things he calls “affordances” - little clues to help us understand how something works. A really good example of an “affordance” is that metal strip on a office door: it’s put on the side of the door that you push, and it’s there precisely to let you know that you can push this door, and which side to push it.   “FM” or “105.9” is a little clue - an affordance - that this is a radio station. There’s a radio station in the UK called Jazz FM that hasn’t broadcast on FM since 2005; but people know, at least, that it’s a radio station (even if they’re confused as to why they can’t find it on their FM dial).   So, while I love the idea of calling a rock station “The Pit”: at least off-air, in its logo, it needs an affordance, too. I’d make the logo read “The Pit Radio”. Without it, after all, “The Pit” could be anything. The early days of digital radio in the UK were full of radio stations with random names - “The Groove” was one - that needed always clarifying with “we’re a radio station” afterwards, and that made no sense at all.   The world of smart speakers makes station names doubly important: since frequencies or wavebands are pointless on these devices.   It’s certainly the case that branding radio stations is more complicated now than it’s ever been. The word “Radio” might be the most important brand we have.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for

Can a smart speaker replace a kitchen radio?   Last week, a small fluffy bundle arrived in our house. We now have a small puppy - she’s lovely, thank you - and the effect to my radio listening has been interesting.   Next to the sofa was a jumble of wires - something to charge an iPad, some USB-C connectors to charge laptops and mobile phones, and a different USB connector to charge an ebook reader and, oh god, my doorbell, I have a wifi doorbell, it needs charging every so often, heaven help me, what has happened.   Anyway, you’re probably well ahead of me: but for some reason, wires and puppies seem to have a fatal attraction for one another, so after seeing at least one of those cables being chewed and ruined, the charging station is in the much less satisfactory location of the kitchen.   Like any normal household, we don’t have enough plug sockets. I could unplug the microwave, but that would be foolish, so instead, I unplugged the only other thing I could unplug: the radio. Yes, the radio is gone. And this receiver is the one I use most often (particularly now, given puppy’s little bladder means she gets us up at 5.45am).   In the radio’s place, in one of the six USB ports that I now have available, is a little Google Home mini speaker. It is this that I’m now having to use as a radio.   This has been interesting. Instead of the 60-odd stations available to me on DAB+ in Brisbane, I now have probably a hundred thousand to choose from; and many more podcasts, too.   My listening habits have changed - but probably not in the way you think.   I’m still listening to my local public radio station, ABC Radio Brisbane, given it’s got decent local news and I recognise the voices there. I ask “Hey, Google, listen to ABC Radio Brisbane” and it responds that it’s playing “Six hundred and twelve ABC Brisbane”, which ought to be “six-twelve ABC Brisbane”, except this branding was dropped 20 months ago. It works, though.   But I’m also listening much more to my local community music radio station, 4ZZZ. This station doesn’t broadcast on DAB+ here in Brisbane, and so I listened very rarely to it. Being on the level playing field of the internet, however, I’m remembering to ask for it rather more often. “Listen to 4-zee-zee-zee” is the strange incantation that I have to use: the station’s branding of “four-triple-zed” doesn’t work, of course.   I’m also listening to on-demand news (which, I might point out, can now include “Podnews podcasting news”, my daily news service, on both Google and Alexa speakers). But no, I’m not listening to any overseas radio. (Few people ever do, says the research).   There’s no doubt that smart speakers are being used more than ever to listen to the radio, and that’s good news for the industry. I’ve certainly discovered that it is a very viable replacement for a kitchen radio. But it’s been interesting how it’s changed my radio habits, too - rediscovering a radio station on an inconvenient waveband, and hearing a bit more on-demand content, too.   Checking how your station is presented on these speakers is probably a good idea. I’m not of the opinion that you need “a skill” necessarily; but you certainly need to ensure that the service works as you’d expect, and with the spoken brand you’re using on-air. Both a Google Home Mini and an Amazon Echo Dot are very cheap to buy, and you probably ought to. Support the show.This...

Is object-based media in your future? “Object-based media” sounds very techie. But as I stumbled across a BBC Research & Development web page last week highlighting where they've got with it, I am reminded how powerful the idea is (and how much it could play a part in the future of radio).   So, what is object-based media?   If you're recording a radio program, typically the only thing that you record is the output of the board - just a stereo recording of the stuff you've done. That's just fine; later, you'll take that recording and play it on the radio, and it'll sound okay.   But instead of just recording the output of the board, you could record a little more than that.   Imagine if you recorded the audio from every single channel on the board - and also record the position of every single fader on the board in real time.   With the right kit, that would enable you to recreate the entire program, if you wanted to. But because it's recorded every single thing that went into the program - every ‘object’ - it allows you to do much more.   You could make adjustments based on your audience's needs. You could remove music beds to make it easier to be heard; or you could take all the current music out and replace it with 80s songs (and still hear the presenter effortlessly talk to the vocals, including their fader pumping).   You could extract a good interview, without any music bed, for use in news bulletins or podcasts.   You could tweak and polish - correcting an over-eager fade there, or a correspondent who you cut slightly early here, or to fix the levels for an enthusiastic phone caller.   Or be rather more radical - you could much more easily telescope a three-hour program to fit a two-hour repeat.   Given the right additional information from a producer in the form of metadata, you could even make different lengths automatically. Perhaps automatically make a version that's as long as a listener wants it for their commute. Perhaps strip all the music out.   Object-based media is a brilliant idea: made by engineers who understand the radio production process. And it’s also just as applicable for TV as radio.   The BBC have explained what they’re doing over on this website - you should take a look.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

iHeartRadio - the future of radio? iHeartRadio has done something clever this week.   In the US, the iHeartRadio app contains a bunch of features - not just live radio streams, but podcasts, algorithmic radio stations and (if you pay for it) a music service much like Spotify.   A few weeks ago, it added a feature that brings it up to parity with Spotify - its own version of “Discover Weekly”, that feature that uncannily works out the kind of music you enjoy listening to and gives you more new stuff that you've otherwise not heard. This service is the main reason I stick with Spotify: so it's interesting seeing iHeartRadio adding its own.   Last week, it added something that even Spotify doesn’t have - intelligent segues. Up until now, every music service has essentially played a set of songs one after another, with great big gaps between them. Many bright young programmers were quite happy with this - because they hadn’t come from a world of radio, where you can do some lovely things with a proper segue. I’ve lost count of the amount of music services I’ve spoken to who have looked at me with a blank stare when I talked about what a segue was.   iHeartRadio appears to have fixed this, though - working with some outfit called Super Hi-Fi to produce proper, decent segues, whatever you’re playing on the service. And, yes, volume levelling too.   In the UK, the latest MIDAS survey from RAJAR, which came out very recently, shows that during the work day, about 17% of the UK listens to the radio, but about 12% are listening to on-demand music services (slide 17). That’s a considerable amount of listening to music services (in a country that doesn’t have Pandora or iHeartRadio, but does have Spotify and a number of other services). iHeartRadio’s strategy appears to be to invest in a product that competes with radio, and might one day take it over. That must have been quite a hard sell. But as they continue growing that product, it seems more sensible by the month. Up until now, radio’s main promotional tool has been to promote their music policies, to the exclusion of all else. But when you’ve online music services which are now capable of music discovery and even the subtle effect of a decent segue, now’s the time to focus, surely, on the other things that radio has to offer.   After all - why promote “the best music from the 80s, 90s and now” - when you could be promoting, instead, the thing that makes your product unique - the human beings.  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I’m six foot four, something that I’m acutely aware of in two situations: first, whenever I’m on an economy airline flight, and second, whenever I’m on a subway train in Asia.   Those useful straps from the ceiling - normally out of my way in the US and Europe, are all fighting to slap me in the face in subway trains in places like Japan, where the average height is 5’7” (171 cm) or Malaysia, where the average is 5’4” (164 cm). Those hand straps get a lot of use - just not by me.   Where I see discomfort, others see opportunity - and so it is that a new Japanese organisation called Wakino Ad Company has spotted that commuters holding on to hand straps is an...advertising opportunity.   Yes, the good folks at Wakino are hiring Japanese models with your ad in their armpits. This from a country where people have even rented out their thighs for advertising before now, so maybe it’ll catch on. The first advertiser is, it turns out, a laser hair removal company.   Radio’s ad model is, in the main, still based on 30-seconds of someone shouting at you, followed by five or six more people shouting at you, then a nice jingle and back to the music. We’ve typically been pretty bad at maintaining the price for these things, too, so the interruptions have grown longer and more often.   On visiting the United States in the mid 2000s, one broadcaster proudly told us that his station had 47 minutes of commercials every hour in the breakfast show. Yikes.   Re-thinking how the revenue model works is a challenge; but we need to keep thinking.   I’ve nothing particularly to base this on, but I have a feeling that the days of the six-minute-long advertising stopset, (and the banner ad, for that matter) are going away. We should be focusing both on increasing revenue AND on reducing the amount of spots sold. This isn’t just a rate integrity issue - it’s a programming issue, too.   African radio has done some clever re-thinking, as Steve Martin from the BBC told the Next Radio conference in 2013 - selling funeral announcements, hiring a village hall, and even moving all the commercials into one hour in the late afternoon (which astonishingly works).   I’d not recommend any of that - and certainly wouldn’t go for advertising in armpits - but any ideas for replacements for the long advertising stopsets would be welcome.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I spent last week at Podcast Movement in Philadelphia - a conference with 2,300 delegates, it dwarfs any radio conference I've been to.This was a well-run conference: running to time throughout, with ten different tracks that delegates could go to.Reflecting podcasting's diverse nature, some tracks were basic advice about how to promote your show, or what to do in your podcast intro. Other tracks were rather more commercial in nature, delving deep into cost-per-thousand, targeting and analytics.   Exhibitors offered everything, from microphones and mixers to hosting companies and guest-booking services. The conference hotel was packed, with a bar that was buzzing throughout. The thoughtful organisers had done a lot to encourage a diverse community spirit, even laying on childcare to those that needed it.It was also different for other reasons: it was wildly positive.Podcasting is still pretty small, even in the US. It's 4% of our total audio consumption, say Edison Research, and less than a fifth of the population listen to any podcast over the average week. Smart speakers are not being used for podcast listening to any degree. Google has only just woken up to podcasting. Revenue is small - the total US industry earnt just $314m last year.Radio, on the other hand? 58% of audio consumption (including satellite); 93% of the population listen every week; and smart speakers are having a significantly positive effect. Revenue? 43 times larger, at $13.8bn in the US last year.I bumped into a number of people who go to both conferences. All remarked how positive the podcasters were - and how negative the radio conferences are.   Is it the whiff of freshly-raised VC money? Is it that podcasters are younger than radio folk? Is it that they’re just more enthusiastic about the medium?   I believe there is plenty to be positive about for radio. In many countries it’s celebrating best-ever revenue, and best-ever audiences.   That’s why Matt Deegan and I run a radio conference every year - it’s called Next Radio, and it’s on 17th September this year in central London. You’ll enjoy over 25 positive speakers, with great ideas for radio and podcasting. You can buy tickets at https://next.radio   But in any case - when radio has far more audience, and far more revenue… why aren’t our conferences far more positive? Perhaps that’s something we can learn from podcasting.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Re-thinking and reinventing   Two stories last week made me think. First, this off-the-cuff tweet from a radio station in Scotland, having a day of “going retro” by… playing CDs. I shared this in a Facebook group, and it wasn’t long before the comments descended into Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen sketch. “Retro? I’ll give you retro,” said someone, before talking about cueing up 45s. “You had it easy,” said someone else, discussing editing on reel-to-reel. I remembered my first full-time radio gig, doing afternoon drive at The Pulse in Bradford. During a typical hour, I’d be playing a mixture of CDs and 45s; filling in full PRS returns, including record company and catalogue number. Each needed the levels setting and cueing to a suitable point. Every segue was, of course, live; selecting the right jingle or sweeper was up to me. I’d be running to the fax machine outside the studio, where the AA would send over barely-legible hieroglyphics about travel issues (“A58 WB of Keighley TTL expect delays”) and essentially blind-reading these on-air. The ads would be on individual carts which all needed fetching and putting away at the back of the studio; my news was at a clock-start at the top of the hour; without a producer I also needed to answer telephone calls and run contests myself. And somewhere in the midst of all this, I had to somehow work out something cogent to say. You can sometimes understand the viewpoint of the former presenters in the group - who mostly appear to be driving trains, it seems - that radio isn’t what it once was. It isn’t. When the music and the ad breaks are all available at the push of a NEXT button, you can concentrate on other things; and the output should be (and almost invariably is) better. The other piece of news was this piece of work by BBC News Labs, rethinking and prototyping online news story formats. It’s a good piece of work, informed by data. It suddenly struck me that much of the structure of radio hasn’t changed from the days of 45s and carts. We only got network news at the top of the hour twenty years ago, so that’s when we needed to take it. Many of us still break for news at the top of the hour, though, even if there’s no technical need for that any more (and plenty of evidence that news consumption is changing away from a “cram as much as you can” news bulletin). We’ve moved away from carts, but we’re still selling thirty-second ads, clumping advertising stopsets together, and shoving many of them to the back of the hour for some reason. (Try setting your alarm clock to 6.45am to discover how bad this sounds). There are plenty more thing we do in radio that haven’t changed in thirty years: a horrid old news jingle ‘because tradition’, using callsigns rather than a sensible brand, and the utter pointlessness of travel news. I love the idea of rethinking things. Much of the time, that process reveals that it’s always done that way for a reason; some of the time, it hits on something new. We should do more of it, don’t you think? Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

At last - a chance for global podcasting measurement?   James Purnell, the ultimate boss of BBC Radio, blogged late last week that ‘we need an industry chart for UK podcasts’.   He’s understood that the iTunes chart isn’t a chart at all, which is gratifying: that it’s a trending list, “which is great for audiences but content creators and distributors want to know reach and value.”   He writes that there’s no industry standard for a podcast chart; but there is an official top 40 for music; a sales chart for books; and of course an established “chart” for live radio (called RAJAR in the UK).   A few weeks ago, in a German radio conference, I asked what the weekly penetration figure was for radio - already knowing the answer. They don’t have one. I know that 90% of adults listen to the radio every week in the UK; that 93% of adults listen every week in the US; but Germany doesn’t have a similar figure, since they’ve never worked out radio audiences on a weekly basis. (86% listen to the radio on a daily basis in Bavaria, Germany, by the way).   Dig a little deeper, and there’s a myriad of differences between every country’s radio audience figures. Some use electronic pagers, some use websites, some use paper diaries; some are based on calling people at home; some revolve around knocking on doors. Some countries use more than one method.   In the UK, most radio stations are measured across their own unique transmission area. In Australia, there are distinct survey measurement areas (which your radio station’s own transmissions may only partially cover, or wildly exceed).   Ireland’s public numbers are based on “listened yesterday”, smoothed over a year’s worth of survey data. The UK is mostly driven by overall reach, a figure that the US calls cume. AQH is a standard currency in the US, but unheard of in most parts of Europe. Australia mainly uses share.   Norway measures radio in the same way as TV, but in most other countries, the two broadcast media are measured quite differently. The UK has an “other” column to indicate listening to radio stations who aren’t in the survey; Australia pretends they don’t exist. Some countries measure radio from 6am to midnight; others measure full 24-hours; others still measure 7am to 7pm.   I mention all of this because - yes - we need a proper chart for podcasting, and I’m delighted that the BBC is interested. It has, until now, refused to release its own podcast figures, claiming they’re “for the purposes of journalism, art or literature”.   However, podcasting is, by its very nature, global. We don’t need individual pieces of analysis for individual countries, working under different rules and different definitions. We need one standard way of measuring podcasts - wherever you are.   The IAB in the US have a standard methodology for measuring podcast downloads, which many podcast hosts are compliant with. That, at least, measures download figures in a consistent way; and podcasters moving from, say, Spreaker to Megaphone, will notice that the download statistics they’re given are roughly similar. That’s really helpful. We don’t need a new standard for that.   For actual consumption, NPR is working on RAD, an overly-complex measurement system designed to measure ads. It requires podcasters, hosts and app developers to all change their workflows to...

I was in the sunny German city of Nuremberg last week, as the guest of the lokalrundfunktage. The state media regulator for Bavaria helps run a big, impressive conference with a surprising amount of people there.   The most impressive thing to me was that I was speaking at 1.30pm, and everyone turned up at 1.25pm. As you might know from conferences, the concept of people being early is… well, it just doesn’t happen. Except in Germany, it appears.   Earlier in the day, research company Kantar TNS revealed some data for Bavarian radio listening, and it’s interesting to take a peek at it, since it reveals some interesting trends.   It says that 15% of people use DAB in Bavaria in a typical week - that’s up by over a quarter year on year, and for the first time, DAB is more popular than internet listening, at least in terms of total reach.   That’s quite a change for Germany. DAB had a bit of a poor launch in the country, where they originally used a different set of frequencies, L Band, to the rest of the DAB countries at the time. Some receivers coped with L Band - most didn’t. And because L Band was a higher frequency that was worse at penetrating buildings and, you know, trees, and things - it resulted in pretty awful coverage. So, as a result, DAB didn’t really catch on. They’ve fixed all that now, and you can see the results.   DAB is up… radio through internet, cable and satellite is relatively static… but FM use has decreased: down by almost 5% year-on-year. It seems to me that if DAB didn’t exist, the German radio industry would be in a rather bad place.   The figures also show the average age per radio platform - an interesting set of figures I’ve not seen reported before. The average age of FM is 49. DAB is almost identical, at 48. Internet radio is a whole ten years younger - which, as you might guess, means that listening over satellite or cable is rather older. As ever, this points to being on the right platform for your audience. Satellite or cable attracts the older folk; internet attracts younger ones. Common sense, you might think - but with limited budgets, worth considering.   What’s certainly clear from these figures is that radio is continuing on its trajectory to be multi-platform. Less than half of the UK’s listening is to FM/AM radio; Germany’s not there yet - not that these figures are entirely comparable - but certainly well on the way.   As if to underline the multiplatform nature of these figures, I was interviewed after my keynote speech on a local student radio station, then on camera for Facebook, and then for a podcast.   While the Germans may have been astonishingly punctual for my keynote, my train back to Munich was delayed by 40 minutes. Well. Nobody’s perfect.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Last week, US broadcaster Entercom decided to pull its streams off TuneIn, the radio aggregator. From now on, the stations will only be available on Entercom’s own radio streaming website, radio.com; and the radio.com smartphone app.   David Field, the company’s CEO, said “We are committed to making Radio.com a leader in the digital audio space”. Seemingly, this is the way he’s going to achieve it.   I’ve said before that we should lessen our reliance on TuneIn. The radio industry doesn’t own it, after all: and, by and large, they don’t particularly care about us. However, I’ve never advocated pulling your stations off TuneIn - because that’s the wrong thing to do.   Pulling your stations off TuneIn isn’t financially clever. The bulk of radio station revenue comes from radio listening, not from internet activities. If you can increase your total listening hours by 10%, then, roughly speaking, you increase your revenue by 10% as well.   PwC published a piece recently showing their predictions for the growth of radio in the Australian market. There’s plenty of growth in internet - but even by 2022, the company reckons that internet activities will be just 17% of total radio income.   Put simply, the best financial strategy for your radio station is to get more people listening - to make your radio station available in as many places as possible. That’s where the money is, and that’s where your focus should be.   Pulling your stations off TuneIn isn’t clever for your listeners, too.   TuneIn is the default radio provider on many smart speakers and connected televisions. Sure, you can build your own apps for those, too: but that’s expensive and is a sure-fire way of losing focus. It’s unlikely that your own teams are going to be talking to as many hardware companies and car manufacturers as TuneIn are. It’s really hard to be all things to all people.   When your stations are removed from TuneIn, what will your listeners do? Sure, some of them will go and download your own app; but many of them won’t - and will find a new station to listen to. I hate to break it to you, but there are many more stations playing “your easy favourites from the 80s, 90s and now”, you’ve not really got the monopoly on that.   Forcing your listeners to abandon an app they’ve chosen (presumably for a reason) is certainly a brave test of brand loyalty.   Moreover, forcing listeners to choose a provably worse app is a questionable choice. TuneIn on the Apple Store has a rating of 4.6; the Radio.com app has a rating of just 2.7. On Android, Radio.com’s app has an average review of 3.5, while TuneIn’s app has an average review of 4.4. Why would you force me to choose second-best?   The strategy for radio apps is, I’d suggest, relatively clear.   Make your stream available on every single possible device, and in every single possible app. Your radio station is the most monetisable asset you own. Appearance here is valuable for station trial, and essentially free marketing.   But then use your own data, programming and intelligence to make your own app the best listener experience. A feast for the eyes as well as the ears - better artwork, talent photos and connections, higher quality streams; perhaps skippable segments, personalised advertising, unique content and fewer ads.   Be everywhere. But instead of bullying your audience,...

Google Podcasts - friend or foe to radio? The radio industry has been slowly incorporating podcasting into its mix: both as a useful way of promoting some of our key talent, and increasingly as a way to get closer to clients by producing branded podcasts for them. Increasingly, sales teams are representing podcast networks as well as radio stations.   Last week, we were handed a gift from Google: as the search giant finally got into podcasting in a big way. They finally launched their podcasting app - Google Podcasts; and it’s already installed in hundreds of millions of Android phones.   This is important because Android represente over 80% of the global market in smartphones; and even in strong Apple countries like the US and Australia, Android still has around a 50% share.   Even now, 74% of Americans don’t listen to podcasts; so proper, inbuilt Android support is a significant doorway to making podcasting a mass media: something that has been eluding the industry for a while.   Part of the issue with podcasting has been that podcasters have had one simple place to link-to for Apple Podcasts. That’s guaranteed to work on any Apple iPhone or iPod Touch; because the Apple Podcasts app has been pre-installed for many years.   Now, we’ve the equivalent for Android phones: a link to play a podcast on Google Podcasts will, on an Android phone, just work. The podcast app is part of the Google Search app, which is installed on every new Android phone.   Additionally, Google have added a few Google smarts. First, the app itself - you can install an icon for it from the Google Play Store - has recommendations in it, as you’d expect; but they’re based on your listening. I listened to one episode of Christian O’Connell’s breakfast show from a radio station in Melbourne, and it recommended other podcasts I might enjoy (including Ricky Gervais’s show from SiriusXM). It also recommended more podcasts from the MouthMedia Network, a podcast publisher I’ve also listened to.   Probably the most interesting step is that a Google websearch now highlights podcasts, with a little ‘play’ button. That allows frictionless listening directly from a search result: so if you search for anything you’re interested in, you might get audio as well as a web page.   All this leads to the inevitable question: is a significant addition to the podcast landscape like this going to erode radio listening?   Or is it a great opportunity - allowing on-demand radio, in the form of podcasting, to reach many more people?   In any case, if you need it, I’ve written an FAQ about Google Podcasts, and what your station should do next, over on my podcasting newsletter website, Podnews. Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

TRANSCRIPT:   Jamie Dupree is a radio reporter with Cox Media Group in the US, for WSB: and two years ago he lost his voice.   As a story on the BBC will tell you… he’s got it back. Kind of. A company based in Scotland has sampled his voice from a set of recordings: and he’s now back filing full reports for the company with the aid of voice synthesis.   The technology isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s certainly well on the way; and that’s - of course - interesting to radio.   If consistency is one thing that makes radio work - and most radio programmers agree - then it’s an obvious next step to have not just consistent music but consistent radio presenters. Indeed: the same radio presenters, twenty-four hours a day.   There are, already, radio stations like this. I wrote about the excellent, tight-sounding Carolina Classic Hits a while ago, which has the same radio presenter on-air twenty-four hours a day. The station sounds great, with crunch-and-roll links and an almost relentless up-tempo sound: and Rick Freeman has been on the air every hour of every day since 2012, thanks to a bank of well over 5,000 voicetracks.   But recording voice-tracks only gets you so far. What if you could go a little further. If voicetracked weeks in advance, your favourite radio personality can’t talk about yesterday’s World Cup game. But with this type of technology he can.   Indeed, this could even make famous radio presenters come back from the grave. (Indeed, this has already been done: Bob Monkhouse, a UK comedian, famously did a TV ad for prostate cancer awareness, four years after he died of the disease).   A number of years ago, I saw a presentation by a German radio company, who’d added a personalised clock alarm to their radio app. You’d wake up in the morning to hear the breakfast radio presenters say “Good morning James!” - clever, but it turns out that you only need record a hundred first names to cover the vast majority of your audience.   With voice synthesis, personalised radio could be something else.   “Now, here’s a great new song from Taylor Swift: and you’ve ten minutes, James, before you need to leave for work, so crank this song up while you get ready!”   “Should be a warm day today, but maybe some rain this afternoon. In your task list it says you need to visit the dry-cleaner, so maybe you want to do that this morning?”   The opportunities are endless.   And for television? Well, the technology to produce fake videos - perhaps to make Barack Obama say something he didn’t really say - is already out there - and getting much more realistic.   The preceding column was written by a human being. At least, this week it was.  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Transcript:   Learning radio’s future from NPR   NPR’s audience is up.   “The average weekly broadcast audiences of the top 20 NPR member stations continue to grow — from 8.7 million in 2015 to 11.2 million last year”, says an article in NiemanLab. They’re on record highs in terms of total audience.   NPR’s mobile apps are growing in use, too; and paid station membership - part of NPR’s funding - is also increasing, as is revenue overall.   Broadcast radio listening by 25-44 year-olds to NPR programming increased by 26% in 2016 (the company didn’t split ages out in their 2017 release). That’s a significant growth; but it’s also listeners who don’t typically listen to talk radio of NPR’s type.   So what’s making younger audiences listen to NPR?   Obviously, the news is one thing. That’s a large part of NPR’s output in any given week; and there’s certainly evidence that all news media has seen an uplift since the election of President Donald Trump. Whatever you might think of his politics, he’s certainly been newsworthy.   Another thing, though, is NPR’s distribution strategy. Their programming is, literally, everywhere. From podcasting to smart speakers, NPR is almost omnipresent on a connected device.   Podcasts are an obvious part of NPR’s strategy. They’re easily the world’s largest podcaster. Some programs make it directly onto podcast, while there’s a digital-first strategy for some programming - not least ‘Up First’, NPR’s daily podcast, which according to Podtrac is the third most-popular podcast in the US.   A second is their use of smart speakers. Amplifi Media report that between November 2017 and March 2018, NPR member-station streaming from Amazon Echo more than quadrupled; and Amazon and Google smart speakers account for over 16% of weekly total listening hours for NPR member station streams.   Their NPR One app is another important part. A personalised, skippable news radio stream, it delivers a different form of ‘radio’ which is much more suited to an interactive device like a mobile phone. It will, undoubtedly, gain them different listeners than a linear stream.   Back in the mid 2000s, when I was running Virgin Radio’s digital strategy, 20% of our superfans told us that they’d first heard the radio station online; and then found us on additional platforms, too - like broadcast radio. Digital undoubtedly added to the station’s audience figures.   NPR’s success seems to back that up. Be available on as many platforms as you can: and uniquely tailor your product for each of them if you’re able. If fusty old public radio can manage it…. Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Article is here: https://medium.com/@JamesCridland/are-we-moving-to-an-all-ip-media-future-377802e03dd5Music by Ignite Jingles  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

    What is a radio, anyway? [CLIP of Google] Last World Emoji Day, the UK industry group Radiocentre tweeted that their favourite emjoi ought to be the one of the radio, but radios don't look like that any more - they look like phones, tablets, cars or televisions, so they don't really have a favourite emoji after all. It’s a succinctly made point; and highlights a failing in the English language — radio means, of course, three different things — a receiver, a technology, and a type of audio programming. Radio is now on a variety of different platforms. Broadcast technology, like FM or DAB+; live streaming via IP; and on-demand too, in the form of podcasting and other things. Most, if not all, radio research reflects this. The apparent unsophistication of a paper diary or a web form is actually quite a useful way of understanding how people listen: since it works with every form of radio, not just something delivered on a speaker. Fewer people are buying radio receivers than ever before. Yet, in most markets, more people are listening to radio than ever before — because radio is not a platform, it’s a thing. I define it as “audio with a shared experience and a human connection”. Alexa, however, defines it as this. [CLIP] If we have trouble with defining a “radio”, what about a “smart speaker”, I wonder? In Q1 2018, the Amazon Echo sold 2.5m devices worldwide; but Google Home sold 3.2m devices in the same time period. It’s the first time that Google has out-sold Amazon for smart speakers. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, though: Google’s voice assistant works with over 5,000 devices. My JBL Link speaker that is on my deck has Google Assistant built-in; but it isn’t a Google Home. Where does it fit in the figures? The GPS I use in the car has Google Assistant built-in (very good for sending text messages). The Bose headphones that I take travelling, or the smaller bud headphones I wear on the bus, both have Google Assistant on them as well — I walked over the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane the other day, asking Google about my diary for tomorrow. And of course, my mobile phone has Google Assistant in it, too. If it’s on the table, seemingly switched off, I can still turn it into a radio.[CLIP]. So, you can compare sales of Amazon Echo vs Google Home if you like; but that misses great swathes of the smart speaker ecosystem. And you can define radio as a speaker in a box that picks up FM if you like; but that, too, misses much of what your audience already calls radio. Your challenge is to ensure that your radio output sounds great — whatever ‘radio’ it is playing on.  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

There's a full transcript of this at https://medium.com/@JamesCridland/measuring-radios-best-customers-dd8b127889d1 I'm at https://james.crid.land Music by Ignite JinglesSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I'm at https://james.crid.land Music by Ignite Jingles Transcript: A look at a new London radio station   I talk a lot about making the most of your radio station’s content.   The tyranny of the transmitter - something that needs feeding 24 hours a day - means that historically we’re not that good, as an industry, making sure that we capture and re-use our content in other ways.   Much of what we do in radio is informed by our history and tradition, rather than what’s right for today’s program-making. Live radio is one of those things - in the 1920s and 1930s, it was the only way to make great radio. These days, far too much of radio is lazy live content rather than well-polished audio.   So it’s fun, then, to take a peek at new radio stations. They have the opportunity to get things right from the get-go, rather than have to reinvent things later on. Change is hard.   Love Sport is a radio station in London, which focuses on sports talk. It’s on AM and DAB in London, and everywhere from Radioplayer, TuneIn and the Amazon Alexa. They’ve worked hard to make sure that they’re available where the audience is.   One look at the website, at www.lovesportradio.com, shows that this station doesn’t just focus on live radio. The “Listen live” and “on demand” buttons are the same size, in the same place. It doesn’t matter how you listen, as long as you do. And, by the looks of it, every single show is available on-demand.   They use clips of what they’ve broadcast on Facebook - a social medium which does rather better than Twitter for short pieces of audio, since it is less “of the moment” and rather better at surfacing posts from the last few days.   One of the more interesting sections of the station is evenings and weekends: and it’s here that Love Sport benefits from being in a city with eleven professional league football teams. The station broadcasts fan podcasts from each club.   Last week, the station announced that it had made those podcasts available on smart speakers, in a partnership with XAPPmedia. It’s another clever way for the station to associate itself with sports fans; and, while smart speaker consumption is still relatively low, it’s a good time to get into these services.   Finally, and for noting, the station is known as “Love Sport” on-air, but “Love Sport Radio” off-air (in logos and online). In the new multiplatform radio world, many brands mistakenly try to drop the word “Radio” - rather than help redefine it. This station hasn’t made that mistake.   It’s tempting, when you launch a new station, to do radio the way it’s always been done.   But better, and braver, to design your programming and distribution strategy based on radio in the late 2010s, rather than the early 1980s. Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music in this episode from Ignite Jingles. Typing sound effects in this episode by Sally Walker. I'm at https://james.crid.land Podcasting news is at https://podnews.net or wherever you got this podcast.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music by Ignite Jingles. Bad editing by me.Hear this on the Radio Today UK podcast, and, um, here on this podcast app.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I'm at https://james.crid.land Music is from Ignite Jingles  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Some people agree, or not, with my thoughts that live radio isn't always best. Thanks to Tommy and to Peter for their voices. Thanks, too, to Ignite Jingles for the music. And to you for listening. And especially to you for visiting https://james.crid.land to get my weekly newsletter.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

What works? What doesn't? And can I avoid mentioning Viking FM's "Erik the viking" knickers by name? Music from Ignite Jingles. I'm at https://james.crid.landSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

No, really. https://james.crid.land is where I live. Ignite Jingles made the intro. https://podnews.net is worth subscribing to. Auphonic made this sound (even) nicer.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I'm a radio futurologist, not a futurist, of course.My website: https://james.crid.landMusic by Ignite JinglesSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Live, from Vienna Austria...My weekly newsletter is at https://james.crid.landSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music is by Ignite Jingles, while I live at https://james.crid.landSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music in this episode is from Ignite Jingles (my introduction) and stolen without any permission at all from Reelworld (the other two loud boom-bang-a-bang jingles). My weekly newsletter - https://james.crid.land - and my daily podcast news website - https://podnews.netSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I'm at https://james.crid.land Podcasting news is at https://podnews.net Nice music like this is from Ignite JinglesSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music: Ignite Jingles I'm at https://james.crid.landSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music from Ignite Jingle Voice columnists's own Newsletter: https://james.crid.land Podcasting news: https://podnews.netSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music by Ignite Jingles. Hair by the podcast host. My weekly newsletter: https://james.crid.land Daily podcast news: https://podnews.netSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

It's true, young people don't listen to the radio, a man in the bar told me. Links:http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/news/musicnews/this-years-hottest-100-is-record-breaking-year/9350308http://www.radiomagonline.com/blogentry/1313http://www.commercialradio.com.au/content/mediareleases/2018/2018-01-29-record-numbers-listen-to-commercial#.Wm7r2ZP1WL5Music is by Ignite Jingles Weekly newsletter here: https://james.crid.landDaily podcast news here: https://podnews.netThis episode was edited on REAPER which is a rather good editing thing. It was uploaded at -19.4 LUFS which is a bit quiet. Sorry.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music is from Ignite Jingles.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Weekly radio trends newsletter: https://james.crid.land Daily podcast news: https://podnews.net Music used in this episode: Ignite Jingles Flavour noodles ate just before recording this: Katsu currySupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

My website - https://james.crid.land My podnews website - https://podnews.net Music in this episode is from Ignite Jingles  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

I have no idea what Aussie radio is doing, but it works anyway. Weekly newsletter: https://james.crid.land Daily podcast news: https://podnews.net  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

My weekly radio trends newsletter is at https://james.cridland.net Daily podcast news at https://podnews.net Music is from Ignite Jingles It's a Rode Podcaster that I use for this.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

My weekly radio newsletter has a new home at https://james.crid.land My daily podnews newsletter doesn't. It's at https://podnews.net Music for this week's episode is by Ignite Jingles.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music in this episode is from Ignite Jingles. My weekly newsletter is at https://james.cridland.net My daily podcasting newsletter is at https://podnews.net My favourite beer is IPA.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

My weekly newsletter is at http://james.crid.land Daily podcast news at https://podnews.net Music for this episode is by Ignite Jingles.Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Music is by Ignite Jingles. My weekly newsletter is at http://james.crid.land Your free daily podcast news briefing is at https://podnews.netSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

In which I pretend to be an authoritative voiceover. Music by Ignite Jingles http://james.cridland.net is where I liveSupport the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Where I talk about local radio for local people - and how the FCC's abolition of an outdated rule is the best news for radio you've ever, ever, ever had. Music: by Ignite Jingles Get my weekly newsletter at https://james.cridland.net  Support the show.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy