Trip report - to Doha, London, Calgary, San Francisco | James Cridland - radio futurologist
Including a review of SFO's OneWorld lounges| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Including a review of SFO's OneWorld lounges| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Thoughts after the 50th anniversary reunion| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Built in 1864, 39-45 Well Street in Bradford - above - was used as wool warehouses, built for the yarn merchants Heymann & Alexander. Lewis Heymann came from Hamburg in Germany, as did many of the people who owned businesses in the area, hence why this area of Bradford is called Little Germany. It was one of fifty wool warehouses there. The building became Grade II listed in 1983, and it’s now - not that you’d know it - an exclusive set of apartments, even if the picture of it, taken over...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
As Podnews covers today, Apple Podcasts is shortly, it seems, to support the podcast:chapters JSON chapter files that are part of Podcasting 2.0. There are a number of chapter formats for podcasts. The main one (and the only one Apple has supported up till now) is chapters held within the ID3 tag of an MP3. These are still a fine method of doing chapters, and most podcast hosting companies support them: but not all. ID3 tags are a bit difficult to read, if you’re running (for example) a web...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I was in Jakarta last week for Radiodays Asia (and Podcast Day Asia). There are plenty of stories about it at Radioinfo Asia; and you’ll find some more podcast-related chats in the Podnews Weekly Review this week, from about five minutes in. Radiodays Asia is always a fascinating glimpse into how other markets work: Asia is a very uneven set of markets, which makes it particularly challenging to program an event for everyone, but I learnt a lot, as ever. It was interesting hearing from the ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Apple’s radio stations caused a stir when the first was launched in 2015 - not least because one of the broadcasters to make the leap over to Apple was Zane Lowe, a well-regarded host on BBC Radio 1. I listened, and I didn’t think much of it. Back in 2020, I noted that Apple had launched a set more, including a rather more accessible station (“Apple Music Hits”), as well as a country station. They now have six. Until now, you’ve needed an Apple Music subscription to listen. But as o...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I enjoyed chatting with ABC Radio Canberra today about the future of radio, and the CRA’s call for legislation to ensure access to radio. You can listen to the whole thing here. Transcript Well, speaking of futures, should ensuring radio has a future be a priority for the government, for lawmakers. Do you think the modern world would be okay without live radio? I hate to ask on 0467 922 666. Now, if you’re listening in the car right now, how easy was it to tune in to 666? Did you use the ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In Australia, industry lobby group CRA has released a caps-lock-heavy release CAN YOU FIND THE RADIO IN YOUR NEW CAR? Urgent Call for Legislation to Ensure Access to Local Radio, accompanied by a paper entitled THE FAST FACTS: KEEP RADIO EASILY ACCESSIBLE ANYTIME, ANYWHERE. Plucky little Australia - the #15 new vehicle market in the world with 1.2 million sold in 2024 - is asking for “prominent one-button access to Australian radio - AM, FM, DAB+ receivers and streaming audio - in all cars...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
QF 509 BNE-SYD I’m flying “Townsville”, on this flight for the 40th time. Next to me in economy is a Qantas pilot and a flight attendant. The pilot is recognised by all the crew, and both are fawned over for breakfast. As a Platinum flyer, I’m invisible. The Qantas pilot loudly tells his FA friend how shit Qantas is, how bad his manager is, and how the company is losing all its best people. I suspect he’s counting the days to his retirement. Interesting that he feels unhappy enough ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Within hours of my post last week, ARN announced that the Christian O’Connell breakfast show was going “national”. The show will be on FM in Sydney; and (surprise) Gold will additionally broadcast on DAB+ and online in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. In Radioland last week, I suggested that ARN should put Gold onto FM here in Brisbane rather than KIIS. Gold’s rollout here on DAB+ was seized by some of the trades as a “missed opportunity”, and I agree; but I’d underestimated the co...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
After a refreshed website from CRA, this incredibly helpful data from GfK became no longer available; so here it is, rescued out of the archives, to help us understand how radio is listened-to in the capital cities in Australia. At the end of 2022, radio looked like this… Share of all radio listening 61% of total radio listening was to AM/FM radio. 20% of total radio listening was to a DAB+ receiver. 18% of total radio listening was to online/streaming (marked as “digital” in the above ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
So, I have my fancy new electric car, an MG 4, and it has Apple CarPlay in it. You plug your phone in, and it works. And it’s very nice. Except… if you plug in your phone before the in-car software has booted, then it never sees your phone. So you need to get in the car, watch the boot up sequence, and only when the boot sequence has actually finished, then connect the phone. And all this plugging and unplugging probably isn’t great for my phone, I thought. So, looking in a Facebook gro...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Many people who work in radio are there because of someone else. Kenny Everett, perhaps, or Tony Blackburn. I got into radio because of James Whale, who died this week. Yes, James Whale. When I was stuck at boarding school, James Whale did the late show on Radio Aire in Leeds, which I could just about pick up. His first hour between 10pm-11pm was music, with “do it yourself dedications”, where you would ring up, say hello to people and introduce a song. I longed to do that. I don’t thin...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
The UK’s RAJAR radio figures came out this week. Matt Deegan highlights the “serious warning lights flashing” about young listeners. In twenty years, the time spent listening to the radio for those aged 10-18 has fallen by almost 50%. Meanwhile, Adam Bowie also crunches the numbers, pointing out that Boom Radio (targeted at those aged 60+) has new record figures: audience up 14.5%, and hours up an astonishing 49%. Success with the old; concern with the young - and it’s all looking qui...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. What is now ABC Radio Brisbane launched on 27 July 1925, at 1pm, with the Market Report, followed by the Stock Exchange and the weather, after which in a display of programming genius, the station, um, closed down until 6.30pm. Rae Allen has written a full history on his website. It was quite the honour to have been asked to be on the station on its one hundredth birthday. I was asked whether I’d give my thoughts on the output of the station - which I...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
To help convince us that the company does know what it’s doing after all with AI, Apple Music added a new feature called “automix”, which mixes together songs. If you want to. I’ve been playing with the tool using the developer beta, and now the actual public beta is available, I’m finally allowed to write about it on this blog, so here we are. First, it won’t automix albums. (I tried to turn the feature on, but it won’t do it). It can automix your playlists, and “stations”,...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. How is BBC Sounds doing within the UK? The BBC’s Annual Reports and Accounts were published for 2024/25. BBC Sounds reported a 2% increase in weekly active users (to 4.8mn - 15.3% of the total audience of BBC Radio). However, listeners have skewed older - last year, 45% were aged under 55, this year, only 42% are. Total time spent listening to the BBC Sounds app remained static, at 17.3mn hours a week. Total plays did increase, by 8%: 61% of those pla...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
A few years ago, I bought a little Home Assistant Green box, which sits and monitors things in the house. I’ve conspicuously failed to get it to connect to my proprietary Google cameras, but it’s been good to connect to my solar system and to the power consumption monitor that’s also in it. The most obvious thing to do there is to use the standard SolarEdge integration, for which you need an API key. The way that then works is that a) your solar system sends information every fifteen mi...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. I’m continuing to explore the idea of a universal digital radio receiver - one that would do analogue plus HD, DRM and DAB. In Australia’s RadioInfo, Ruxandra Obreja from Digital Radio Mondiale wrote a response to my idea. She writes that there are chipsets that deal with all of them, like the Si469 series from Skyworks, or the now deprecated SAF360x series from NXP: yet for both these examples, you need different firmware on the silicon for each di...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. As regular readers know, I’ve been interested in the availability of BBC Radio outside the UK. And there’s been some movement. You may remember that BBC Sounds and access to national BBC radio, except Radio 4, was due to be turned off in Spring 2025; and that it’s still going after that plan was postponed. Well, now, we know what’s going on. February’s FAQ on the BBC’s website has been updated (though not with a new title), and it tells us t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. Hello from Darwin in the Northern Territory, where I’m having a week’s family holiday. Data, above, from New Zealand - where GfK asked the question “Which medium provides information about what to do during or immediately after a disaster?” Ask all of New Zealand, and the answer’s… radio (although the metro area of Auckland would turn to their mobile first, assuming it worked). News from Bavaria in Germany - Radioszene reports (or in English...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. It’s been the week of radio numbers in Australia. First, The Infinite Dial Australia 2025 was released - and it painted a very positive story of both podcasting (hitting 50% monthly reach for the first time), and commercial radio in Australia, which remains strong. It’s not just the numbers: it’s how they were presented. We were treated to a live webinar, including Margie Reid, the CEO of creative ad agency Thinkerbell, Larry Rosin, the President ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. A post from Michel Colin on LinkedIn tips me off to discover this PDF from the Spanish Association for Media Research (AIMC). It looks back at the morning of the power blackout in Spain on April 28, when at 12.30pm - as you may remember, Spanish people everywhere rediscovered the radio - since a battery-powered radio was the only thing that worked. In English, the PDF says (my bold)… The peak listenership occurred between 6:00 and 6:30 pm, when one in...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above: how the Swiss listen (total hours, I think) to the radio - red is “digital” (online and DAB+), grey is analogue AM/FM. From 50/50 in Q3 2015, it’s now 17% analogue, 83% digital (Q3 2024). FM has been turned off for public service broadcasters already, and for the commercials by the end of the year. Clive Dickens - formerly of Oxford’s JACK FM, Absolute Radio, SCA, Seven West and Optus - has launched a new AI strategic advisory company called Meliora. Meliora, which is Latin for...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I’ve spent much of the evening trying to get an audio player working with VTT captions. The previous code I used worked on everything (Chrome on desktop, Chrome on mobile, Safari on mobile) but not on Safari on desktop, which was a bit annoying. It turns out that, for whatever reason, Safari desktop sets the track as “disabled” for some reason, and needs specifically telling that it needs to show it. I suspect this is because there’s no space in the audio controls to show the captions...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I started using ForwardEmail a long time ago, when its name made sense: it forwarded email. Set it to accept incoming email for your domain, and you could get it to forward email to wherever you read it. These days, ForwardEmail doesn’t just forward email; it also has full email itself - IMAP/POP3/SMTP accounts, even a CALDAV account for a calendar - and it’s still remarkably cheap, at US$36 for the year. For that, you get virtually unlimited incoming domains, unlimited email aliases, and...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. Adam Curry, the co-inventor of podcasting, spoke at a Christian radio conference about where he sees the future of radio. The future is local, he said. There’s a link to watch the whole thing, too. (Adam Curry is working on Godcaster, an on-demand radio player specifically for faith-based broadcasters.) Christian radio is not a thing in many countries. Radio stations owned by religious groups were illegal in the UK until 1990, as one example; but in t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
The very basic thing about Amber Electric is the pricing. And it’s also the most complicated. I live in South East Queensland; bear that in mind when you read the below, because it may be different in other states. (And if you’re overseas, this is all in Australian dollars, not US dollars). How a normal electricity provider charges A normal electricity provider will make their bill using two charges: A daily charge (one electricity provider charged $1.27 a day last year); A charge based o...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is Radioland, my radio newsletter. Dear radio receiver manufacturers… could one of you please make me a proper global radio receiver to take with me on my travels? I’d like it to have FM reception, with RDS (both the station name and the “scrolly text” please). I’d like it to have AM reception, with adjustable bandwidth settings, and to support all the sensible SW bands. Could it also support the AIR band, as well as the US Weather band? I’d like it to have DAB+ (for Europe),...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
“I am travelling on Qantas from London Heathrow terminal 3. Which is the best lounge?” This question appears almost every other day on Facebook, so here’s what I believe is the definitive answer, in order, for a OneWorld frequent flyer, based on exhaustive testing. I’m assuming that you’re flying QF2, which goes all the way to Sydney via Singapore. (Or on QF2 to Brisbane or Melbourne, changing in Singapore). The first tip is that if you’re QF Platinum, you can use the Fast Track l...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Welcome back to Radioland, and here’s something seemingly unreported by any of the radio trades - the great Google smart speaker bug of 2025, which wiped thousands of radio stations off these smart speakers for weeks. As I understand it, here’s the story - Google rolled out new firmware to their smart speakers and Nest displays about four weeks ago. This new firmware had the side-effect of breaking support for streaming AAC, a format of audio streaming that many radio stations use (higher...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Spotify announced it was adding a “play” count to its podcast app last week. Some in podcasting are really vexed about this. Courtney Elmer says it hurts independent podcasters; Jim Salveson says there are good but also bad things about the plan; others have pulled their shows off Spotify in a fit of pique; the discomfort has even made it to national US news; and some have chosen to post great screeds about it on any social media they can get their hands on. Including me, here. A few thou...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
CX156, a flight from Brisbane to Hong Kong, is not really the start of the most direct route to Toronto, I grant you, but this flight is with my home airline alliance, and thus lounges await; and it isn’t via the US which is another important thing. Air Canada was my only real other choice, but this flight’s cheaper and much more exciting, and Air Canada is really not a very good thing especially if you don’t have status - you get chucked right in the back, in the middle, and… eurgh. ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In the US and Canada, Nielsen changed the methodology for radio listening from January in PPM markets; and we’re beginning to see the results. Someone listening to a radio station for just three minutes is now counted as a listener (rather than the previous five), resulting in an apparent significant increase for radio listening - 15% across all US radio, but a 41% jump for “all news” formats and a 28% jump for all listening in Phoenix AZ, for example. (Canadian listening also increased...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Reasons to be cheerful, part one - Tim Perry was stuck in Spain during the almost nationwide power-cut. What was that like? And what was the only thing that worked? Yes, it was radio - as has been covered in the press all week. Indeed, I was on BBC Radio 4’s PM on Tuesday, talking about it (it’s not available on BBC Audio, which doesn’t do radio catchup, so here it is). Reasons to be cheerful, part two - If you were at the Paris Radio Show in January, and you spoke perfect French, you...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I’ve recently switched to FreshRSS as my main RSS reader. Here are a few notes for me, really, about simple installation on an Apache/PHP system, and a few tweaks. I’ll probably come back to this later and update it a little more. Installing FreshRSS on Amazon Linux AL2023 I’m using a Lightsail box running Amazon Linux 2023. Assuming you have a working PHP/Apache setup, here’s how to do it quickly and without any hassle… sudo dnf install git php-zip cd /usr/share/ sudo git clone htt...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This is the (English-language) text of a speech made by Pierre Bellanger, founder and president of Skyrock, the French radio network, at the Paris Radio Show on Jan 29, 2025. It’s reproduced with his permission; I’ve made some stylistic edits. Alright, we’re among friends here, so let’s be honest with each other. There’s no point in hiding it. It’s over. People are leaving us. The young have already gone. We can’t compete. They’re doing whatever they want. They’re breaking t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I’ve been on holiday, kind of, for the last few weeks. One of the things I went to was an exhibition called Precious, in the Museum of Brisbane, which contained some small domestic collections of “stuff” that people had been keeping, now displayed for the first time. I was a fan of the branded matches for ABC Radio Brisbane, which, um, probably wouldn’t be a thing these days. Anway, two things have happened, though, which I’ve written two separate blog posts about. First, the BBC ha...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
There’s a show on Australian youth radio station CADA, 11am-3pm, that’s called Workdays with Thy. That’s Thy up there, in the image just above. CADA is on FM in Sydney, and on DAB in Australian cities nationwide; and, of course, on the iHeartRadio app. Thy has been broadcasting this show for the last six months. Last week, a website called The Carpet wondered what was up, after being curious why Thy isn’t anywhere on social media, which the website says is quite odd for a 20 year-old ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
First, a timeline… Nov 27, 2024: I write a piece about the puzzle and confusion of BBC Sounds, and suggest that really, the right thing to do would be to close it for overseas audiences, and, sadly, switch off access to the BBC’s domestic radio stations. “Those only exist internationally because they’ve always been available that way - but they cost money to stream overseas, and the music rights amnesty they enjoy goes away as soon as the BBC starts commercialising the streams.” Feb...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Fun to have been in Dublin in Ireland for Radio Days Ireland earlier this month. Ireland is a vibrant and positive radio market, with a few surprises. Wireless Group rebranded as “Onic” just before the conference started. The company, which also includes a radio sales house previously known as urbanmedia, owns a number of the larger radio stations in Ireland, like FM104 in Dublin, Dublin’s Q102, and Cork’s 96fm. Most interestingly, Onic will also launch ten DAB Digital Radio services ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In news that will surprise nobody really, it’s emerged that Bauer - one of the big two commercial radio broadcasters in the UK - will close all its local radio breakfast shows in England and Wales in June, meaning an end to any local radio production. There are twelve different local breakfast shows currently being broadcast; those talented breakfast presenters will disappear, and one show (not yet announced) will be a national show. Listeners will get regional news and travel, as is mandat...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I originally posted this as a comment a few weeks ago on LinkedIn. This week I co-presented the Edison Research Infinite Dial 2025, which this time around was careful to ask whether people have watched (but never listened-to) a podcast. It discovered another 8 million Americans who have consumed what they consider to be a podcast. I thought my original comment was worth a wider audience. (But before that, let’s put it on my blog too, ho ho.) Twenty years ago, the US radio industry decided t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
An internet search gives me nothing about RSS feeds from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC News don’t link to them, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that they don’t have any. Nine months ago they pretended that they don’t have any which are updated. But ABC News does have RSS feeds. Here are some of them, and how to find more. ABC News RSS feeds Top Stories Qld Top Stories World Business Politics Just in Entertainment & Culture Lifestyle Around Australia Sport Long Reads ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
So, in February, I linked to an FAQ from the BBC - seemingly published two weeks early - which suggested that the BBC would be removing BBC Sounds from international users, and also removing access to BBC music radio stations from us too. Particularly, the FAQ said: Due to rights limitations, not all BBC content can be made available to international users. This includes BBC music radio stations as well as some podcasts. So, that was pretty clear. BBC music radio stations were not going to be...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Almost 1,300 journalists, producers and assistants are no longer working at Voice of America, and for the first time in 83 years, the broadcaster has been silenced. I went to the Voice of America in 2009 and did a talk there about radio’s future. Look at the marble! Look at the bad shirt collar! I’ve just found my blog post from the time and restored it to my website. It reminded me of my visit - I found it a little old-fashioned and “government-y”, but also genuine and sincere about ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Last week, as part of the ABC’s cyclone coverage in Brisbane, the ABC made a surprising, and welcome, admission. The ABC thinks AM radio is not a suitable transmission network to reach the most people in Brisbane. How else to describe the choice, by the ABC, to remove classical music station ABC Classic (which, weekdays, reaches just 67,000 people in Brisbane) in favour of a temporary simulcast of its flagship emergency service 612 ABC Radio Brisbane? ABC Classic wasn’t removed from audie...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This time last week, I was looking forward to travelling to Radiodays Europe; but - no such luck, after tropical cyclone Alfred hit Brisbane, cancelling flights. (As a fun fact: it was going to be called Tropical Cyclone Anthony, but with a pending election here in Australia, it was wisely felt that PM Anthony Albanese might not be too impressed with the country talking about the destruction caused by Anthony, so it was officially changed.) At first, we felt that we’d got away with it - the...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
There’s an interesting set of responses for the UK government’s recent consultation about Apple and Google’s mobile ecosystems. A number of people submitted their responses, but most interesting to read a few responses… Radiocentre Radiocentre’s response, from the UK commercial radio trade association (and likely on behalf of all UK commercial radio companies) Radiocentre focused on voice assistants, noting that 20% of radio listening is via a smart speaker (much more than via apps ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I was on BBC Radio 4’s Feedback programme on Thursday, talking about the decision by the BBC to remove BBC Sounds (and therefore, as far as we can tell, access to the BBC’s domestic music radio stations) from international listeners. When I worked for the BBC, one of the reasons given to senior managers why we shouldn’t make a change was: “you’ll have to be the person to go on Feedback and explain it”. So, it was a little nervousness that I jumped on - at least, knowing that I was...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
https://op3.dev/show/55f8007aec094899a02fd44273aa6558 shows massively high numbers for Podnews Daily recently. As above, shows that normally get about 2,500 downloads are suddenly getting 49,000 downloads. But it’s not all good news. Stats for March 1 show 51% of downloads from Malaysia and a further 38% of downloads from Indonesia. Top devices for March 1 = Android Phone (97.8% of all downloads). Seemingly, the only useragent being used is Dalvik. Now - all of these audio downloads appear ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In the UK, RAJAR has published its MIDAS survey for Q4/2024. This study should be required reading for anyone interested in audio consumption. Podcasts got the highest weekly reach figure yet (26% of all British adults) and are most consumed by those aged 35-54, where they enjoy a 35% reach. However, podcasts still only account for 9% of total time spent listening to audio (including “catch up radio”); live radio (still!) is listened-to more than 7 times longer. Time spent listening to po...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Last Friday was the turn of a number of radio presenters to do what may well be their last radio show, as Global ended a number of regional shows on Heart, Capital and Smooth (which I blogged about earlier this year). As expected, the London people got the national shows. It also means the physical closure of many studios, too; gone are the studio facilities in Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham, Wrexham, Milton Keynes, and Fareham. Global look after their people well, as I understand it...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
The show In & Around Podcasting carried a rather clickbaity episode last week, called “Has Podcasting 2.0 failed?”. Hosted by Mark Asquith and Danny Brown, and with a guest of Claire Waite Brown, it suggested that the initiative has - five years on - failed. I’m not sure I agree. “Podcasting 2.0” is a collection of ideas. Some ideas work. Some don’t. Some are total failures Let’s talk about the podcast:images tag - totally unusable, and a duplicate of a different tag that alread...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Audible spends a lot of money on original audio shows (“podcasts”, if you like), but I can’t promote them in Podnews, and I’d quite like to, but I can’t. Here’s why. First - in Podnews, the image artwork, the links, etc, are all automatic and come from a standard podcast feed (or via the open Spotify API). But, Audible shows have no standard RSS podcast feed, so I can’t grab any of this information from the feeds. There is no API into the Audible catalog either, as far as I know...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Embargoes and “in advance” briefings are always slightly odd at the best of times. You chat amiably with a senior member of staff, but nothing can be used until XX date. It’s a helpful thing for journalists. In this case, an “in advance” briefing with a PR person (who had to wake up at 4.30am his time to tell you that there’s a strict embargo on using the information until XX) was rather undermined by an announcement containing much of this information being posted by the same com...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Back in November, I wondered aloud what the BBC was playing at when it came to its BBC Sounds app. It wasn’t promoted internationally, didn’t always work well, but the BBC were hard at work restricting access to its podcasts. In that blog post, I made a guess at a potential strategy: Like BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds will (at some point) not be available internationally. We’ll be left with the BBC World Service (possibly within the main BBC app), and the podcast output “wherever we get our...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I bought a new car last week. It’s a little electric MG car - one of the cheapest you can buy in Australia - and it’s a zippy little thing, whisking me around to school pickups and, unnervingly, gym appointments, which are apparently a thing these days. It has a radio inside it, of course. But. It has DAB installed, and it also has FM, but no AM band at all. I can’t pretend I care that much - the AM stations are also simulcast on DAB after all… but it’s an interesting omission. Some...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Triple J, the ABC’s youth station, celebrated its fiftieth birthday last week. The Sydney Morning Heraldwrites a potted history of the station, but suggests it’s doing badly in the ratings and, well, more opportunity to bash the ABC. (It isn’t mentioned that the SMH is owned by Nine Networks, which has a radio business that competes with the ABC). Former breakfast host Wil Anderson says “The ABC should not make any decisions with ratings in mind”, which is nice but misguided. No, of...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
UK broadcaster Global is to drop local and regional shows in England, on its Heart, Capital and Smooth radio stations. All the output for these stations will be broadcast from London from the end of February. That’s around 20 local and regional shows which will disappear. There will also be only one set of national shows for Wales, coming from Cardiff. That means the loss of separate shows for Heart and Capital in North Wales. (I don’t see anything about Capital Cymru, the quietly-existin...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
On a recent Podnews Weekly Review, Sam Sethi and I discuss “lowlights” of the year from the podcasting world. My first lowlight of the year… The rush to video. It’s such a short-sighted thing for the podcast industry to be doing, to move away from the very thing that we have in our favour, which is that podcasts are there as entertainment for your ears while your eyes are busy. That’s the fundamental thing that podcasting offers – and that radio offers, by the way – and if you t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Welcome back to work! As if you were ever away… This year, I’ll be making a number of rash appearances at conferences talking about the future of radio once more - a subject I’ve actually not been very vocal about for quite a few years. The future, of course, is human connection and shared experience - something I’ve been saying is the definition of radio for some time, but I’ve come to realise it’s not always what radio is: especially the high amount of non-stop music stations th...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
If you are making a web page and you think it might be useful to add a “share” button, to help share it to social media, then the “right” way to do it is like this: Make the share button let you share to all the apps your reader has installed and none else You can use the web share API which is supported by most browsers, particularly on mobile where most people share onto social media from. Notably, it’s supported by Safari, Edge and Chrome, so effectively 90% of all users. The onl...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
The quick answer: Yes, you can, just like you can on any email server. Amazon SES can be used like a pretty standard SMTP mail server. Go find its SMTP address, use a username and password, and you can send email through it. It costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails to send email like this. So, if you’re sending 500,000 emails a month, you’ll spend $50. I use Sendy to send thousands of (opt-in!) emails every day. If you host your own server, then Sendy, hosted on a server in AWS, and using Amazon S...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Everyone else is away, but I bet you’re not quite, yet. Good luck for the Christmas break. Here’s a few stories about radio you might find interesting. TuneIn appears to be in bad shape - I reported for Podnews about how they have undergone many layoffs and the product is really suffering in terms of data quality. The radio industry relies on TuneIn for a lot of radio listening (not least, it’s the default radio list in products like Apple Music or most internet-connected cars), but - a...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Hello from a hot Australia, where the last radio survey of the year has just been released. Commercial radio has posted record numbers, and a record share of 75.9% of radio listening, which is the highest share in more than two decades. That, of course, suggests that the ABC is on its lowest share for more than two decades - possibly something you’re unlikely to see reported, but it’s quite the concern (see below for more). In Sydney, Kyle & Jackie O are still #1 FM, though Ben Fordham on...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Whatever you might think of the excitement about video podcasting, and whether it’s a good idea or not, there’s a common refrain with some of podcasting’s old guard. “This is nothing new”, they’ll tell you. “We’ve had video podcasting ever since it started”. And they’re right. RSS lets you publish any “enclosure” - audio files, like MP3 or AAC files, or video files. Apple Podcasts supports it, too. This Week In Tech (Video) is a video version of the audio show. Subscri...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
BBC Sounds is a bit of a puzzle. Though you wouldn’t know from visiting the BBC Sounds website, BBC Sounds is also an app for your phone, and intended to be, I think, the primary place you find BBC audio content (music, radio, podcasts). (More than 90% of podcasts are listened-to on a mobile phone, so it’s curious that links to download the app aren’t front and centre on the BBC Sounds website.) Try listening to the In Our Time podcast from the BBC on a third-party app, and you’ll dis...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
There’s quite the stampede, at the moment, for Bluesky accounts. It’s a social media network that isn’t owned by Elon Musk, nor Mark Zuckerburg; and it seems to be adding a million users a day at the moment. Bluesky is supposed to be decentralised. It uses a thing called the ATProtocol, and you can set up your own server, but in practice, it’s unlikely anyone will until Bluesky itself starts boosting bad things and censoring good things - there’s little benefit otherwise. But - if y...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
As I write this, Bluesky is clearly the social media website du jour, with tens of thousands of sign-ups per day. Hardly surprising, given where users are fleeing from. I’m there, as @james.crid.land. Yes, @james.crid.land - my domain. Now, look - I don’t want to throw any shade on people that are signing up, but if you are involved in tech or are a brand then you should be using your own domain. There are four hundred bazillion reasons for this, but the most obvious ones are: Verificatio...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I swore that the last one I did of these was my last for the year, but as it happens, I have one more - a quick visit to Los Angeles for two days. And it’s just brilliant so far. “OOOOH, LOOK! A toothbrush! A comb! Look! That’ll be useful!” My passport never works going out of Brisbane, but this time, it really didn’t work, giving all kinds of alarms. I wasn’t allowed to check in on the phone app, but I didn’t realise, when I checked in at the desk, that I had the dreaded SSSS n...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above: I was a proud sponsor of the Independent Podcast Awards a few weeks ago The NYT shares a story about OFF Radio Kraków, a radio station in Poland (run by Polish Radio, the Polish equivalent of the BBC). It apparently turned all-AI, and AI presenters were used to present programmes, including an AI-generated interview with Wisława Szymborska, a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet who died in 2012. It lasted for a week, to some uproar, but then closed. But, is there more to this story than ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
And when she passes, Each one she passes goes… “ahh” Ah, the soothing sounds of The Girl from Ipanema in the background welcomes me to this Emirates flight, EK435 from Brisbane to Dubai. This is the eighth time I’ve flown this route - the fastest time 13h50m (in July 2018), the slowest time 14h39m (in Jan 2020). I have flown on this A380 plane, A6-EEQ - once before: just a week ago, on my return to Brisbane. It’s eleven years old. Since I flew it, it’s been to London, Johannesburg...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above: “make sure when you meet Ken Bruce that you don’t make the selfie look as if you were in a gale”. Sigh. Q3 2024 RAJAR figures are out for the UK. Listening to radio online actually fell for the quarter (27.7% of all radio listening, compared to 28.1% last time around). Listening to radio via DAB continued to increase, and is now at 44% of all radio listening, another record. FM/AM now accounts for 25.7% - down from 29.7% one year ago. RAJAR appears to be a tale of two industries ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
“Have you visited our lounge before?” “Yes, many times,” I say to the folks at the Emirates Lounge in Brisbane airport. Except I actually haven’t visited the lounge for some time - because it’s been renovated since I came in here. Gone is the rather old-fashioned bling, and instead everything is rather nicer and more modern-feeling. Good. Excepting a lack of power points, and the type of people who fly on Emirates, the lounge is quite nice. I’ve got quite a set of flights ahead ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
“Experience a brand-new hotel buzzing with life. With Scandic Spectrum, we created just the sort of hotel we ourselves dream of checking into. A place, not just for sleeping …but for being.” I stayed at the Scandic Hotel recently in Copenhagen, Denmark. Opened in June 2022, it’s one of the newest hotels in the city, with 632 rooms: and a bizarre level of annoyances. What annoyances, you ask? Well, let me tell you. The lights “As part of the only hotel chain in Denmark awarded with t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Hello from Oslo airport, where I am currently waiting for a plane to take me to Stockholm. I’m a guest in the radio and audio conferences in Norway, Sweden and Denmark this week, as well as going to the Independent Podcast Awards in London on Wednesday. Last time I was in Oslo airport, they managed to lose my bag, so I’m hoping this time round they don’t. Lyddager in Oslo was a slick event, with a varied audience - not just radio, but a lot of audio producers, podcast creators and other...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
WEBP images are supported by every email browser these days, so you’d have assumed everything was good for email as well. Er - no. For a start, Google’s Gmail doesn’t support Google’s WEBP format properly, and turns them into JPEG. That’s fine, but it does mean that a WEBP with a transparent background won’t work very well. But, more to the point, any user on Microsoft Outlook on Windows - and there are a lot of those - will just see a broken image, because, in a refrain familiar ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above: Bell Media in Ottawa, Canada. The studios are right next to tourist attraction ByWard Market: the faux transmission tower is a bit over the top. (Looks like there are two microwave antennas on there for transmitter links, otherwise it’s almost entirely ornamental). The building didn’t entirely feel loved, with a closed store, an empty reception area, and boards covering up the remaining windows. “If we aren’t on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, we won’t reach the pe...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
To a public service broadcaster conference in Ottawa, Canada - where there was an underlying set of discussions about podcast exclusivity. Tomas Hedenius from Swedish Radio was part of the opening session. He told us that they were pulling their most popular shows off third-party apps - so the only way you could listen was to download the SR app and listen there. He proudly told us that when he made that decision, none other than Daniel Ek (the CEO of Spotify) turned up at SR headquarters. Wi...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
A few weeks ago I wrote a little disparagingly about Brisbane’s B105 and Brisbane’s KIIS 97.3 both claiming that they are “Brisbane’s #1 hit music station”, so I found the above image amusing. Posted by Keri Jones on Facebook from the early 1990s, it shows Pennine FM also claiming it was “West Yorkshire’s Number One Hit Music Station”… there truly are no new ideas in radio! There’s a lot to unpack from this press ad, over thirty years later. Why was it important to promote...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
This trip promises to be something a little different - a new country to visit (the little Pacific Island of Niue); a relatively new airline to fly (Air New Zealand, which I haven’t flown since before the pandemic); and a new Emirates class, premium economy. And a lot of random flying about. My trip starts with a lot of random driving about, as my Uber driver gets lost on the way to the airport. And then at the actual airport. An Uber driver who doesn’t know where to drop someone off at t...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above - as I do a bit of travel over the next month, I’ve got a fancy travel radio, the XHDATA D-808. However, it won’t be very useful in Oslo, since it doesn’t have DAB… but looking at the LCD display, I can see “DAB” there, so I do wonder whether there is a new version of this coming out with DAB inside? That would be excellent. Where do we get new talent? I enjoyed a discussion on social media recently about how people got their first radio show on a big station. For people my ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
It’s sad to pass on the news that Carl Kingston passed away this week. I was flattered when he wanted to meet me and share a coffee and a chat, when we were at the same conference in Switzerland. I was thrilled. I’d been a long time listener in Leeds, on Radio Aire, as were many of Pennine Radio’s younger team. I was rather starstruck. We chatted about Moylesy and Hirsty; about The Super Station and Radio Aire. You’ll be glad to her that I didn’t share our cheeky impersonation of hi...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
I was at Radiodays Asia last week (and Podcast Day Asia as well, which I was programming). My time was mostly focused on the podcast bits, though I was happy to interview the excellent Jacqueline Bierhorst from WorldDAB on-stage (above). DAB is now gaining a lot of interest from a number of Asian countries, which is good - many are in “trial” (never quite sure what there is to trial, to be honest), but very good to see. And why wouldn’t they be interested in DAB? It offers, among other ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
After a frankly chaotic Brisbane International on a Saturday morning (we get the Olympics in eight years! Ha! Just imagine!) - I jump onto QF51 and do the comparatively short eight hour flight to Singapore. QF51 (on “Swan Valley”) worked as you’d expect it to. It was late to depart (freight taking its time to be loaded). The IFE didn’t work properly for a few people round me (and who knows, me as well, though I don’t use it). Catering was as expected, too, by which I mean that my ch...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
A bit of a career achievement yesterday - appearing as a guest on the BBC News channel. If you’re anything like me, then firstly sorry, but secondly you’re probably interested in the mechanics of how it actually works. First, I was sent a WhatsApp message from a journalist (at about 6.30pm my time). That probably means that she saw my contact page, where my phone number is; and while I don’t advertise WhatsApp as a way to contact me, of course it works. I didn’t see the WhatsApp messa...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Above: NPR’s HQ in Washington DC, where I was last week. Back in Brisbane, and enjoying SCA’s B105 claiming it’s “Brisbane’s #1 Hit Music Station” meanwhile down the dial, ARN’s KIIS 97.3 claims it’s “Brisbane’s #1 Hit Music Station”. (Melbourne has the same, as do many UK cities). I wonder whether the only thing this communicates is that radio stations think the audience is dumb. When both stations play similar music and are a preset-punch away, do they genuinely think ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Bag drop seems closed when I walk up to it in Ronald Reagan Airport, with ribbons closing it off. The guy looking at one of the machines turns to look at me as if I’m an idiot. “Han DelDown and undatha ROAP!” he gabbles at me, then helpfully repeats the instruction. Oh, so it isn’t closed at all. He just wants me to put the handle down, and push it under the rope. So I do. I give my passport to the TSA agent. She looks at it. “Gedafota”, she says. After repeating it she points at ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Ding! That’s the sound of a text message from Qantas. Excellent. You’re sending me this 24 hours before my flight, so this is probably good news, telling me that my upgrade has been granted by the Upgrade Gods. I stop work for a minute to open the text and - oh. It’s a text from Qantas, yes, but it’s telling me that the BNE-LAX flight tomorrow is cancelled. I’ll be automatically re-booked onto an alternative. And I am - the BNE-LAX flight a day later, which isn’t really very good ...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
A closure in New York… WCBS-AM “NewsRadio 880”, a 57 year-old all-news radio station for New York City, is to close next week. After the end of a contract, ESPN New York 98.7 - owned by Emmis - will turn into a music station while they try to sell the station (just $50mn). The music format has yet to be announced. The home of ESPN in the city gets shifted to 880 AM instead. Audacy owns WCBS-AM 880, which will be renamed WHSQ. Audacy also owns all-news “1010 WINS @92.3FM”; which does...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In Australia, Kyle and Jackie O’s simulcast into Melbourne has - so far - failed to take Melbourne by storm. Some in radio are keen to point out that syndicated shows don’t work in breakfast, where radio needs to be local. I’d disagree with that. Syndicated shows can, of course, work across any country. The fact that “this is coming from Sydney” is no reason why someone shouldn’t want to tune in, if the content is “real and relevant”: real human beings, talking about things th...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
In the UK, the RAJAR radio listening figures were released for Q2/2024. RAJAR talks to around 100,000 people a year, and asks them what radio station they listened to, as well as where (at home? in the car?) and how (FM? DAB? Online?). It uses both a paper diary looking like this, but also an online equivalent, as well as 5,000 people with MediaCell, an mobile phone app that listens to everything. RAJAR takes that information and “weights” it to the total population - matching the results...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
Lego has made a radio. It’s a radio with a difference, because it has a thing called a “sound brick”, which has sounds of a radio on it, but oddly is not an actual radio. There may be a missed opportunity here somewhere. Looks like I saw a DAB+ radio made out of Lego in Belgium in 2013; and seemingly an entirely different one at the EBU in Feb 2012. In Australia, Commercial Radio & Audio has published The Audio Edge, with data and information about audio advertising. Tom Webster has lau...| James Cridland - radio futurologist
If you're a fan of BBC Radio 4, or BBC Radio 2, or even BBC Radio Leeds, here's how to listen| James Cridland - radio futurologist
