Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist in every sort of month or so. I mean, it's supposed
to be weekly, but every month or so I write a newsletter all about the future of radio
and international radio trends and all of that. And this is it for the 10th of October 2023,
called Careful What the Numbers Tell You. For the last four years in Australia, commercial radio
and audio, the CRA, has been publishing audience figures that break down online audio, adding
two extra pages marked by radio type to the number pack for each capital city. And they're
interesting to read, I'll link to them in my show notes and the newsletter at james.crid.land.
Australia is the only radio market, I think, which publicly splits out broadcast versus online
per station. And as you might guess, speech-led radio does very well streaming online. At breakfast
in Sydney, for example, 27% of all radio streaming is to right-leaning talkback station 2GB and 12%
to ABC Radio Sydney. The old platform Breakfast Market Leader, the Music Station Kiss 1065,
can only manage a 9.8% online share, which is about half of what it is on broadcast radio.
Now that leads to some changes of priority for radio stations, and I'm not entirely sure how
helpful they are to audiences. So this week, for example, I'm waking up to ABC Radio Brisbane with
a big ticket giveaway for Sir Paul McCartney, who's playing Brisbane on November the 4th. No,
November the 1st in a concert that went on sale in August. Still, weirdly, isn't anywhere near
sold out. Anyway, the only way to enter the giveaway for these tickets is to download the ABC Listen
app to find ABC Radio Brisbane, to scroll down to the picture of Paul Thumsiloft Paul McCartney,
and enter the code word of the day into the app. It's a fairly transparent push to get more
installations of the app and therefore to grow ABC Radio Brisbane's online share. 8.4% in case
you're wondering, as opposed to 6% overall. It also sounds really clunky on the air.
Mine Radio, the owner of 2GB, gives streaming share equal prominence to overall share in its
press releases, which is fine. They've certainly got something to shout about, but it's quite a lot
focused to give a relatively small platform because, and I think this is a little bit misleading,
the share of listening between broadcast radio, AM, FM, DAB and online isn't given anywhere
in the CRA's releases. Now there's a little bit of a glimpse at the truth with the cumulative
audience figure. So 2GB, that's the number one for streaming, let's not forget, reaches 701,000
people weekly on AM, FM, DAB plus. Just 169,000 people online, that's 24% of their total, and in
total 2GB reaches 756,000 people, which means that 15% of people listen to both. But the total
number of hours spent with online versus broadcast, well that's no way to be seen at all.
And now somebody quietly contacted me with those numbers late last year, and at that point
the figures suggested that online radio listening in Australia was just 18% of the total. But looking
at the CRA figures, you'd never know that online radio listening was so small, just 18%. It's given
equal prominence to broadcast radio, which is still more than four times as large. And it's a bit
more misleading when you look at the DAB plus survey numbers, which the CRA publishes separately.
Those contain a long list of barely listened to radio stations, only quoting CUME since total
share would look slightly embarrassing. And you'd assume by looking at these numbers that the number
one DAB station in Brisbane is smooth with 88,000 listeners, followed by 973 Kiss 90s with 60,000
listeners. But that's misleading as well, because the majority of DAB listening is to the big
simulcast stations also carried on AM and FM. But you'd never know, because those figures don't
mention the biggest stations on DAB plus, which must be 4BC and ABC Radio Brisbane, B105, NOVA,
all of those. So as a result, many radio journalists or even radio executives think that DAB
plus is a failed experiment and that nobody bothers with it. So it might be interesting to know that
while online radio accounts for 18% of all radio listening in capital cities, DAB plus accounts for
20%. It's quite hard to listen to the radio for any length of time without hearing a promotion
for ABC Listen or the iHeart Radio app or listener or the 4BC app. You'll never hear DAB though,
mentioned on air by any of the big services. But in spite of that free promotion for apps every
hour, all day, DAB plus does better than online streaming, except no one wants you to know that,
not publicly anyway. Those numbers are of course available directly to the stations.
Now Radio Days Asia, one Australian radio executive I spoke to was baffled that I was telling them
that DAB plus was bigger than streaming in Australia and who can blame them if the only
numbers they have are presented in this way. So I linked to how the UK does it and I quite like
that in Australia, if that's possible please, that'd be nice. And a plea to all radio broadcasters out
there please, don't focus on growing the 18% to the detriment of the 82%. Owning a big stick that
transmits free to your local area is your unique point of difference. There are maybe 40 or 50
other radio stations out there. Why would you want to promote listening on a device that costs
your listeners money to listen? It's the same place as you can listen to Spotify and YouTube music
whether there are thousands of other radio stations and where you have no competitive advantage
whatsoever. Now to give them their due, the CRA release for Survey Six does point out that in
the latest survey period nearly 4.2 million people listened to commercial radio via a DAB plus radio
and nearly 3.6 million listened via live streaming. So it is there but you've got to really know to
look. Not that I can listen to commercial radio on DAB plus in Brisbane in my car anymore, mind you
because after a software upgrade to the commercial radio multiplexes my Toyota car can no longer
pick them up and I can no longer listen to any commercial radio in this city. I linked to a
rather tedious video if you can help me understand what on earth is going on. Apparently it's just
my car. One set of people slightly evasively tell me it's just my car. Another set of people tell me
that it's an issue for all 2015 Toyota vehicles and they've had multiple reports. Don't really know
what the truth is. Frankly I'm losing patience to find out. The ABC stations though are on a
separate multiplex. ABC uses Panada rather than commercial radio, Factor and Radio Escape and
they sound just fine and as an added bonus none of the ABC radio stations contain advertising for
tiles. So I've resigned myself to the fact that I can no longer listen to any commercial or
community stations on DAB plus any longer in the car and that's a shame but that's progress I guess.
Other things going on in the news. Happy 50th birthday to commercial radio in the UK with
LBC and Capital celebrating this month. Also happy 100th birthday to Radio in Australia with 2SB
which is now known as ABC Radio Sydney celebrating next month and if you'd like an LBC documentary
I linked to a 10 year old one hosted by Clive Bull. In my newsletter it's got me in there 37
minutes in if you're lucky and LBC's 50th tinged with a little sadness for me because my friend Paul
Eastern would have loved to have celebrated it. Talking of LBC I love the 404 error page that
you get when you try finding a page that doesn't exist on the LBC website it's worth a peek.
I'm ashamed to see UK DAB networks which is a small-scale DAB operator in the UK in places like
Winchester and Basingstoke go into liquidation. Ash Elford is an excellent man with his heart in
the right place and he sees this as a failure but I see it as a success for running those services
for as long as he has and doing some excellent education so congratulations Ash. I also linked
to a random Dutch man walking around IBC in Amsterdam if you missed it it's very good.
Disappointed to notice that lots of people are leaving BBC local radio at the moment because
of cost-cutting particularly disappointed given that the BBC is also currently advertising
on Elon Musk's hate-filled Twitter website or X or whatever the thing is called these days.
Why the BBC is funding that? Haven't only knows but anyway it's up to them I suppose.
The Nikki Campbell Radio 5 Live on BBC News Channel show has been halved in length. You might
remember I took a long look behind the scenes not so long back. Everybody says it's absolutely
perfect and it's the way that it should have been so that's all okay then. Matt Deegan listened to
a radio station running AI-generated local news. Now in Australia there's an AI voice doing news
on disrupt radio as well. I'm a little reticent I have to say about using AI to produce editorial.
Radio GPT which is Futuris AI service has clear human oversight throughout the process. I do
think that that's required. I think Kerry Jones has the right idea. He tweeted not so long ago that
we should treat AI as an intern who needs their work checked. Yes congratulations I would
hardly agree with that. In Australia SPS Radio has a new schedule. It's removed BBC World Service
from DAB between 11 and 5. 11 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon which probably means that more
listeners will find the excellent ABC News Radio though so that's all okay. Nothing to do with radio
but if you like travel blogs I link to my latest travel blog there and I've also been rather enjoying
using pay for search engine as a replacement to Google. It's called Caggy I think. Anyway there's
a free trial which is worth giving it a go if you wanted to. Now I'm speaking at the I'm speaking
at a few events. So Media and Target in Munich in October also Audio Days in Denmark and PodCon
MX in Mexico City in November it would be excellent to see one of those and thank you to Broadcast
Radio to Clyde Broadcast Richard Hilton and James Masterson. Brun Audio Consulting, Somer FM
and Media Realms Meta Radio for your support. If you'd like to support my work in any way you
can buy me a coffee. Become a member to give regularly or just give a one-off coffee or five
you can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash jamescridland. I'm on Master Don as well just give me a search
james at crid.land you should find me there and my professional website has a little bit more detail
about who I am and what you what I do and all of that and whether I can help you further that's
james.cridland.net and until next time keep listening.