Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist,
and every week or so I write a newsletter all
about the future of radio and international radio
trends. And this is it for March the 9th, 2025.
Emergency Radio Broadcasting, ABC Radio Brisbane,
excels. Now this time last week I was looking
forward to travelling to Radio Days Europe, but
no such luck, because if I open the window, then
you can probably hear... Yes, there's quite a
lot of rain and wind there. Let me just close
that. There we are. Yes, Tropical Cyclone Alfred
has hit Brisbane and it's cancelling flights.
and therefore I wasn't able to travel in any
way. I wasn't going to leave my family here either,
was I, to be honest. As a fun fact, Tropical
Cyclone Alfred was going to be called Tropical
Cyclone Anthony, but with a pending election
here in Australia, it was wisely felt that Prime
Minister Anthony Albanese might not be too impressed
with the company talking about the destruction
caused by Anthony. So it was officially changed.
Now, at first, we felt that we'd got away with
it. The cyclone calmed down a little, and we
didn't get the scarily high winds that we were
first expecting. But then came the rain. and
a surprise set of high winds around 24 hours
later. And as I'm recording this, much of south
-east Queensland and northern New South Wales
are coping with flooding, torrential rain and
uprooted trees. More than 300 ,000 households
are without electricity. Some will be without
for many days. ABC Local Radio is well practised
at emergency broadcasting with a clear format
that it slips effortlessly into. The output is
tight. Clear and unsensational. Not built for
drama, but instead built for human connection.
It's a mix of regular communications from authorities,
information from elsewhere, and plenty of call
us and tell us your story from wherever you are.
Imaging is built to be reassuring. Little pre
-recorded segments tell us how to prepare. And
all the more impressive when you note that the
ABC was doing the entire radio coverage. from
the boardroom of a local hotel, rather than its
normal offices. The ABC's studios are built on
the side of the Brisbane River, and during the
last floods, the building's basement was flooded
out, and with it, the electricity supply. They
were taking no chances. So a hotel was chosen
that was 57 metres above sea level, rather than
the ABC, which is less than 5 metres above the
river. And the ABC had planned ahead. Much of
this emergency coverage was simulcast across
three ABC local radio areas, and as a tacit acknowledgement
that everyone doesn't have AM radio receivers
anymore, 612 ABC Radio Brisbane also took over
ABC Classics transmitter on 106 .1 FM in the
city. A wise move, it turns out, since for almost
two hours on Sunday, the 612 AM transmitter fell
silent after a failed generator. Radio's place
in time of emergency is a bit of a trope, and
in many cases isn't really a given, with many
broadcasters eliminating local broadcasting altogether.
At least one Brisbane commercial broadcaster
thought it was fine just to broadcast non -stop
music between 9pm and midnight, for example.
But in this case, as hundreds of thousands of
people were left without power and without internet,
the ABC was their only connection to the outside
world. And it's brilliant broadcasting. Now,
on the web version of this, you can hear an entire
hour of programming from the ABC, because I think
people might learn a little bit from it. But
here's a little taste. This is Cyclone coverage
on 612 ABC Radio Brisbane and Queensland. The
wind goes rattle a fair bit. Now we've got consistent
rain and getting a bit heavier now. I'm at Burley
Heads. It is wild, rugged and kind of evil out
there as well. Just a lot of rain and, yeah,
checking the elderly neighbours and seeing if
they're going all good. But, yeah, a lot calmer
than I expected, to be honest. This is Cyclone
Alfred coverage on 612 ABC Radio Brisbane and
Queensland. There's a whole hour of that over
at james .cred .land and just find the blog section.
Now, in other news, I was on Radio 4's Feedback
this week, talking about the closure of BBC Sounds
internationally. There's a link to that from
the link in the show notes. Some fascinating
stuff from the UK's CNMA consultation about Apple
and Google's mobile ecosystems. It turns out
that both Radio Centre and the BBC both submitted
their concerns and thoughts. And much of the
BBC's response is very interesting, though being
fair, some of the BBC's response is trying to
have their cake and eat it. I've written a full
blog post about this i won't bore you with it
now but you can certainly find that james .crid
.land I'm currently having to deal with 20 times
the podcast download traffic for my daily pod
news podcast, which is fun. According to the
rules, they're all valid downloads, so perhaps
I should be claiming them, but they're not. Clearly,
they're all coming from either Malaysia or Indonesia,
all from Android phones. It's all a bit weird.
Can't quite work out where they're from. A link
again in the show notes to that. And a link to
this. Last month on World Radio Day, I was on
BFM in Malaysia. radio day segment starts at
12 minutes and 15 seconds 12 15 and brilliantly
world radio day was all about climate change
and they asked me to record something so i did
directly into whatsapp because that's how they
asked me so um that ended up going out and that
sounded quite good and if you're listening to
this in athens firstly i mean why but also secondly
have a lovely time i'm waiting for this rain
to die down a little let me just check is it
still Yes, it's still raining. So, yes, I'm going
a little bit stir -crazy, but at least I do have
power, which is something, and internet, which
is something else as well. So sorry I can't be
with you, but make sure to see the session about
marketing at the end of Tuesday in track three.
I've bullied Wade Kingsley, Wade, into doing
that for me so that we can have another person
from Australia on the stage. Where I'm speaking
next, though, Radio Days Ireland in Dublin, March
the 27th. Definitely be able to go there. Looking
forward to it. Evolutions in Chicago, March the
31st. Radio Days in North America, in Toronto,
May 7th. The podcast show in London from May
20th. Podcast Movement in Dallas, Texas, August
18th. Radio Days Asia, which probably September.
September the 1st to the 3rd, I believe. and
PodSummit in Calgary in Canada. It's PodSummitYYC
is its name from September the 19th. And thank
you to the many supporters of this podcast and
of the newsletter as well, including Play It
Software, Soma FM, and Media Realm, all excellent
for supporting me, plus personal supporters Greg
Strassel, Sam Phelps, Richard Hilton, Emma Gibbs,
Jocelyn Abbey and James Masterton for being regular
supporters. If you would like to support my work
in any way, buymeacoffee .com slash jamescridland
is a nice place to go. You can just give a one
-off coffee or five or give regularly on that
and that's all good. You can follow me on Mastodon
at james at bne .social and my website has more
details about who I am, what I do and if I can
help you further. There are also various virtual
of this column translated into German at Radio
Zine if you would like to go and take a peek
at that but until next time keep listening