Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist,
and this is Radioland, my international radio
trends newsletter. You can sign up at james .cridland
.net. And this is from July the 27th, 2025. ABC
Radio Brisbane celebrates 100 years on air. Yes,
what is now ABC Radio Brisbane launched on the
27th of 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 closed down. until 6 .30. Ray Allen
has written a full history on his website which
I link to and I heartily recommend. It was quite
the honour to have been asked to be on the station
on its 100th birthday and I was asked whether
I would give my thoughts on the output of the
station which I hurriedly declined. But a chat
about the future of the station might be fun
I thought and I discovered on a chilly winter
morning that... They weren't broadcasting from
their South Bank studios, but instead broadcasting
live from the Queen Street Mall in the centre
of the city. Anyway, a very nice T -shirt was
made, which my wife excellently ordered for me
ahead of time as a gift, so I put that on and
caught the bus into Brisbane to have a chat with
Steve Austin. It was a day of celebration, though
I have to, of course, I had to mention that ABC
Senior Management should give that station an
FM licence, which was reacted to with a bit of
a laugh. Anyway, you'll find the audio linked
from my newsletter and on my blog, james .cridland
.net slash blog. Now, last week, I linked to
a video about the BBC moving radio studios from
Radio Tech Con. This week, I've linked to Bauer
Media Moving Studios, a not altogether smooth
move, if I can read between the lines, but a
fascinating look into London's newest radio broadcast
centre. Saga Communications in the US is replacing
their voiceover talents for imaging with AI cloned
voices. And that saved jobs rather than cost
them, according to the report that I link to.
Now, I use an AI voiceover for the Pod News Weekly
Review. And yeah, it's right, but I can hardly
pass judgment on Saga doing much the same sort
of thing. Incidentally, that podcast of mine
goes through an automated tool that removes um
and uh filler words. And that seems to work quite
nicely. Now, there's been a public beta of iOS
26. That's the next operating system for iPhone
that has been made available. I've had the developer
version for some time and tried out the Apple
Music Auto Mix run by the company's AI systems.
And it's mostly really very good. It's better
than any other streaming service that I've heard
and frankly nicer than many radio stations manage.
I link to what it did to my music on my blog
as well. And the BBC Sounds app is now turned
off for anyone outside the UK. Now, if you still
have it and you want to still keep on using it,
then it's relatively trivial to get past. You
need to find a UK VPN, but use the BBC Sounds
app on it just once. And that appears to reset
the holiday clock for a month, and you'll still
be able to use BBC Sounds for now. But there
is a bit of an issue with that, in that the BBC
Sounds app is no longer available in app stores
anywhere outside the UK. So I guess if the BBC
wants to break it, they just need to update it
and check for the latest version. If you just
want to listen to live radio, well, there's no
need for even that. Just use your web browser
and visit bbc .co .uk slash radio station name,
like bbc .co .uk slash radio 2. or bbc .co .uk
slash radio leads. Or you can use TuneIn or Apple
Music or anything else. Now, as far as I can
see, the BBC app is just a website wrapper. So
it doesn't work with Apple CarPlay or Android
Auto. But that does mean that if you want to
see what the BBC app is like, and you're in the
UK, then just use a VPN. and accessbbc .com.
It's almost the same experience. The main issue
that people have found is the lack of any scoped
search for BBC Audio. So a search for The Archers
results in the top search results being all about
sport. I'm slightly surprised, it has to be said.
about the copy on the BBC's subscription webpage.
Now, in the US, the BBC is trying to earn money
from an annual subscription, $8 .99 a month,
or there's an annual cost in there as well. Anyway,
it uses a font that isn't wreath serif and a
text size that surely isn't BBC standard because
it's microscopic. But the page contains a list
of the things that it appears you get access
to, including... the BBC World Service. It looks
very much to me as if the BBC is trying to claim
that you'll need a subscription to access the
radio station in the future. Now, it does get
government grant funding of £104 million and
another £158 million from the licence fee, so
I'm surprised that they can put that behind the
subscription wall as well. Or perhaps they're
not, and they're just being misleading. Who knows?
Anyway, it's the lack of catch -up that hurts
a bit, especially for those of us not in good
time zones. As one example, the BBC's Today programme
is now unavailable via catch -up internationally.
But rejoice, there is a podcast called Best of
Today, but there's been no updates to it since
October 2024. So presumably there's been nothing
good on since then. And thank you to the excellent
Jared Greats, who sent over five coffees. That's
kind of you. BuyMeACoffee .com slash James Gridland.
Now running the Greats Media Group, he calls
himself an audience -ologist. What a ridiculous
thing to do, to take a word and add ologist to
the end and hope you'll get away with it. Anyway,
he's good and enthusiastic about the future of
radio and worth chasing up. Speaking next, I
am at Dallas in Texas, the podcast movement,
which is August the 18th to the 21st. Looking
forward to that. And Radio Days Asia in Jakarta
in Indonesia in early September. If you'd like
to go to either of those, I have money off tickets
for you. please just get in touch and ask. James
at crit .land is my email address and I will
help you save some money off both of those and
that'll be good. Thank you to my supporters,
including Greg Strassel and Sam Phelps and James
Masterton for being regular supporters. If you'd
like to support my work in any way, you can buy
me a coffee. Be a member to give regularly or
just give a one -off coffee or five. Alternatively,
you can do that directly with Stripe as well.
There are links and all of that in the newsletter
or buymeacoffee .com slash James Cridland will
also get there. I'm on Blue Sky and on Mastodon.
You should probably follow me on Mastodon, I
guess. And my website has more detail about who
I am and what I do and whether I can help you
further. That's at james .cridland .net. And
until next time, keep listening.