Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist,
and every week or so I write a newsletter all
about radio. It's called Radioland, and this
is for the 25th of August, 2025. 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. It's accompanied
by a paper called The Fast Facts Keep Radio Easily
Accessible Anytime, Anywhere. Good old plucky
little Australia, the number 15 new vehicle market
in the world, with 1 .2 million sold in 2024,
is looking for prominent one -button access to
Australian radio, AM, FM, DAB Plus receivers
and streaming audio in all cars, and also asking
for the government to act now. The fact sheet
also promotes streaming radio and even podcasts
in the same breath as requiring AM, FM and DAB
plus reception in cars. Well, the Australian
radio industry has mistakenly long ignored the
work from Radio Player, which has been spending
a lot of time to actively work with auto manufacturers
to make the radio experience work better in cars,
particularly ensuring that receivers can automatically
hand over between FM, DAB and IP, and not just
making sure that there's a radio button, but
setting clear UX guidelines to ensure that it's
easy and clear to use. is doing similar, and
in my view it would be better for the CRA to
work together with other global organisations
here rather than treat them as not invented here,
as the organisation has long done. The requirement
put forward by the CRA that connected cars and
devices with a terrestrial receiver continue
to provide prominent access to radio broadcasting
services seems to leave the door wide open for
manufacturers to just remove the terrestrial
receiver altogether, something that we don't
really want. Better still, of course, that the
public want broadcast radio enough to request
it in their cars. Meanwhile, it would be churlish
to mention that the CRA's implementation of DAB
Plus radio in this country is not quite what
car receivers expect. Neither my Toyota Prius
nor my MG4 decodes the CRA -operated DAB signal
correctly. The Prius can't even get the audio
without glitches, while the MG struggles to decode
the programme type, the slideshow or even the
DLS in some cases. as well as a suspiciously
long delay between tuning in to a station and
the audio actually coming in. The ABC SBS multiplex
is fine in both, and yes, I've reported it to
all the right places, but nobody seems to want
to acknowledge the issue, or indeed fix it. Elsewhere,
catch -up radio has been quietly added to some
shows on BBC Radio 4 on the international BBC
website. They appear in the schedule page, so
we can now listen to the Today programme, PM
and other long -form news programmes, which don't
appear in podcast form. The schedule also seamlessly
links to podcasts, so if you press play on The
Archers, for example, it plays The Archers podcast,
complete with ads, as it should be. However,
this isn't yet available in the BBC app. where
if you manage to find your way to the programme
schedules, you'll not see these play buttons.
90 % of all on -demand audio is listened to on
mobile. And the Archers podcast, by the way,
starts with a superfluous BBC Sounds promotion,
which really isn't hard to get right. Thank you
to George Wright, who shares Tuning In, an American's
Guide to British Radio Culture, the massive difference
between UK radio and that from the US, and why
most US radio leaves me entirely cold. It's worth
a read. You'll find it in the show notes. In
Australia, Stephen Centovanti has updated his
radio technologist's resources, and there's plenty
there to read. Just released from the Radio TechCon
conference is Radio Land supporter Rupert Brunn,
talking about the pips, the time signal that
you'll hear on... BBC Radio, especially BBC Radio
4 and the BBC World Service. And there's some
interesting information in there, particularly
that the pips are produced every quarter hour
and the strenuous work that went on in the BBC
to ensure that they don't go out by mistake.
There was a big orange light, apparently, but
the big orange light didn't work. Instead, the
more sensible plan was to automatically mute
the pips channel between five minutes past two,
55 minutes to so that you only heard the correct
ones at the top of the. hour, even if you did
leave the fader open. In my quest for a little
travel radio that picks everything up, radio's
Stephen Martin has pointed me... Well, he's Steve
Martin. When he's in radio, he pointed me to
an amazing looking thing, the ominously named
DP666. Yes. First, it looks like an Anorak stream.
It's the kind of information that the screen
gives you. Everything from, you know, program
type to EON information and all kinds of stuff
for FM, RDS. Oh, it's going to be very exciting.
It uses a TEF6686 chip inside it and it's about
£50. The firmware for the chip is open source
and the radio is capable of tuning. in to DAB
bands but not decoding the audio but blogs about
it appear to indicate that you can also connect
your computer and treat it as an SDR receiver
so who knows whether that opens up additional
things to do with DAB or you can make it available
as a web tuner instead so of course I now have
one on the way so thank you to Steve Martin and
next weekend I fly to Radio Days Asia which I'm
looking forward to I'm moderating some sessions
and playing MC for the podcast day if you are
going to be in Jakarta. I would really appreciate
saying hello. I'm speaking next then at Radio
Days Asia in early September. I'll be at Pennine
Radio's 50th birthday and last ever get -together
in Bradford later on in the month. Pod Summit
YYC in Calgary. The Health Podcast Summit, which
I'm speaking at. I'm, I think, speaking at something
in the end of September in Istanbul as well.
I'm just waiting for information about that.
And also Radio Days Europe in Riga in Latvia
next March. Thank you so much to the many supporters
of Radioland, including Studio Media Results
Inc. and Brunn Audio Consulting Limited for your
kind support. If you would 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. Buymeacoffee .com slash
James Cridland is where to go. My website has
more details about who I am and what I do and
whether I can help you further. That's james
.cridland .net and keep listening.