I'm James Criddon, the radio futurologist, and
this is Radioland, my international radio trends
newsletter. You can subscribe for free at radioland
.email. And this is November the 9th, 2025, news
bulletins on radio and AI. When I worked in commercial
radio in the UK, every hour on the hour, we broke
for a live news bulletin. Even in today's deregulated
UK market, Ofcom expects regularly refreshed
and locally gathered news bulletins, normally
hourly, during daytimes. Canada expects a third
of output to be local. and that news is, quotes,
an essential aspect of station output. Minimums
are agreed per station. Ireland's requirement
is particularly fierce for news and current affairs
output, a negotiable standard of not less than
20 % of all broadcast airtime and at least 120
minutes a day. In Australia, though, as with
many things, Australia's media regulator ACMA
is a little more relaxed, requiring local radio
broadcasters to broadcast A, at least one news
bulletin a day, and B, at least 62 .5 minutes
of bulletins a week. That's, if you've worked
it out, a 90 -second bulletin every hour during
weekday daytimes. And you can't just repeat them
either. But producing news is expensive. A report
in Media Week reported further in entertaining
fashion on the ABC's Media Watch. I'll link to
both of those from the newsletter version of
this. suggests that on SCA stations, bulletins
are now being written by AI that scrapes local
news from online sources, leading one human newsreader
to check and voice 39 local bulletins a day across
four regions. I also suspect the newsreader isn't
actually voicing complete bulletins either, judging
by the similarity of the intros on the ABC's
Media Watch. Now, I'm not sure how possible it
is to fact -check AI output at scale like this,
and I suspect that there's a lawsuit waiting
to happen for broadcasting an unchecked story.
Only a few weeks ago, in fact, when producing
an audio transcript for this very newsletter,
I caught my own transcript generation AI tool
confidently giving me text about an alleged and
proven offence. The audio actually said an alleged
unproven offence. I also wonder how much local
news actually exists for AI to scrape these days
anyway. Elsewhere, good news. After BBC Sounds
was turned off in July, the BBC have restored
on -demand access for flagship BBC Radio 4 programmes
in the BBC International app around four months
later. I've updated my canonical guide on how
to listen to BBC Radio outside the UK with that
information. Now, the only thing I'm keen to
happen is for the BBC to stop promoting BBC Sounds
outside the UK in its podcast Trails. They've
got all of the tools to do that already, and
it's clear evidence to me of friction between
sounds and studios. Triton Digital has rolled
out an interesting product for radio sales. It's
known as AdBuilder AI, and it allows smaller
advertisers to make radio ads themselves using
AI, then pay for their radio advertising using
a credit card. It fixes some of the problems
of local direct sales. that below a certain size
of order, it's not really very viable to give
a full service three -course sale to a small
advertiser. So your stations version of this
tool is all branded with your own logos and stuff.
It's a very clever application of technology
to free your salespeople up to give their full
support to larger advertisers. Talking about
radio advertising, I linked to a piece from AdsWiz
suggesting that they have the data to be able
to give a better answer in terms of frequency
or opportunities to hear than the oft -quoted
at least three. It also links to SiriusXM, which
suggests that the best value is four or more.
In Estonia, Radio Kuku has reportedly announced
that it's going to stop broadcasting on seven
FM frequencies from mid -January due to high
costs, they say, replacing the coverage with
a DAB plus signal. I suspect we'll see a bit
more of that. And last time, I wrote about my
disappointment that there was no local content
on my local ABC station after 7pm on a Sunday
night, and discovered that BBC local radio wants
to stop bothering doing local radio on Sunday
afternoons entirely, and instead they want to
network an All England programme instead. David
Lloyd makes a response to Ofcom, which is excellently
written, very robust, and worth a read for anyone
like me who wants to learn how to criticise properly.
You'll find that linked from the newsletter today
at radioland .email. Finally, to Brisbane, which
I appreciate I've been banging on about recently
and you're probably not very interested in it,
hence why it's at the bottom of the newsletter
and why I've left it till last. And frankly,
why I didn't do one of these newsletters last
week, because I had very little to say that wasn't
Brisbane -based. But having fired the current
KISS 97 .3 breakfast team in Brisbane, although
correctly letting these professionals say their
goodbyes, so thank you for that, ARN has announced
a surprising replacement. We'll get somebody
called Craig Lowy Lowe. It's a curious choice.
He's lived in the US since 2010 as a comedy writer,
performer, actor and director. Apparently, he
only returned to Australia last month. He's not
done radio or even any podcasts since 2010. It's
also interesting since, by rights, the $20 million
a year Kyle and Jackie O should be on Kiss instead.
Also in January, ARN will launch the Christian
O 'Connell Breakfast Show in Brisbane. Tried
and proven talent, with a music format that works
brilliantly in this market, but music that's
only available on AM, so it's an obvious number
one FM station. But Christian will only launch
on DAB +, and not on FM. Now, I just went to
check whether the press release about Loewy said
Kiss 97 .3 or just said Kiss. It says 97 .3,
but are ARN really going to squander this golden
opportunity? I think there's surprises still
to come, if you ask me. Also, congratulations
to Sophie Formica and Dean Miller, who have been
given 4BC's breakfast show next year. I don't
know Dean. I've met Sophie, though. She's a great
and positive broadcaster. Both are Brisbane -based.
and they've known each other for 20 years. And
it does fill me with quite a lot of confidence
that this show won't just be an angry old man
shouting about politics and stirring for divisive
talking points. The ABC, I think, should be a
bit concerned about 4BC next year, particularly
if 4BC's owners, Channel 9, use their multimedia
heft to promote the new show properly. Next,
I'm speaking at Radio Days Europe in Riga in
Latvia in March 2026. I mean, theoretically next,
I'm speaking at an event in Sri Lanka towards
the end of November. But I don't quite yet have
any confirmed tickets or anything like that.
So, you know, what do you know? But thank you
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you all for your support and all of the other
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whether I can help you further. That is at james
.crid .land. And until next time, keep listening.