Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist,
and this is Radioland, my weekly international
radio trends newsletter. What's the date today?
It's February the 16th, 2026, and this podcast
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for that. Now, I've been watching the troubles
of the television industry in a detached sort
of way because it's very clear how quickly the
business of live television is collapsing before
our eyes. It seems every few weeks there's another
story about cost -cutting within the TV industry.
I can't really remember the last time I watched
live television. From the antenna, actually I
can, we turned on the TV on January the 24th
to listen to Triple J's Hottest 100 on the big
speakers in the front room, but that wasn't watching
the television really though, was it? Particularly
from an infrastructure point of view, the end
of broadcast TV is moving really very quickly.
In the UK, there's increasing talk about switching
off terrestrial television broadcasting. 2034
is given as a potential switch -off date. given
that that's when the contracts are due for renewal
with broadcasting infrastructure company Arkiva.
But that's television, and we don't need to care
about television, do we? So I thought. But what
I'd not appreciated until now was that of course
this means that the costs for maintaining the
terrestrial transmitter network post -2034 would
no longer mostly be paid for by television. That
means that radio could end up being charged significantly
more, according to a story in the iPaper. Radio
isn't always co -sited with TV, but clearly maintenance
of masts, ground rent, the cost of staff and
offices and many other parts of the broadcast
infrastructure world would end up having to be
paid for almost entirely by radio broadcasters.
And frankly, there isn't the money to go around
there. There's much to think about, I think.
While FM and DAB Plus don't require anywhere
near the same kind of infrastructure as AM or
TV, at high transmission powers they still do
require proper transmission. Meanwhile, the UK
government is running a review about the future
of FM radio beyond 2030. DAB is still much, much
bigger than online, so there's no suggestion
right now that it's the end of terrestrial radio,
and those masts will still need to be required.
Radio Today has reported a Europe -wide piece
of work celebrating listening to radio in the
car. And I'm still surprised at the piecemeal
approach that the radio industry is taking towards
car manufacturers, which means that we get the
sort of bad experience that I have in my car
right now in terms of a radio receiver, because
nobody is apparently talking to auto manufacturers
about how to make it better. And that's not been
helped by commercial radio in Australia overfilling
its multiplexes, which has broken much of the
functionality of DAB in my car, which is, again,
something that nobody cares about either. My
goodness, the amount of time that I've spent
talking to the CRA about it and not getting particularly
far. The BBC has launched a new tech podcast
called The Interface. It's a BBC Studios audio
production for BBC Sounds of the UK and BBC .com
internationally. And true to form, it has a bewildering
distribution plan. If you're in the UK, you'll
be able to listen to it on BBC Sounds or wherever
you get your BBC podcasts. Outside the UK, you
can listen to it on bbc .com or wherever you
get your podcasts or watch it on YouTube. Outside
the UK, despite the BBC's website having full
video capability, you're not watching it there.
No, you only get to watch it on a US website,
Google's YouTube, with advertising and tracking.
And inside the UK, in spite of the BBC's website
having full video capability and the BBC having
this thing called the iPlayer, which you might
have heard of, which has lots of long -form video
content, you don't get to watch this thing at
all. It's just audio for you and tough. Just
bizarre. Really don't understand what the BBC
is doing. Now, discovered for pod news, but in
radio, we'll find this helpful as well. You probably
know about FFmpeg. It's a wonderful command line
thing that works command line in Linux and also
in Darwin, which the Mac uses and all of that.
It's very good for audio encoding. It's very
good for audio conversion and all of that. You
might not know that it's also capable of sorting
out LUFS levels. You can add compression with
it. You can add EQ with it. You can add all kinds
of additional things just using FFmpeg, which
is lovely. So there's a thing called FFab, Scotty.
FFab, it's a really nice UI for FFmpeg. And it
gives you the command line for what it's doing.
So you can add the commands to your workflow.
It's genuinely amazing what FFmpeg is capable
of doing, it turns out. And this is really nice
UI, which lets you play with the buttons or faux
faders and all that kind of stuff to your heart's
content. It's very nice. FAB isn't Scotty, is
it? FAB is something else. I'm trying to remember
what it is and I can't remember. Anyway, there
we are. I did a web search for Phil Reilly, trying
to remember where I'd read that main story about
the cost of radio. And I noticed... Then he'd
blogged at the end of last year about the funding
debate for the BBC and its effect on radio. Privatising
bits of the BBC would be a calamity for everyone,
he argues. It's good. There's some good maths
in there. It's worth a peek. Now, two pieces
of random radio research, which you'll find linked
from my newsletter, which you'll find at james
.cridland .net. or indeed at radioland .email.
Yes, can't forget that, radioland .email. It's
rather easier, isn't it? Anyway, two pieces of
random radio research. Firstly, I'll link to
2025's radio figures for Finland. Radio reaches
83 % of the population there a week. Daily listening,
two hours, four minutes. Although, if you look
at people aged under 24, that two hours, four
minutes drops to just 32 minutes. Gosh. There's
some nice data in the pack about where they listen
and who to. It's a lovely, really clear, really
inclusive report, which is really nice. And I
also link to the Survey 325 survey for New Zealand.
And unlike the Finnish one, it's two sets of
tables with a tiny cramped graphic at the bottom
of page one. The figures don't include RNZ, the
public service broadcaster, or indeed many of
the community stations. I think that radio is
much stronger in Aotearoa than these figures
would tell you, and I don't think they tell a
very good story about radio at all. Bit of a
shame. Now, I'm on ABC television tonight in
West Australia during their 7pm news, as I record
this. Two hours' time. talking about ABC Radio
Perth's switch later this month over to 102 .5
FM. That's a familiar frequency for me. Anyway,
hopefully it'll be almost as good as a very nicely
written piece from the ABC on its website, which
correctly catches all of my tedious caveats about
AM still being very important in regional Australia,
but this being a particularly good fix. for city
broadcasting, which is what ABC Radio Perth is,
stroke, should be all about. Anyway, it's a nice
piece which you'll find linked from my newsletter.
Tomorrow morning, I'm also on ABC Radio Perth.
If you're up at 6 .15 in the morning Perth time,
it's 8 .15 in the morning Brisbane time, so I
will have had enough time to get into the centre
of Brisbane and used something called the TARDIS,
which the TARDIS is there. A little radio studio
where you go in and you talk to people at the
other end of the line rather than it just being
at the end of a phone call. Rather nicer. Anyway,
there we are. Now, I didn't hear from Peter in
Waverley last week. I did hear, though, from
another former ABC employee called Ed, who sent
me a grumpy email saying, I do carry on so much
about AM, adding, I'm just interested in the
content and I couldn't really care less about
the form of modulation. Well, Ed. I am interested
in people actually listening to the content and
therein lies the difference. Now, I spoke last
week at the radio festival in New Delhi, at least
I think I did, and you can watch many of the
sessions on their website. YouTube's captions
are really good at translating the mix of English
and Hindi that the session was all done in. There
was a session called Is Radio Dying or Thriving
where some radio people genuinely stood there
at a radio conference, saying that radio was
dying which i thought was a brave career move
yes i understand the conversations But also,
wow, gosh, okay. So the lady from Fever 104,
I thought, yeah, brilliant. I mean, good for
you, but wow. So anyway, worth a peek. There's
a whole day's worth of coverage there. And thank
you to Radio Today in the UK for becoming my
latest supporter. As soon as I say that, I start
thinking about the little jingle that they used
to have with MCASO. Anyway, as long as I've been
in radio, Radio Today has been there covering
the changes in the industry. It's an excellent
resource. And I'm also very excited to see some
of Mr. Roy's money. So I will be spending that
wisely, quite possibly in Riga, in Latvia, which
is where I'm speaking next towards the end of
March. My session is called The Future of Audio
is People Powered. I've got lots of data, lots
of excitement, but also talking really rather
more about the content that we put on our transmitters,
not necessarily what those transmitters actually
are. And certainly I don't think I'll be mentioning
AM once because it's Europe and Europe has moved
on from all of that sort of thing. You should
be going to Radio Days Europe as well. It is
a marvellous, marvellous, marvellous event if
you're interested in anything to do with radio.
I know it's called Radio Days Europe. There's
people from all over the world there. It's a
really invigorating couple of days. It's well
worth going to. RadioDaysEurope .com is where
you can buy tickets now and you should be buying
tickets now for it. The tickets will go up and
up and up and up and up in terms of costs. And
you should be sorting that out right now. So
RadioDaysEurope .com is where to go for that.
I'm also speaking at the podcast show in London,
May the 20th to the 21st. I'm actually doing
the first speak, the first keynote. Yes. Anyway,
I'll be on at quarter past nine, if you can get
in, in the first 10 minutes. So that'll be good.
And I'll be last on as well, recording a Pod
News Weekly review from something which I can't
tell you yet. So there we are. And probably a
few other things as well. The podcast show is
very good too. If you subscribe to PodNews, then
you get some money off as well. podnews .net
slash extras if you do that. And thank you to
our many supporters, including Radio Today and
Gavin Watson, Greg Strassel, Sam Phelps, Richard
Hilton, Emma Gibbs, Jocelyn Abbey and James Masterton
for being regular supporters. If you would like
to support this in any way, then you can buy
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James Cridland, or indeed just go to radioland
.email and find the link there. I'm on Mastodon
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at BNE .social. Mastodon's good. None of the
rest are. So that's basically me. And my website
has more details about who I am and what I do
and whether or not I can help you further. Thank
you to a few people who have contacted me and
said, would you like me to edit this podcast
for you? No, no, no. This podcast is literally
me opening the microphone, recording it, closing
the microphone. and then uploading it. There's
no editing on this at all, can you tell? But
until next week, thank you for listening, and
keep listening.