Hello, I'm James Crittland, the Radio Futurologist and every week or a couple of weeks
I send out a newsletter all about the future of radio and radio's interoperability
interconnectedness with technology and all of that kind of stuff.
This is it from February 9th, 2023, the BBC, Poling its Radio Stations from Radio
Player and the Radio Fingers. In a potential actor of oblivion that's a joke related to a picture
which you can't see, the BBC has pulled its stations off Radio Player the cross-app platform
that it helped fund UK listeners now have to download the BBC Sounds app instead.
Now Radio Player was the thing I spent my last few months at the BBC occasionally working
on and I remember presenting to the heads of commercial radio in Tim Davies office
demonstrating how the player might look. It was only a web player at the time,
what actually it was a keynote document and demonstrating how it might all work as well.
Anyway, Radio Player was run very successfully by Michael Hill and the much admired service
is now in a number of different countries with integrations with car manufacturers, smart
speaker platforms as well as apps and it's just launched in Finland as it happens.
Now the BBC has in the past pulled some of its podcasts from general release for the
first 30 days in a trial open of a commerce close in verticals that was announced more
than 12 months ago and which a BBC press person tells me is still ongoing with no public
end date. It pulled all of its podcasts from Google podcasts when that launched, complaining
that it didn't want Google's player to appear in the results instead of its own. I also
hear from podcast commissioners that any success on third-party platforms like Apple Podcasts
or Spotify don't matter when the BBC is judging the success of shows. After all of this
in quarter four, 22, 188 million plays within BBC Sounds were to on demand content, excluding
music mixes. The corporation also saw 259 million podcasts downloads on third-party platforms
in other words. Podcasts don't perform nearly as well on BBC Sounds that 188 million figure
is made up of both podcasts and catch up radio after all.
Now the reason the BBC has done this is of course data. After I worked out the arcane
anti-pattern of actually requesting it, I was able to examine the BBC's data that it
had collected on me to discover that it gets data every second I'm using the BBC Sounds
app, even collecting data for 10 minutes after I stopped using it. To force listeners
to download an app is understandable if you're a commercial radio station where you'd like
to monetize the visitors much as possible. I'm not sure it's the right strategy, but
commercial radio can do what it likes because it lives and dies by the revenue it makes.
The BBC is different though. Its funding is guaranteed through a legally mandated TV
license fee, one that gets single mums threatened with prosecution for not paying and was
responsible for 50,000 prosecutions for non-payment in 2021 alone, 50,000 and if nothing
else, that should mean that its output is made available to the UK public in whatever form
the UK public wants to listen rather than forcing a download of a specific app. That,
truly would be a public service.
It was the quarterly radio figures in the UK earlier this month, Matt Deegan has written
a long post looking at the numbers so too has Adam Bawi. What I get out of the data
is a continuing fall for BBC Local Radio in England down by 15% in year-on-year reach
and down by 11.9% in year-on-year hours. That is ahead of the programming sharing that
they're about to start doing.
What I also see is boom radio, which isn't oldest service, more than doubling their total
reach up to 119% year-on-year and doing even better in terms of hours up, 137%
year-on-year. Normally those don't go on that way, new listeners tend to be less committed
to normally you see reach going up more than hours. But of course the heritage presenters
are a major part of the offering on boom radio, but I also wonder whether the music mix
for the station is unspotifiable. That is difficult for any algorithm to quite match the
kind of service that boom is. I wonder whether it's a relatively unique format in that case.
And LBC, the station of choice when I was in the car recently in the UK, continues to
do excellently. I do think there's a big difference between the future prospects for speech
radio when compared to music intensive formats. But the radio I don't seem to agree with
me because hard, which is an AC station in the UK, has done really well as well.
Elsewhere, fun radio in France has been fined more than 11 million Euro, that's more than
12 million US dollars, what not quite. I'm sort of nearly 12 million US dollars. Anyway,
they've been fined for encouraging listeners to tell audience researchers that they
listen to fun radio. So fun facts about this. All of this happened in 2016, which shows
the speed of this sort of thing. They did mention this on air more than 100 times, more
than 100 times. Their audience increased in a very unusual fashion as a result.
Compared to N. Ajay, we'll get 10 million Euro in damages. And fun radio is now owned by
M6, who claim that they had nothing to do with it anyway, and M6 planned to appeal.
After ceasing programming on 1215 AM with some beautifully produced audio, absolute radio
turned their transmitters off, one by one on the 25th of January. I think to a recording
of more side edge being turned off, I used to live just over the valley from those transmitters.
And I also noticed with some satisfaction that the switch was thrown at the end of the
loops announcement, not during its bravo bower again. That said, bower could apparently
be fined for ceasing to provide the service. It'd be interesting to see what off
come really do at the end of that, given that the UK government has been pretty clear
that it wants people to leave the AM wavepad. There's been a rebrand for KPCC in Los Angeles.
The radio station will now be known as LAist89.3. It's the same slightly unwieldy brand
that's used for the company's podcast and online service. It's called Signs to me,
seem really an aquronistic in 2023, although I guess that one benefit is at least that they
form a unique ID for any radio station that uses one. And so therefore, at least that's
handy for a smart speaker. But yes, LAist89.3, so much more obviously to do with LA than KPCC
was. What on the heels of their signing of Ken Bruce, Bower's greatest hits radio has
fallen back on tried and tested biscuit content. I linked to a tweet in my newsletter today
James.crid.land, which reads, what's the worst biscuit to have with a cup of tea?
Defored, the head of the UK's Bower Radio Group, is to leave the company after 35 years
it was announced. Now in the mid 1990s, she was my managing director for a short while.
She was one of those people. You admired greatly and you really wanted to do your best
for it. So I don't know if it's officially retirement, but if it is, happy retirement
D. She was, she still is, one of the good people. And let's finish with two fun facts.
Fun fact number one, twice as many people use telly text in Norway than use Twitter, which
is a great, great stat. And another fun fact, YouTuber Mr Beast has comparable hours of viewing
across his video to a top five netflix show. Now this newsletter is fueled by coffee by
you buying me coffee if we're going to be strictly accurate. So thank you to Craig Young for
the five coffees. He says appreciate the news in your newsletter and even share to my members
on occasion. Thank you Craig. Phil Riley, one of the brains behind boom radio is also bought
five coffees as did downright the excellent person behind absolute radio's tribute to
15 before it was turned off. Thank you Dan. I appreciate it. You're audio. I appreciate your coffee
even more. And also Alan Clement also bought a coffee all very kind of you also. Thank you for
doing that. Thank you also to Richard Hilton to James Masterton and to Brunn Audio Consulting
for your ongoing support of my newsletter and of this podcast and very grateful to you. If you
like to support my work in any way you can buy me a coffee, just be a member to give regularly
or just give a one off coffee or five if you'd like buy me a coffee dot com slash James
Cridond. And it's way to go for that or if you're using one of those fancy new podcast apps
then hit the boost button and send me some sets and that would be a lovely thing. Now also on this
page I'm just hitting refresh because I just added where I'll be of the next couple of months
because you know when I started recording this as a podcast where I'd be over the next couple of
months was at home because there was some form of pandemic on here at least. I don't know if
that happened where you were. Anyway it turns out that I'm traveling again. So where am I? I'm at
the IAB Audio Summit in Sydney on March 1st looking forward to that. A podcast movement
evolutions in Las Vegas on March 6th to the 11th. I'm looking to look forward to the podcast
movement evolution spit. Not necessarily the Las Vegas bit. Radio days Europe in Prague March 25th
to the 30th the NAB show in mid April which is in Vegas again. The New Zealand podcast summit
in mid May in Auckland the podcast show 2023 in London at the end of May. And Radio days North America
in early June which is in Toronto anyway my contact details if you're there too it'd be lovely
to catch up. I'm James at crid.land which is also what you can search mastered on for if you're on
there James at crid.land if you search that then you will find my master don account which is James
at b and e dot social Brisbane of course b and e dot social that's where I am I'm mastered on these days
and that's a lovely thing my professional website has more to say professional has more details about
who I am and what I do whether I can help you further you'll find that at James dot crid.land.net
and until next time keep listening.