Hello, I'm James Cridland, the radio futurologist, and every couple of weeks I send out a newsletter
all about the future of radio and where radio is going and all of that, and this is the
podcast version.
This is from February 18th, and it starts by going to Canada.
Because Canada is all of a flutter.
Catherine Tate, the president and CEO of the CBC, says that the organisation is going to
stop broadcasting, preparing to end traditional TV and radio broadcasts and move completely
digital.
Well, Canada's commercial media companies have an even worse relationship with the CBC
than most because the CBC competes for ad revenue on many of its services, so the media
has of course reacted by setting light to their pitchforks and adding fuel to the defund
the CBC fire.
I think there may be a couple of mixed metaphors in there anyway, but there's no real announcement
here, just like there's no real announcement with Tim Davies' announcement earlier in
the year that the BBC was doing something similar.
Both public service broadcasters are acknowledging the media is now delivered in a multi-platform
way and flagging that things may need to change in future, but probably not now.
Indeed, while the BBC has mistakenly, in my view, suggested that it'll be online only
in a decade, it won't be.
The CBC hasn't fallen into that trap.
Broadband ubiquity is required, they say, for the CBC to turn off their transmitters.
And for the CBC, that transmitter switch-off may need new laws to be written, because the
law specifies that they must provide TV and radio services, but it'll certainly be one
to watch.
For now though, Radio Canada and the CBC are still safely anchored in transmission.
And I'm sure that they will be in early June, when I will be in Toronto for Radio Days North
America.
If you are in Toronto or going to Radio Days North America, it would be great to catch
up.
I'm jamesatcrid.land.
On Monday morning, my Google speaker woke me up with the words, sorry, I don't understand.
It turned out that the incantation to listen to ABC Radio Brisbane broke last weekend,
as an article that I've discovered goes into.
Now Google hasn't said anything, but that's a big issue, given the number of listeners,
large number of listeners, that tune in on Google smart speakers.
It has over 80% of the market here in Australia, by the way.
Alexa is tiny, but you could imagine that if Alexa was to fall over in parts of the
world, then there'll be an awful lot of outcry about that.
I would hope that radio programmers have been onto Google like a shot to get this fixed,
but I'm not convinced that they have been.
My favourite dip-in-dip-out radio station, ABC News Radio, was broken on Google speakers
for more than a month earlier this year.
I've just checked.
It's back, so that's OK.
It is important that, as radio broadcasters, we ensure that smart speaker operators ensure
that we're available there.
It's fast becoming a multi-, a major platform for us, and it's one of the most popular
uses for these speakers.
And if smart speakers are important to radio, the car is even more so.
In my newsletter at james.crid.land, I share a really interesting graph from the BBC's
Alison Winter.
It's from a conference in Ireland, and it seems to show UK radio audience week by week
in 2020 and 2021, overlaid with the number of cars on the road.
And it shows a really strong correlation between the amount of cars on the road and the amount
of people who are listening to the radio, and a strong argument for radio getting serious
about its place in the car dashboard.
Many US radio brands have pulled AM radio out of cars completely, citing interference
issues.
And while some car manufacturers are working hard to ensure a great in-car experience with
radio, many aren't.
So let's hope that that changes soon too.
And by the way, I was actually unaware that we had weekly audience figures for UK radio.
First time I've seen those.
Other things, happy World Radio Day for last week.
I was on ABC Radio Goldfields Esperance, which is in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, which
is six hours drive from Perth.
It really is in the middle of nowhere.
And I was also on ABC Radio Sydney on Monday as well.
I linked my appearance on Radio Sydney, if you would like to hear me fawning ever so
slightly, to the excellent Richard Glover who was on the radio.
And I am in Sydney on February the 28th and March the 1st, if you would like to catch
up.
I'm jamesatcrid.land.
It would be good to do that.
I linked to some nice new fancy radio studios from RTE in Ireland, the second visual radio
studio, a studio built for radio and TV.
RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland is simulcast on TV on the RTE News channel, which you can
watch everywhere in the world, although it doesn't seem to stream particularly well for
me.
But still, there you go.
So yeah, they clearly will benefit from having some really nice radio studios that work for
TV too.
And entire website branded BBC News, I discovered, that is all about how the BBC worked to make
people feel more favourable towards Huawei, achieving a 61% brand uplift.
Now I know it's the commercial arm.
I know it's people selling advertising on the BBC, but it is also the BBC.
And there's something a bit distasteful about a company that's currently being ripped out
of government offices because of security fears, having their reputation managed by
the BBC.
There's one time when you might want to launch a different brand to manage advertising on
the BBC's output.
That's what happens in the US.
There's a company called National Public Media.
Ever heard of it?
No.
Well, they sell NPR.
Heard of that?
Yes.
Of course you have.
And I think it does make a bit of sense to have those brands at arm's length from one
another rather than BBC News saying how much favourable the world is towards Huawei these
days.
The US National Broadcaster, the ABC, fell off the internet completely for about 70 minutes
on Monday, World Radio Day, actually while I was on.
If you tried to visit any ABC web property or use any ABC app, you got all kinds of errors.
It was a DNS error.
Of course it's always a DNS error, isn't it?
Except when it's cause, in which case it's a cause error, not DNS.
Some interesting key facts about the US radio industry from Pew Research.
I'll link to those.
Along the graphs, data showing how many newsroom employees are employed in US radio.
What do you think?
Has that figure gone up or gone down?
Of course it's gone down.
And finally, I'm busy repopulating my blog and I've got up to the middle of 2007, which
is an interesting time for me as I leave Virgin Radio, a place where I loved working, and
went to the BBC, a place where I worked.
And yes, which has been interesting reading through some of those blog posts.
But a few that I link to.
Has your radio station got a Marty?
Talking about a nice man called Marty from New York who used to, and indeed I think still
does, listen to the radio station 24 hours a day seemingly and knows everybody.
I also link to a slightly plaintive note that my old show on The Pulse on Bradford has been
networked.
This was back in 2007.
I believe now that there's only a breakfast show left on that radio station and the radio
station comes out of Leeds now, not out of Bradford.
So it's not really the same, is it?
And I also link to random write-ups of media conferences that I attended.
Here's an interesting stat from 2007.
40% of commercial radio stations lose money.
That figure I'm imagining is now no longer the case, if only because 40% of commercial
radio stations are now just being broadcast either from Manchester or from London.
But still, there you go.
I must say thank you to my supporters.
Paul Chandler has written all kinds of legal books for media types.
I link to some of those.
He bought me five coffees.
Thank you, Paul.
Also thank you, Lee Price.
That's excellent of you both.
Lee Price is now working for Adthos, which is a very clever company doing some very clever
dynamic ads in which I believe that he will be at Radio Day's Europe.
So you can go and find out more about that in Prague, as will I.
Thank you also too to Richard Hilton, to James Masterton and to Brun Audio Consulting for
your ongoing support of this newsletter.
I'm very grateful to you.
If you'd like to support my work in any way, any way at all, you can, pardon me, you can
buy me a coffee.
You can become a member to give regularly or just give a one-off coffee of five.
And you can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash James Cridland.
That's buymeacoffee.com slash James Cridland.
Here's where I am over the next couple of months.
I'm at the IAB Audio Summit in Sydney on March the 1st.
I'm at podcast movement Evolutions in Las Vegas between March the 6th and the 11th,
which should be great fun and also very tiring.
Radio Day's Europe in Prague, March 25th to the 30th, the NAB show in mid-April.
I'm also going over to Berlin, which I haven't written in here and I probably should have
done.
I'm in Berlin in mid-April as well, April 20th to the 23rd, something like that.
If you're in Berlin, it would be lovely to see you.
The New Zealand Podcast Summit in mid-May, assuming that everything is back to normal
in New Zealand by then.
The podcast show 2023 in London at the end of May.
And Radio Day's North America in early June, also in June.
Pod News Live.
It's the first of a few conferences that Sam, Sethy and I are running.
Very much looking forward to doing that.
That's on June the 13th.
It's in Salford.
Sam will be saying Manchester.
I will be saying Salford because I know better.
But it'd be wonderful to see you.
It's all about podcasting and you will find more information soon at podnews.net slash
live.
Obviously not now because, well, I don't really know what to write.
So yeah, podnews.net slash live will be the place to go.
My contact details are james at crid.land.
That's my email address.
And also where you'll find me on Mastodon.
Just search for james at crid.land and you'll find my Brisbane social handle, which is where
I currently am, which is jolly good.
My professional website has more detail about who I am and what I do and whether I can help
you further and whether I can actually edit audio.
But the point of this is that I don't edit audio.
I just read.
That's the point of this.
There's no audio editing in this podcast.
So thank you for listening and until next time, keep listening.