Hello, I'm James Cridlin, the radio futurologist, and every week or so I write a newsletter
all about the future of radio and all of that. And this is it for March 12th 2023 AM radio
to disappear from more cars. Because it turns out that the 2024 Ford Mustang won't have
AM radio in it. The company says it will remove amplitude modulation from most new and updated
models we bring to market. And it's notable that this isn't an electric vehicle, which
is new, I think so far AM has only been removed from electric vehicles with some kind of spurious
excuse that electric vehicles and AM don't work very well together, which I'm not entirely
convinced is true. But anyway, the US Senator for Massachusetts Ed Markey is batting for
AM radio and writing lots of excited letters to everybody. But the auto manufacturers are
all just pointing out that they all have internet radio and HD radio in them. And so what's
the point? There's also been a fascinating discussion, or a fascinating decision, I should
say from Bauer to remove Lynx FM's three FM frequencies in the UK. They're putting Greatest
Hits Radio on there instead. Now, the curious thing is that Lynx, not on FM, what are they
going to call it? Lynx FM, but not on FM. Anyway, it will continue on DAB. And their
DAB coverage appears considerably larger than their FM coverage because they've got an additional
transmitter in East Yorkshire. Hi, Hunsley from memory. Anyway, it'll mean that rather
more will be able to hear their station. But of course, fuel will listen because just on
DAB. So fascinating to see how all of that pans out and how long we give Lynx FM. In
case you're wondering how big Lynx FM is, it's a pretty big station. It's the 14th most
popular radio station in the UK. It has a 14.8% share. However, the 13th most popular
radio station in the UK is Greatest Hits Radio, Barnsley, which has 15.5% share. And that's
essentially what Lynx FM on FM is going to become. So maybe Bauer's doing the right thing,
who knows? For regulatory reasons, sandwiched between Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo on Greatest
Hits Radio in Lincolnshire will be John Marshall. Now, John is also the mid-morning presenter
on the Lynx FM itself and has been at the radio station for 26 years. So which will
he do live? Is he going to do both shows live? Could Bauer not afford another presenter?
Who knows how that all works? In other news, Sean Ross has listened to the Spotify AI DJ,
which was announced a few years ago and a few weeks ago, I should say. It sounds a little
bit better than at first thought. The ABC in Australia is to join the Australian podcast
Ranker. Now, they did say that they were joining at launch in October 2019, but apparently
this time they mean it. So that's nice. The NAB show in Las Vegas will have more than
a thousand exhibitors, they say, and that number is up 20% year on year. Although the
show did have 1600 in 2019 when I was there last, so there is some way to go. I will be
there again this year. And I've also been talked into running two events in the UK,
Pod News Live in June in Salford and Pod News Live in London on September the 27th. They
are already available for tickets at a very low early bird price. And the idea there is
an event built for networking and for sharing knowledge in the business of podcasting. It's
still a difficult time for events, but I hope that we can make for a good event. You can
grab your tickets for that at podnews.net slash live. Later this month, I'm at Radio
Days Europe in Prague, where I'm speaking at both the podcast summit and the audio data
summit on the Sunday. This recording is me basically putting off writing all of those
keynotes. And then I'm speaking also in the event on Tuesday as well. And thank you to
Richard Hilton, to James Masterton and to Brun Audio Consulting for your ongoing support
of this newsletter. I'm very grateful to you. You can buy me a coffee too. Buy me a coffee
dot com slash James Credland. You can become a member to give regularly if you like, or
just give a one off coffee. That's also absolutely fine. So apart from Radio Days Europe in Prague
and the NAB show in mid April, I'm also off to Berlin for Spotify's event as well, which
I still can't remember his name. So looking forward to that. The New Zealand podcast summit
in mid May, the podcast show in London at the end of May and Radio Days in North America
in early June. Gosh, I've got a lot of time on planes. My contact details, james.credland.net
slash contact if you're there in any one of those. I'm also on Masterton. Just search
for James at cred.land and you'll find me there. And my professional website has more
details about who I am and what I do and whether I can help you further. That is at james.credland.net.
Until next time, keep listening.