A trawl around the web on July 13th
Posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 9:11pm. #
Attention, radio people!
Kill or cure for pirate radio? [BBC NEWS]
Quite a good piece about DAB in your car. And a quote from me in this piece too: seems I'm rather more pessimistic than others in the industry. Ho well.
Getting Ahead Of Change [The Infinite Dial]
Tom Webster poses that it's time to switch off AM radio. Perhaps. An interesting article, starting off with reminiscences of owning a Sony Walkman. (I had one of those. Well, not a Sony.)
The Easiest Thing That Could Make Radio Cool [The Infinite Dial]
It's apparently 'pausing and rewinding live radio'. You know, that thing that upmarket DAB Digital Radios have been able to do for a while. Yay Britain! First again!
Little things [Earshot]
Two reasons to go to this blog entry. One is the point of the piece – that changing little words can make all the difference. And the other is the excellent piece of audio in it… a recording of the BBC World Service years ago, from shortwave. What a splendid evocative noise.
Visualising "Material World": studio set-up [BBC Internet Blog]
How the BBC did the visualisation of a Radio 4 programme. Good tidbits ("black mike leads look nicer, colour ones work better for producers") and lots of detail. (It's a trial, this – working out how to automate stuff is only useful once you understand what editorially works). Interesting stuff.
Been There. Done That. [Radio InSights]
"Radio has pretty much stopped paying attention to our listeners. We go through the motions, whether it might be texting or Twitter, but most stations don’t really care." – yes. Yes, yes, yes. A vital blog entry for everyone involved in radio to go and read. This is right on the button.
Paying for Digital Britain’s ‘Digital Radio Upgrade’: who, me? [Grant Goddard]
Grant's a nice man, but he writes blisteringly negative comments about every aspect of the radio industry, convinced that he could do a better job at everything than the current incumbents. It would be lovely if, as an "independent radio consultant", he might write something positive about the industry just once in a while. You know, just once. However, this blog post, once you get past the splurge of negativeness, is quite an interesting post.
Ofcom’s 3G coverage maps: O2 embarrassed [Crave at CNET UK]
Ah yes, this'll be the 3G network that some people tout as the conduit of the future of radio – listening to internet radio on mobile phones. Er, right. That'll work, then.
Mobile Pointers for Radio From NPR [Radio 2020]
NPR share some really rather good things about radio station mobile websites. And after all… listening to the radio on the move is what quite a few people do… so why are our mobile sites consistently so poor?
Radio Festival audio now all online [The Radio Academy]
This is one link that I frankly don't need to write anything about, since the headline does it all for me. But in case you missed it, the Radio Festival audio is, er, now all, um, online. (Shuffle. Looks uneasily at feet. Walks quietly away.)
Attention, journalists!
MJ OD [BuzzMachine]
Jeff Jarvis notes that Google Trends might have told the TV networks to calm down on that Michael Jackson stuff… it's very clear when we started getting bored with the story.
Attention, people who wish to be amazed!
My media: James Palumbo [The Guardian]
The founder of the "Ministry of Sound" nightclub. Choicest quote: "I only discovered the internet two years ago and it has transformed my business thinking, particularly in researching brands." TWO YEARS AGO???!!!! Bloody hell.
Attention, people who like miscellaneous things!
The Peter Principle — and how to avoid it [Memex 1.1]
Rather a good piece from John Naughton, who I've not seen in ages. John discusses the 'Peter Principle', which I have first-hand experience in. (And you can read that however you want!)
BBC Internet Blog: Glow Technical Overview [BBC]
An overview of a rather splendid development: the BBC open-sources its JavaScript library, Glow. I do intend to use this on new projects. Possibly.
The Writing Contest [Andrew Dubber]
A brilliant short story – shared quite unexpectedly from a blogger I use to follow music and radio stuff. Read it. You'll like it.
London’s Lost Tunnel [IanVisits]
Heard of the MailRail? Yes, me too. But there was an even earlier one. Which, even though I've quite an interest in underground tunnels, I'd not heard of. Details here.
re the MJ OD post on BuzzMachine – a journalist writes:
Most TV execs and news editors are pretty good at what they do. The moment they sensed (and a good editor CAN sense these things) or saw (the overnights and weekly adjusted figures provide the bald facts) their audiences tiring of schlocky, endless, banal MJ stories would be the moment they stopped.
The disparity between the internet trending data and the TV news running order suggests each is targeted at an “audience” which, although it has significant overlaps, wants different things.
That is all.