Some Sunday reading
Posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 9:03pm. #
It’s nearing the end of Sunday, so I’ll only give you three things to read this week. You might end up reading this on Monday, after all, and then you’d be really supposed to be working.
Australian DAB
The RAJAR figures last week coincided with the first year’s figures from Australia’s DAB+ broadcasts. I’d link to RadioInfo.com.au, but it has mandatory registration, so instead, I’d mention that “…after just one year on air at full power in Australia’s 5 largest capital cities, digital radio has hit another milestone. The latest Survey 4 data shows there are 523,000 people listening to digital radio in an average week and three times the predicted number of digital radios in the market at nearly 150,000, according to manufacturing and sales data.”. These figures are moderately uncomparable with anything RAJAR produces – RAJAR measures hours (time-spent-listening) and not reach (cume), and measures DAB in households, rather than total sales.
It might be interesting to compare, however, the sales figures with a similar point in the UK: a ‘similar point’ being the year of 2004, the first full year that DAB sets had dropped below 99-quid, and the first full year that additional DAB stations were beginning to be promoted by the BBC and commercial broadcasters. The Australian sales are an equivalent (in population terms) of 435,000 UK sales; we actually only sold 346,400 radios in 2004. The Aussies are showing us how it’s done. (And it’s nothing to do with DAB/DAB+).
Red mist
For some reason, this ‘outrageous BBC spin‘ appears in my Google shared items. What concerns me is quite how ANGRY people can get about a simple news story.
Tweetdeck
And those of you on Android might like to play with Tweetdeck for Android: which, despite its over-large screen font and almost complete lack of options and features, is rather a capable little thing: pulling together Google Buzz, Twitter, FourSquare and Facebook. I disliked it almost immediately after I downloaded it; but overlooking the rather fugly user interface, it’s a really very nice client – particularly capable with being offline (where it stores a ton of information and lets you reply, keeping the response until you’re back in coverage).
