Grüße Deutschland!

It’s been an eye-opening day. I’ve been at RadioDay 2008 in Cologne, a really very large get-together for the German radio industry. Over 2,000 people come every year: three separate tracks of conference speakers, and a quite wide-ranging amount of corporate stands.

The overwhelming impression, for someone who doesn’t understand the German radio market well, is one of disunity and pluralism. Everyone takes advertising here, whether “public” or “private”. There’s no equivalent of the RadioCentre, a place where the UK commercial radio industry gets together - instead are two sets of advertising companies, one with a logo that on first glance reads “ASS Radio”, which was hugely amusing for at least twenty-five minutes. There are almost no national radio stations either; and virtually no networking. The NRJ group apparently does do some networking (for two hours a night) but the NRJ station in the old East Germany - and yes, to my surprise, people here still do refer to it as such - doesn’t take the shared programming, since they’re owned by the Polish NRJ not the French NRJ (even if it’s the same brand, which would in ordinary circumstances lend me nicely to another Virgin riff, but I won’t). “Disunity” sounds like a negative, and it is in many ways (it’s harder to buy radio advertising here, and harder to reach consensus on technology-related issues) but it’s also a benefit, with a much more vibrant, creative industry than the Global/Bauer/GMG/BBC-controlled industry we have at home.

Radioday is their “Radio Festival”, a place where people come to meet and talk. The party in the evening, where I’ve just come from, is famous for its food - everything from currywurst to chinese food - its entertainment - this year, the entertaining spectacle of Croatia beating Germany, followed by Austria drawing with Poland, followed by Mousse T (”Horny horny horny”) and, among others, Roachford (sing “Cuddly Toy” and all, er, his, cough, other hits) - and its beer - tiddly little 20ml glases of Kolsch, the local beer type.

The difference between Radioday here and the Radio Festival in the UK is that, because of the sheer number of people who work in the radio industry here, there are loads of potential visitors. The uncharitable might claim it’s 1983 here - mostly, not networked; mostly, multiple owners; and almost totally still in the analogue era. And it won’t come as a surprise that I was there talking about DAB Digital Radio, which is the only real way of getting digital radio into a device costing as little as 15 euro. It’s a far cry from the UK industry, that’s for sure.

Today has been interesting to see how different the German radio market is, and what a surprise it is to them when public and private broadcasters work together. I was speaking with Nick Piggott from GCap Media, and I hope that we’ve shown that if you agree on technology and compete on content - then good things happen. And that means agreeing on Europe-wide technology, not just within Germany.

Photo: Merlijn Hoek - used under licence, and yes, I’ve a few pictures to upload shortly. Disclosures: for this conference, flights, accommodation and food was paid-for by AS&S Radio and Radioday. I got a nice gift of an analogue radio from AS&S Radio for speaking at an event the previous night, and a small speaking fee which I donated to charity.

Updated on legal advice. Woo!

So, there I was tonight in Tesco.

(Note to US people reading: Tesco is a UK supermarket. It’s a bit like Walmart. Except it’s British. You own a set of supermarkets here too, called Asda, which are rather closer to Walmart because they’re owned by Walmart, even though they’re too embarrassed to say so up front. They’re shit. Their food is horrid, their stores are unpleasant, and they demonstrate great value food by getting women to slap their arse. Tesco is not quite as shit, and redeems itself somewhat by not asking women to slap their arse. It’s still mostly shit though.)

Welcome back. So, I was tonight in Tesco, buying important things like pizza, and some quite nice looking carrots, and some towels, and shampoo, and cat food, and cheese. Not quite in that order, otherwise I’d have walked miles.

For the new spare bedroom (it’s been empty for a few months) I idly thought it would be nice to buy an alarm clock, and a little radio - since chums who stay will probably be radio people. Then thought that it would be better to buy an alarm clock radio (see how my mind works) so I put the £2 alarm-clock back and went hunting for a clock radio.

I wanted a clock radio with DAB Digital Radio on it, naturally, and I ended up having quite a few to choose from. Including a brand new DAB Digital Radio clock radio alarm, from the Technika brand range.

No, the reason you’ve not heard of Technika is that it is, I suspect, a Tesco own-brand. It’s fug-ugly, which was one reason I noticed it, but the main reason I noticed it was that, amazingly, it was just £14.97. (It’s also available on the Tesco website, but not for that price).

£14.97 for a DAB Digital Radio. Crikey.

In the end, I bought a PURE Siesta clock radio, mainly because every product I’ve bought from Pure has been excellent quality, and Colin is a nice man.

But wow. I can remember the day when we were excited that DAB Digital Radio sets had dipped below £99.

Photo: Russell Heiman. Used under licence.
Disclosure #1: the Pure Siesta link is an Amazon link which might earn me tuppence if you bought through it. Don’t feel you have to.
Disclosure #2: Pure have given me a few DAB Digital Radio sets as a gift. I think this is the fourth Pure set that I have bought, however, and it ought to be pointed out that Pure have never, once, bought me a beer, which is a gross oversight.
Disclosure #3: I forgot to buy some milk. Gah.

Photo: Steve Rhodes, of Bank of America staff trying to stop him taking a photograph in a public place (the pavement). Take on March 19th. Used under licence.

PhotoShopped
Ack. Very splendid blog showing really quite awful photoshop work. Much amusement.

XMPP Pubsub Radio Playlist Bot
Interesting - an XMPP "now playing" bot for a radio station. Not quite convinced it works like this, but XMPP is certainly worth looking at for a distributed way of doing that type of information. Much better than regularly pinging a server. via kael

How to Look and Feel Like a Complete Idiot
Amusing comment from Curtis Poe (a BBC chap). Via Alan Connor.

A Copenhagen beer map
I personally recommend B and J in this map - both great places to eat and drink some unusual beer. And what a good idea.

How do you get your radio these days?
Word Magazine: "We're thinking of doing a piece in the magazine about the state of radio. How are you getting your radio? And what are you listening to?" - interesting comments!

Math links for fun and charity « Let?s play math!
Use of one of my photos: this time a recent one from the London Transport museum. Nice to see it used in a totally different situation.

TechCrunch UK » News Round
What a brilliant new service Mike's started. Excellent, I hope he continues.

This is a tidied and edited list of my del.icio.us postings from February 29th to March 20th. You can subscribe to this list, live, via rss.

A view of a power plant in Houston, taken on February 20th. Photo: Louis Vest. Used under licence.

Google Calendar on your website using PHP and stuff
If you use my code for this, you might like to note that there are quite a few contributed bugfixes, which fix, er, some bugs.

Has digital radio had its day?
I'm quoted in this piece. Executive summary: "no".

The BBC iPlayer and buzz monitoring in action
Nixon McInnes decides that I might know what I'm doing, and that "the BBC still kick ass", which is very nice of him. Must get back to the kicking.

Is Radio Suffering From Too Little Research?
Self-serving post from Edison Media Research. Yes, research is good - but as Henry Ford said, "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse".

Adrian Fitch's spring training
The Fitchster uses one of my photographs, and concerningly writes about 'going hard', but it turns out it's about cycling.

Another of my photos
… a rather old manual montage, originally shot on film would you believe, used in this blog posting

Intempo Rebel Kills Radio DJs (Gizmodo UK)
"A music sampling system that, once tuned into an FM station, records the 40 most played tracks and then edits out the DJ chatter and the ads." Nurse? The copyright!

This is a tidied and edited list of my del.icio.us postings from February 15th to February 23rd. You can subscribe to this list, live, via rss.

So, the Sunday Times is reporting that GCap’s Fru Hazlitt is switching off digital radio. When the sub-editor doesn’t bother reading a story to make a headline, it’s a concerning time for journalism.

If the story’s true (and you and I will find out tomorrow morning at 7.30am) then GCap are dropping their majority shareholding of Digital One - the commercial DAB Digital Radio multiplex - and switching off their digital-only radio stations.

Their existing analogue brands will continue on digital radio. This is not a switchoff of digital radio, whatever the headline says. It’s also not a lack of confidence in the technology: just the economics surrounding it.

In the middle of an advertising downturn and a general lack of confidence in the radio industry, it’s my guess that removing these stations won’t actually make any difference to GCap’s profits (I’d expect these channels are just breaking even). However, it’ll make a good difference to GCap’s profit margin, since radio traditionally operates on a high profit margin (at least 50%, if not higher).

If you’re trying to impress analysts, this is exactly the way to go.

Next thing in digital radio’s future: the DRg local London multiplex apparently needs ten transmitters, yet the FM coverage for that area is done by just one. Perhaps now’s the time to make the industry realise that the transmission providers get money based on how many big sticks they convince you to put up…

Photo: me. It’s from a Jon Ronson book.

A DAB Digital Radio, showing Norwegian radio station P4’s visual service

My boss’s boss has posted a long and cogent think-piece about DAB Digital Radio, which is well worth a read. From it…

I want DAB to show me weather, traffic and travel information graphically, on (a) nice big screen. I want DAB to use its metadata - the information about the programmes - to differentiate itself from FM, which is surely its biggest competitor. I want DAB to look like a product of the future, not the past.

It’s a great post. I have long argued that the benefits of DAB (the equivalent of, for most people, ten megabits of data, for free, into almost all homes in the land) should be used for more than just audio.

And Ashley’s right. Where things become even more exciting is a device which contains a DAB radio and wireless connection: it’s the backchannel which is most interesting.

Imagine what could happen if you could use this to - with your permission - monitor what you listen to and offer additional choices of programmes it thinks you’ll like (I’d like that across all of radio, not just the BBC). Use the technology to listen live via DAB (with all the quality of service that gives you) but on-demand via IP to the last seven days of the programmes I want to listen to. “Radio James” sounds compelling for me, and I can ignore, thank heavens, all the hideous Goldfrapp on “Radio Ashley”.

The backchannel could also add details of the song, or book, or play, sent to your email address, or to your iPhone, or to your Dualitt toaster, to continue that music discovery chain.

While this may get me a piece in Private Eye’s “Order of the Brown Nose” column, Ashley’s spot on here. While none of this is new, he’s combined some good thoughts into an interesting piece. At a time where some quarters of the industry is making funny noises about supporting DAB, it’s exactly the right thing to say. I hope that the rest of the BBC, and the industry at large, listens. It’s the future of radio we’re talking about, after all.

PS: as part of this, we’re hiring for an Executive Producer, Visualisation for BBC Audio & Music Interactive: making radio look as good as it sounds. Apply early!

Photo uploaded today by Niek R. Used under licence.

Executive Producer Mobile, Audio & Music Interactive, BBC
A good-looking job within the BBC if you do mobile and you do radio. You do? Excellent. You’ve got just ten days to get your application in.

Digg: We’re Fixing The Annoying Ads
Digg removes auto-playing audio ads from their website. Another example why I think jackfm.co.uk shouldn’t auto-play on visiting their website… (though I guess it’s a little different)

Twitter killed the Status Star
The excellent Mike Butcher posts about Twitter. I think he won’t like my status updates then. Oh dear…

Twitter / jamescridland
It’s me, on Twitter. Suddenly really got into Twitter, since it’s updating my Facebook status automatically now, and also is full of surprisingly interesting people. If you’re on, please FOLLOW JAMESCRIDLAND, I’d like that

Why DAB Stations Closing Down is Good News
Core closing… Life closing… and OneWord closing. Anyone would think this is… good news? A cogent and quite splendid piece by Matt Deegan.

New Capital 95.8 Website
Another post from Matt Deegan, including the gem: “GCap have done a good job with the latest roll-out of sites … I think they they clearly lead radio’s online presence”. I think you’re talking bollocks there, Matt.

Listening to internet radio while on the move
“I’ve been taking advantage of my spiffy new EV-DO net connection.” Man (or woman) listens to radio via the internet in the car. Likes it.