BBC and Cumulus both launch smart speaker skills, and a confusing LUFS story

I’m massively grateful to Pacific Content, JCALdigital, Edison Research and Nearly who have all become silver supporters of this newsletter (and of podnews) this week. Reflecting growth, new supporters will pay more in January, so become one today.

I’d also like to thank Kristin Charron, Andy Maher, George Bradt, Brad Smart, Jake Shapiro, Alexander Laurin and Andrew Davies for very kindly becoming personal supporters this month. You, too, can be like these people.

My articles

• Are you spending time doing chapter points in your podcasts? Literally anything else would be a more productive use of your time.

• Presenters and blogs: make it stop - this had lots of nice comments on social media, and at least one indignant comment from a US radio executive.

United States

• Launching smart speaker skills #1: Cumulus Launches Custom Amazon Alexa Skills Network

• The loudness wars are back on: Google wants your audio to be -16 LUFS. Amazon wants -14 LUFS. The AES reckons that anywhere between -16 and -20 LUFS is good. And YouTube automatically makes everything -13 LUFS. Is it me, or is there a standard to be worked out here?

• Are you spending time doing chapter points in your podcasts? Literally anything else would be a more productive use of your time.

• Is Radio Dead? A US piece that proves that if you ever ask a question in a headline, the answer is no.

• The New Yorker discovers the BBC Radio 4 show In Our Time and cautiously loves it

• Apple’s widened ban on templated apps is wiping small businesses from the App Store (and, my guess is, radio stations who use them). I know I’ve been miserable about TuneIn before, but if your app is a templated thing that does worse than TuneIn, that’s an issue.

• A good presentation about the S-curve from Benedict Evans - particularly explaining why machine learning is important. 20 minutes. Worthwhile.

• Cable Ads Lose Audience As Cord Cutting Accelerates (and radio benefits, says Westwood One)

• Radio Has a Big Opportunity with Evergreen Content, says Jacobs Media: music to my ears, given I’ve been saying this for years.

• Storify is shutting down and will delete all posts next May - another reason to consider all third-party tools like this a stopgap until you write your own.

• A whole hour about radio advertising. A fascinating look at their history from 99 Percent Invisible. I remember playing some of these ads to slightly bemused clients, trying to understand how filling a lake with cream would help them sell more double-glazing units.

• Nielsen report that Radio Listeners Spend 58% of Their Tune-In Time with Their Favorite Station - interesting data around switching stations here.

United Kingdom

• Launching smart speaker skills #2: BBC launches voice control for smart speakers

• Working in the UK audio industry? Could you help Heidi Pett with a piece of research in terms of a snapshot of the industry’s rates, to help a fairer industry for all?

• Instead of sending a Christmas card, or a nice woolly hat (I got one once), GetCarterProductions made us all a lovely radio ad, and bought airtime on four (four!) national radio stations. Very nice of them.

• Will Streaming Kill The Radio Star? - an audio documentary from a student (so we can probably forgive him the #lazybugglesheadline)

• “From speech to text” lots of clever tools that the BBC has been working on to help their newsroom be more efficient and good. Particularly neat - they have one speech-to-text system running on every bit of audio and video that they ingest into their news systems, so they’re all searchable.

• I spoke at the ASI conference last month, about the challenges to radio research in the new digital landscape. Here’s the speech in full, with slides and video.

• Awesome sales jobs at a brand new radio station in London (and there are other jobs from the same company, too).

• Just a Golden Minute: a look back at this panel game on Radio 4.

• A nice bit of marketing from a local station in Surrey in the UK (and, I’d assume, a business opportunity)

Australia

• One for the geeks - how Omny Studio worked out how to get podcast consumption analytics out of Apple Podcasts. This is bloody clever, and good on them for clearly explaining how they did it (on the same week that the technology was made mostly redundant).

Elsewhere

• Opportunity: Dubai: A job in the sun, anyone? - an astonishing, once-in-a-lifetime job to be the Content Director for Dubai 92.

• Canada: Vista Radio raises CAD$1.4 million for local charities - I’m on the board of this fine company, and proud of its people.

• France: Nice idea - a company that turns antique radios into Bluetooth speakers.

• France: Last week, the old Fun Radio offices in Paris were being demolished - by its listeners.

• Norway: Good luck, everyone. On 11 December at 11.11.11 (binary, don’t you love it) they turned off the final national FM transmitter. 95% of listening will be digital from now on. (If you’re unsure what’s happening, here are some facts about it - but Norway has not switched off radio transmissions, just changed platform). Meanwhile, at least one station “defied the government order” and refused to switch off their FM. (I’m told they have now).

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