Alexa increases online listening by seven times

Greetings from Philadelphia PA, USA, where I am, as Editor of Podnews, at Podcast Movement. And my apologies for this newsletter being really late as a result (I might have, cough, forgotten to press the send button).

My articles

• At last — a chance for global podcasting measurement?

Worldwide

• Austria: Alexa increased our online listening by 7 times… but she is a trojan horse - some astonishing data from Kronehit.

• Afghanistan: How the ‘Afghan Archers’, a Pashto radio soap made by an ex-BBC journalist - is tackling polio

• Streaming providers take a kicking for poor quality at World Cup - if only we had a broadcast infrastructure capable of live events at scale

• Radio saved over 3000 lives in Africa. 3000 lives. How’s that for a return on investment?

• Netherlands: An interview with Giel Beelen of Radio Veronica

• An overview of radio consumption across Europe

• Data from Radioplayer Worldwide, and monetisation options

• A look at underground/internet music radio

• Canada: Nice new studios at CKNW in Vancouver. Very clean and crisp (and blue).

United States

• AM/FM radio holds strong for American listeners - lots of data from US broadcasting

• New data about how people use smart speakers in the US - interesting seeing differences in behaviour between people who’ve had them for a while, and people only buying them now.

• The World’s Highest Paid Celebrities. Move over, Chris Evans, Howard Stern earns $90m

• What helped Amazon Prime Day? Why… radio.

• Tanks, meet lawn: Netflix is launching a (comedy) radio station on SiriusXM /via @luismipedrero

United Kingdom

• There’s no substitute for learning journalism in an immersive environment, argues Richard Horsman

• The excellent Tristan Ferne explores new formats for news stories (for the mobile web). A very good read; I like the rethinking here.

• Binaural mixes of the BBC Proms

• Ofcom report - the changing face of news consumption

• A new podcast about making radio, Fantastic Noise

• The Football Pen. Crafty idea!

• Going Retro’ now appears, for some, to be playing CDs! God, I feel old.

• Annoyingly well written piece about how the BBC are doing 4K telly by @psythor

Australia

• A good overview of radio’s multiplatform future from Kellie Riordan of the ABC. (Quite public-service focused, which is a good thing for the ABC, but the commercial realities also need exploring, I think)

• Australian ABC launches this website full of stories and facts about the ABC and its staff. Good idea, and good bit of defensive work. As one example, Transmission and distribution is 21% of the ABC’s budget. For the BBC in UK, it’s just 4.8% of its expenditure. (The UK is about the size of the state of Victoria, and has three times as many people).

• ABC closes its regional radio station Twitter accounts. Will focus more on Facebook. bites tongue

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