Chris Evans's gamble
Some quite nice lifestyle advertising from Hit105. Different to promotion of random faces who present a breakfast show. (I’m told the person here is one of their drivetime hosts).
Worldwide
Israel: Public radio apologises for playing Richard Wagner music
Data on YouTube when it comes to music, radio appears to be losing out says this research. Later on, I also noticed some other research saying that new music is still discovered on the radio. So, frankly, who knows.
United States
The biggest threat for children in the 1930s? Radio, apparently.
The history of jingles (for advertising). A good podcast to enjoy.
United Kingdom
Evans
A big day on Monday - as Chris Evans announced, live on-air that he was to leave the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, which is the most-listened-to breakfast show in Europe. In an astonishing signing, he’s going back to the Virgin Radio brand - a DAB-only radio station with 400,000 listeners. Matt Deegan blogged suspiciously early about it.
Adam Bowie wonders whether the many local Wireless Group FM stations will rebrand to Virgin Radio and take the show. They could; but in total, they only reach just over 1m listeners anyway. You could certainly make an argument for simply rebroadcasting Virgin on some of their FMs, though.
The most fascinating blog, to me, was Phil Riley’s maths. In it, he works out how many listeners they would need to make Virgin Radio enough money. He works out that by year five, the station would need 4m listeners. To put that into context: the “old” Virgin Radio did achieve over 4m listeners, with Evans at the helm (he joined October 1997; RAJAR’s first results were 4.6m in Mar 1999). However, after March 2000 the station under Evans never hit 4m again. And that station had an FM licence in London - which the present Virgin Radio doesn’t.
Not Evans
The Economist, writing about UK commercial radio. In glowing terms.
A bit of multiplatform history - BBC Radio 1 finally turned on FM back in 1988. Up until then, the only top 40 radio in FM stereo was from local commercial stations. Andy Walmsley looks back.
I have very high hopes of Greg James’s Radio 1 breakfast show when they’re doing fun stunts like this. Very bright idea not to focus on vacuous celebrity, but instead to focus on making the listeners the stars - it’s what radio does best. PS: not so sure about that camera line.
BBC Local Radio are planning their new local shows. Matt Deegan has some advice.
Australia
The Australian ABC website has been banned in China. This week’s Aussie PM shrugs his shoulders.
Australian commercial radio - spend up over 3%
How the ABC has changed in thirty years. The changing world of broadcasting…
Fans of the BBC Annual Report may also like the Australian equivalent from the ABC. (Its a bit shorter.)
The Influencers & Entrepreneurs Podcast - I’ve managed to fool Patrick that I’m worthy of being on his podcast.