Scripps: radio out, podcasting in; and triplej's Hottest 100 shows radio still big for the young

Last week, I posted about iHeart’s Santa 100, a radio station in Columbus OH which switched to “Christmas time, all the time”. No wonder I was confused - it was, of course, a stunt (another from the crazy mind of Paige Nienaber), to get people to talk about iHeart’s Hot 100, a new urban-format radio station. Its main competitor is WBFA 98.3 The Beat, an urban radio station which… iHeart owned until 24 November. I guess they missed the urban format too much.

United States

• Scripps are selling their 34 US radio stations; retains podcasting company

• What happens if you insult a Morning Joe ‘technician’ - an excellently amusing clip. Good work.

• Apple is giving music artists analytics now. There are some radio equivalents - indeed, I bet that some of the current music monitoring companies could build something like this relatively easily, to allow anyone to realise how large radio is. For example - could this page showing Rita Ora plays in the UK be combined with their RAJAR quarter-hour figures to get actual “play” equivalents? Indeed - this page (compiled by Radiomonitor) shows that KISS in the UK has played “MK” the equivalent of 18 million times.

• Surprises from Boise Idaho in the US - including an AM station being #1

• “Shitty radio stunt”

• Death of AM: LED headlights can interfere with radio signal (which we knew, but I’d forgotten that cars now have LED lights installed too)

• Really enjoying listening to the Tonya Harding story on the NYT Daily. This is a really well-told, well-produced story. Very recommended.

• Impressive development from the folks at Futuri Media: they’ve launched their own ad network (and dynamic ad serving)

• Triton Digital release their latest webcast streaming figures.

United Kingdom

• Watch “Every Football Phone-In Condensed Into 2 Minutes 30” - hits home. I’ve heard an awful lot of very poor mobile phone interviewees lately.

• Behind the call - a great story of Steve Penk not wanting to tell his boss what he was about to broadcast: particularly when it was winding up the British PM…

• BBC News no longer runs BBC Local Radio. Nor does BBC Radio, of course; but Ken McQuarrie is a good egg and this is a good move, all told.

• Nick Ferrari of LBC skewers another politician not knowing the basics.

• The BBC’s going for loudness normalisation for its podcasts, which is a good and sensible thing. Warning: jokes about similarity of LUFS to LOVE in this blog post.

• The enduring power and magic of football on the radio

• Who reads the news on BBC Radio 4? The hidden world of Chris Aldridge, Charlotte Green, Zeb Soanes and Corrie Corfield

• “Why radio continues to leave television standing” - and the final column, if I’ve read this right, from the lovely Gillian Reynolds before she goes to the Sunday Times.

Australia

• If you’re someone who believes radio is dying, and youth aren’t listening, here’s another inconvenient truth: triple j’s Hottest 100 attracts record number of voters. It broadcast over last weekend - is it the Biggest Streaming Radio Event in the World? - I think it is.

• Impressive. My TV set-top box has added very comprehensive support for Google Home (and Google Assistant). Nicely done.

• No-nonsense radio competition on the Central Coast…

Elsewhere

• Pakistan would like to regulate short-wave radio transmitters across the world. Ambitious.

• A podcast from South Africa covering radio there, and a #lazybugglesheadline

• Sobering future for radio: Scripps sell their US stations (keeping their podcast companies); boss of BNR in Netherlands says FM radio, by itself, isn’t enough and focuses on podcasts. There is a trend here.

• Data: Ghana radio listening. Congratulations Peace FM.

• Is the Swiss licence-fee for TV and radio safe? One poll thinks so. They vote in March.

• Online radio measurement statistics - a good overview of how things are in South Africa.

• How to get your podcast onto Google Home - it’s got nothing to do with Google Play Music, and everything to do with raw HTML code. Here’s how to do it…

• A 1930s Austrian radio which you tuned-in using a map.

• newsletter