Live radio and on-demand radio are two different things
Above: the BBC’s reporter covering a petrol shortage in the country must have been sent there deliberately. See this hall of fame for more from the UK; but the best reporter placement in history must be the one sent to report from Melbourne’s AAMI Park, named after an insurance company.
For a while now, I’ve been saying in radio conferences that the way we make radio needs to change away from “the primacy of live”: that we might want to consider a different way of making the audio that doesn’t simply place live radio first, and leave on-demand to just bits hacked out of live radio. If we produce pieces of radio as great-sounding pre-produced segments of audio that can be played out on the radio, but also work well in on-demand contexts, too, then we can get the best out of all the platforms we’re on, not just one of them. Steven Goldstein’s blog this week is a good one: “Unlocking local radio’s digital future is not about repurposing the same terrestrial signal”. That’s a much more erudite way of saying part of what I’ve been trying to say.
Elsewhere…
-
There was an earthquake in Melbourne last week. As luck would have it, the breakfast show on ABC Wide Bay, the radio station in Bundaberg in Queensland, was interviewing someone in Melbourne at the time. That someone, Dr Kate Brady, was being interviewed about her new podcast, um, called After The Disaster, about how to deal with an emergency.
-
WARC and iHeartMedia released a US study showing that audio punches below its weight when it comes to ad spend. 31% of the average consumer’s media consumption is audio; but only 8.8% of the average media budget goes there. 25% of advertisers don’t even use audio at all. Interesting data (and I wonder how it compares with other countries)
-
Joan Warner is to step down as CEO of Commercial Radio Australia. Respect her or fear her - and I think most people do both - they are very big shoes to fill.
-
From the world of TV - I’ve been wondering why a live news TV subscription service hasn’t been available for a while. Foxtel is to launch a new service that produces just that - Flash is to launch very shortly, and promises a mix of live and on-demand news content from Sky News (Foxtel has both Australian and UK rights), CNN, BBC, CNBC and Fox News. It promises “more than 20” news sources; my own https://livenow.news has a good list of many free ones, so you might expect those to be available too.
-
Two fascinating stories about how radio was used in Afghanistan - one example of someone printing the wrong frequency, and another example of repeating the same show round-and-round for more than two years.
%%subscribe%%
Want to supercharge your radio show? Here’s a £1 week-long trial of Show Prep - from a world class radio consultant and the best show-prep writer in the UK. Great for UK stations, or for English-language stations everywhere, too. (ad)
Supporters
Thanks to Joff Hopkins who kindly bought me a coffee last week - that’s very kind of you, Joff!
Thanks to Richard Hilton, and Brun Audio Consulting for your ongoing support of this newsletter. I’m very grateful to you.
It’s absolutely not (that) necessary, but if you’d like to support my work in any way, you can BuyMeACoffee - become a member to give regularly or just give a one-off coffee, or five. Here’s where to do that.
My professional website has more detail about who I am, and what I do.