Carl Kingston and BBC Sounds
It’s sad to pass on the news that Carl Kingston passed away this week.
I was flattered when he wanted to meet me and share a coffee and a chat, when we were at the same conference in Switzerland. I was thrilled. I’d been a long time listener in Leeds, on Radio Aire, as were many of Pennine Radio’s younger team. I was rather starstruck.
We chatted about Moylesy and Hirsty; about The Super Station and Radio Aire. You’ll be glad to her that I didn’t share our cheeky impersonation of him (which you did by pushing both cheeks together with your hands and saying “Carl Kingstuuunnnnn” in a vaguely Atlantic accent). He was a lovely man to meet, and seemed happy in his new home of Switzerland.
Last year, I tuned into a show of his on Fab FM, a radio station in Thailand. He was just as I remembered - tight, professional, great sounding - as if he was right there with you, waking you up in Pattaya (a place where I am not even sure he’d ever visited; it was voicetracked, of course). Carl seemed to me to be the ideal safe pair of hands - and someone who’d totally understood the benefits of new technology to reach different audiences - being recently on Radio Caroline, Mix 104.1 in Dallas Fort Worth, LDC Radio in Leeds, Sunshine Radio, River Radio, and many others.
In a week when Classic FM launches a “music from the movies” station, which would have amused and annoyed Paul Easton in equal measure (since he made the first music-from-the-movies station in Flix Radio), it’s sad to have lost another of the good radio people this week. Sorry to see you finally tuned out, Carl Kingstuuunnnnnnn. What a pleasure to have met you.
The BBC has announced it is to make more podcasts exclusive to BBC Sounds for a time, before making them available on open RSS.
Mary Hough, “Head of Growth and Discovery for BBC Sounds”, suggests that the trial was successful. “Over the six-month trial period these titles brought 218,000 new and lapsed listeners to BBC Sounds and received 17 million plays on-platform. Listeners to these titles were also more likely to become regular listeners on BBC Sounds than on average. This growth on Sounds had a marginal impact on RSS where the majority of listeners continued to listen to the podcasts”, she writes.
Of course, it was an 18-month trial, not a six-month one - it was announced on Jan 31 2022, and Friday Night Comedy has been publishing either 7-day or 28-day delayed ever since.
218,000 listeners sound like a lot - but is just 4.3% of the total monthly audience of BBC Sounds. 17 million plays is, over six months, just 3.5%. The latest quarterly figures for BBC Sounds saw a drop in plays of 5.5%, so I’d question that it’s working.
If, as she says, “the majority of listeners continued to listen to the podcasts” on RSS - it seems to suggest that even if you destroy the “topical satire” part of the Friday Night Comedy feed for 18 months, people still prefer to listen in their favourite app, even if the jokes are a bit old.
Radio France’s strategy seems to be the right one here. New stuff goes everywhere, reaching licence-payers wherever they are and however they want to listen; but after 7 or 28 days (depending if it’s daily or weekly), the material only lives in the Radio France app. Limit the amount of content out there for free; while offering depth and detail within your own app. Probably a bit too late for that strategy change at the BBC.
WIRED covers “how to win radio contests”, with quite the dedicated “prize pig”.
There are plans for a 50th anniversary reunion for Pennine Radio / Classic Gold / The Pulse - either Sep 13 or Sep 20, 2025. If you’re not in the Facebook group, it’s worth joining for the latest.
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Where I am speaking next
- 7th Pacific Media Summit 2024, Niue (Sep 23-27)
- Dubai Podfest, Dubai, UAE (Sep 30)
- PBI Conference, Ottawa, Canada (Oct 8-10)
- Lyddager, Norway (Oct 18-19)
- Guldörat, Sweden (Oct 22)
- Independent Podcast Awards, London (Oct 23)
- Audiodays, Denmark (Oct 25)
- ASI International Radio & Audio Conference, Venice, Italy (Nov 6)
- Radiodays Europe, Athens, Greece (Mar 9-11 2025)
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