James Cridland

BBC Radio overseas: a new plan after BBC Sounds closes

Paul McCartney from Glastonbury on the BBC Sounds app

This is Radioland, my radio newsletter.

As regular readers know, I’ve been interested in the availability of BBC Radio outside the UK. And there’s been some movement.

You may remember that BBC Sounds and access to national BBC radio, except Radio 4, was due to be turned off in Spring 2025; and that it’s still going after that plan was postponed. Well, now, we know what’s going on.

February’s FAQ on the BBC’s website has been updated (though not with a new title), and it tells us the following…

The BBC Sounds app will be turned off for listeners outside the UK on 21 July 2025. (Radio 4 - and, of course, the BBC World Service - is available free on the BBC app).

But. Keep scrolling down that page, and we’re told that BBC radio will remain available internationally - and we’re given a set of deep-links for, um, BBC Sounds. It turns out that while the BBC Sounds app goes away, and much of the BBC Sounds website won’t be available - we won’t get audio-on-demand (or “catch-up radio”), and we won’t even get to access the programme schedules - we will, as long as we know the direct link to the station, be able to continue listening live. You’ll have no app, these pages will be littered with links that will give you a “not available here” message, but the live stream will still play, as long as you know where it is.

Happily - website addresses like https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 direct to the live stream page, so we can just guess the former radio website (ah, remember them?) to get to the live stream. Or, seemingly, Google for BBC Radio 1 live.

You can also continue using third-party platforms - like TuneIn, or this Radiofeeds page, or your smart speaker. Or, use Apple Music (which has live radio inside it, if you search).

So, an overseas listener wanting to listen to BBC Radio 3 in BBC Sounds will be redirected in late July to BBC Audio, where they will see no links to BBC Radio 3. In the menu bar at the top is a cryptic link marked “Audio FAQs”, which takes them to a page with the title of “BBC podcasts and audio are now available on BBC.com”, which if you scroll down past the news of BBC Sounds closing, they’ll eventually find some a link to BBC Sounds, which is supposed to have closed, which isn’t on BBC.com, where they can listen.

On the plus side, yay - we don’t lose BBC domestic radio. Except, this information might as well be in a dark cellar, on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”; and my prediction is that almost no listener will work this out.

I’m told that the BBC will closely monitor audience feedback and engagement habits to determine the best way to integrate the links into the wider BBC Audio experience.

Mind you: in an audacious bid for irrelevance, the BBC is apparently to put almost its entire news website behind a paywall in the US. Careful - that thing you’re pointing at your foot looks like it’s loaded.

RCS

  • It’s a little disappointing, if understandable, to see the criticism of the BBC for the corporation’s Glastonbury coverage, during which a punk band did what you’d expect a punk band to do. But - it has always surprised me that the BBC puts the entirety of this event - including high-risk acts - straight to air. Virgin Radio’s coverage of V Festival was in delay, which allowed edits to be done and decisions to be made before broadcasting anything. It allowed for a slicker sound on-air, too. I often question the need for so much radio to be to-the-second live: there’s really no disadvantage for Glastonbury coverage to have been delayed by ten minutes or so, to avoid edgy music artists being too edgy.

  • Sanoma, a Finnish radio broadcaster, is using AI voices to produce 26 local weather forecasts split by region, instead of just one human voice with national weather. A very good case study here from Microsoft, with some fascinating detail of using AI for something that simply wouldn’t be possible without AI: worth keeping an eye on. (h/t Nik Goodman)

  • On BBC Radio 2 the other day, the subject of Jeremy Vine’s phone-in was: “have you ever been injured during a medieval battle re-enactment”? Brilliant. It reminds me of this masterful talk by Geoff Lloyd who once did a phone-in on whether anyone had performed dentistry on themselves: “you’ll probably only get one call on that, but it’s going to be an amazing call.”

  • RadioToday reports the first commercial station I’m aware of in the UK that is switching off two of its FM frequencies (claiming that DAB and online serves its audience well enough). They won’t be the last, I don’t think.

  • Covered in Podnews during the week, the owners of WNYC, the public radio station in New York, published its accounts for last year. Two things that stood out - the company’s podcasts earned $426,000 from AdsWizz (a company that injects ads into shows); and the published salaries of some of the company’s podcast hosts.

  • Audacy has done a deal with its rival iHeart to get its stations and podcasts into the iHeart app. They’re keeping some features - live rewind, for example - back for its own Audacy app, but it’s an interesting decision: it makes iHeart the de-facto radio app for the US. The Radioplayer model, where each broadcaster owns a stake in the common platform, has always seemed more attractive to me; but, I guess, better to cede control to a fellow radio company than to Google.

Thank you to Timby for your coffee, who posts “Thanks for the Nick Ferrari interview clip. Reassuring there is still journalism on the radio.” And to Graham Mytton, who said “I especially like your graph today showing the media that New Zealanders would turn to in a crisis.” Me too!

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)

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