Emergencies - and weekends

A shorter than usual (and later than usual) newsletter this week. We’re one of 75,000 households who lost power in a big storm last night - with at least one house being blown over, and plenty of trees falling into cars and onto roads. We’re still some of 25,000 households who still don’t have power more than fifteen hours later. When the power goes down round here, the cellphone coverage also virtually disappears - partially because the cellsites lose power, but also partially because what’s left is hideously over-subscribed.

Without any internet or power, and after realising that the torches that I bought nine years ago are nowhere to be found (I’ve ordered some more), I sat down by candlelight, and tuned into ABC Radio Brisbane.

But because it happened on a late Sunday afternoon, by the time I started listening, it was a networked show called (by the announcer) “National Evenings”, and the 8pm ABC news bulletin was also national, and no mention of the 75,000 households (187,000 people) who could have been doing like I was.

It was a shame not to have heard any local programming on Sunday night on the ABC given the number of people affected. The difficulty, I guess, is that it’s a major operation to reconfigure the network to allow local programming for Brisbane - especially if you’re broadcasting to 2.3mn people and only a tenth of those are affected. Particularly, nobody expected this storm - especially its ferocity. I understand why there wasn’t any local content.

But I do wonder how many other people like me assumed there’d be something on the radio? And what happens if we don’t deliver local information for when it’s needed the most - even if it’s a Sunday evening?

Classifieds

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This morning, while I was on a drive to find a power cable from the car to save my freezer’s contents, a listen to ABC Radio Brisbane was the warm and friendly experience I was expecting, with plenty of information about what was going on. Then the 8am news, and then we were all treated to AM, a fierce networked news program from Nipaluna Hobart - with no local information.

AM started with a raw and unpleasant report covering this story surprisingly without any editorial warning about the level of detail we subjected to in the report. Here’s the first four minutes, at peak “driving children to school” time. (And, I’ll warn you - it’s a challenging listen, especially 1'30" in).

Only ten minutes previously, Craig and Loretta were a warm, family-friendly presence sharing experiences in last night’s storm. I’m constantly surprised at the 8am handbrake-turn on ABC Local Radio, with one audience thrown under the bus in favour of a hard-hitting news show better suited for Radio National - and, here, no care shown for the audience. Today, especially, I’m surprised at the content of this program, and its suitability for an 8am timeslot on local radio. It’s a stern, broadsheet program on a warm, tabloid station. It belongs on Radio National - and I wish it would stay there.

• Probably not alone this morning, I switched up the dial at 8.05am to 4BC, where Luke Bradnam was doing a good fill-in role, and was warm and friendly. There was some talk about the storm; and plenty of talk about other things. He’s a decent and warm person, I quite enjoyed it, especially his little impersonations of his friends, which could become a nice gimmick. I forgot to switch back to the ABC at 8.30am.

• BBC Sounds has released its Q3/25 audience figures for its audio app. Total (UK) plays were up +8.5% from 622mn to 675mn year-on-year; audiences increased +4.3% to 4.8mn weekly active users. However, after a reorganisation leading to an incomplete international BBC Audio product, and a paywall in the US for BBC News, total global podcast downloads are slightly down, from 213mn to 212mn. The top 3 shows are Global News Podcast, 6 minute English, and The Documentary Podcast.

  • Confusingly, the BBC’s internationally-available podcasts still promote BBC Sounds, a product that was closed outside the UK in July. Given they’ve all the tools to correctly geo-target those ads, I’m very surprised how badly the BBC is doing things here.

• RAJAR, the UK audience figures, also came out last week. Here’s the bit I found interesting - and nobody’s commented on it as far as I can see, although maybe they did last quarter. Commercial radio’s share of listening on AM/FM has increased by 23% year-on-year. Now, as far as I’m aware, the amount of choice on AM/FM has decreased: AM transmitters continue to be turned off, while FM transmitters are more likely to be broadcasting networked, national output. I wonder what’s driving it? Anyone know?

• An interesting idea from last week’s Podnews - someone has made a ranker for “podcasts where your ads will work the best”. Very neat.

• Best of luck to Sound.Waves., an audio conference/festival in co Limerick in Ireland on Nov 12-13.

• Nice to see Global doing a glitzy “upfronts” for advertisers, for the first time. This happens all the time from podcast companies and TV networks - it’s great to see Global doing similar.

Where I am speaking next

• Radiodays Europe, Riga, Latvia, (Mar 22-24, 2026)

Supporters

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Selected bits from Radioland are in RadioInfo in Australia, and RAIN News in the US
Lesen Sie außerdem ausgewählte Artikel auf Deutsch in Radioszene