Hey, Google - when will you fix radio? Plus, ARN's compliance team
This is Radioland, my radio trends newsletter.
Hey, Google: it was interesting to hear the following on 4BH over the weekend:
I’ve not heard radio stations having to broadcast apologies about their station not working on Google speakers before. But it shows what a bad state of affairs we’re now in, where stations have to broadcast PSAs about the fact that they know there are problems.
Back in May I covered an issue with Google speakers and live radio. But it seems all still isn’t well with Google devices - many stations stopping working after firmware first released in July had caused problems. This is an issue all over the world, not just in Australia; but Australia has a high concentration of Google speaker users, after some quite heavy promotion a few years back (with Google speakers being given to virtually everyone with Telstra, the big telco).
If you want more detail, RadioApp’s FAQ is interesting - try scrolling down to “Why is RadioApp not working on my Google speaker?”. This is a really helpful list of what the app, which is run by CRA, has been told from Google about streaming issues.
It looks like Google released a bad software/firmware update, which broke playback altogether on some Google speakers. Then, another issue - streams would only play for ten minutes or so, before falling over. And then, on Nov 18 at 2pm, literally nothing worked on Google speakers at all.
A broadcast radio station would fix their transmitter within hours; but Google’s fix takes days to roll out, and all this seems an astonishly poor state of affairs.
It’s not the only issue with Google’s stuff. Something within Google was pulling my daily podcast so often, it was costing me $200 in additional bandwidth. The issue was directly traceable to their infrastructure, yet they just denied anything was wrong, while also not understanding the issue in the first place. I suspect it’s still causing issues for others. I’ve just given up.
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Regulation: After last week, where I mentioned ACMA’s next steps in regulating Kyle & Jackie O, I was curious. What’s ACMA doing? And what can they do?
So I went digging into broadcast law to discover what ACMA can and can’t do in a blog post.
First - huh, it’s “the ACMA”, just like it’s “the FCC”, so there’s a learning. (All the media have so far got that one wrong).
Second, I learn that the ACMA is responsible for regulating the aims of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, which includes a requirement to “place a high priority on the protection of children from exposure to program material which may be harmful to them”. (16% of KIIS’s audience is aged 10-17). The ACMA can’t ignore it, since it’s written into the law that output must “respect community standards”.
But third - the ACMA is really limited in what it can do. If this was Ofcom in the UK, they could issue a small fine, or a big one, or make an ad-hoc requirement (“you must all do training in the next two months”). Instead, the ACMA has to issue a licence condition, which is a complicated legal document - and its only form of enforcement is to either suspend the licence, or terminate it. That’s all they can do. Those are really serious: and there’s no less-serious enforcement that the ACMA has any power for. That’s a failing in the law, I suspect: but it explains a lot.
But! ARN finally appear to be taking this seriously! A new job ad has appeared for Senior Content Advisor at ARN. The description says: ARN is offering a rare opportunity to join the Kyle & Jackie O Show as Senior Content Advisor, where you will play a pivotal role in safeguarding brand integrity and leading a team dedicated to ensuring broadcast compliance.
Leading a team. A TEAM! To police what Kyle Sandilands, who is apparently a professional broadcaster, says. A team? I wonder how big the team is?
While the broadcast compliance bit is difficult, “brand integrity” for Kyle is, of course, just talking about his willy, by all accounts - so that bit should be easy.
(I do also wonder where Jackie Henderson fits into all this. It’s easy to say it’s “the Kyle & Jackie O show”, but from what I can see of the transcripts, Jackie seems to never initiate this type of talk, and you sense she’s a bit bored of it.)
Not really broadcast radio, but I’ve been learning about Meshtastic, a way to send short messages via a mesh of small, low-powered radio receivers and transmitters. I bought a little board - a Heltec 32 - and it can now see other Meshtastic users for around 300km. I’m not quite sure what use it is, and whether I should really be using Meshtastic or Meshcore, but still, it’s a fun little thing to play with.
Something good in the US - Mentoring & Inspiring Women in Radio has just announced its second annual digital sales mentorship program. One exception female seller or manager will get personalised, hands-on mentorship from an accomplished industry leader for a whole year. You can apply today (you’ve until Dec 12).
The CRA launched Audio ID, a way to allow audio ad buyers to see the entire online audience of radio stations in Australia as one set of data. That means that if I listen to a little TripleM, then a little 4BC, the advertisers see me as the same person: allowing better frequency capping and targeting overall. This seems a sensible way to make radio audiences easier to buy, and better to compete with Spotify or other services.
Zeno Media has added a new Self-Service Ad Feature which “gives stations full control of their inventory and direct access to advertisers, making it easier for broadcasters of any size to launch and optimize campaigns directly from their existing Zeno Tools dashboard.” Tools like this make a lot of sense for helping salespeople focus on their best clients.
An upcoming news podcast from the BBC, Asia Specific, is being made in video - but the video will only be on YouTube, and won’t be on the BBC’s own website, my other website Podnews revealed last week. The podcast launched last Thursday on all podcast platforms, but in spite of the BBC having a comprehensive video service on its international website, the only way to watch this new show - filmed twice-weekly at the BBC’s bureau in Singapore - will be to visit a US-owned website. This seems suboptimal.
And, a new audio awards have been announced in Australia. The Australian Audio Awards will take place in Sydney on May 28. Operated by Mumbrella, Radioinfo and RadioToday, the awards will recognise both radio and podcasts.
Thank you to Radioland reader James, in Orlando FL: “I recently found your podcast through YouTube of all places. I’m 60 and have been a big fan of everything radio since I was a kid around 9. I’ve been binging on your podcast and will be passing it to my radio enthusiast friends!”
And thank you to RSS.com which is celebrating its new free podcast hosting by becoming a sponsor of the podcast version of this newsletter. I’ve worked with the team for a while as an advisor - and they recently launched “PAID”, an automated programmatic ad insertion tool, which turns out to be a simple way to earn money fom your podcast. For radio companies, I think there’s something coming just round the corner which should make it really simple to include podcasts from your audio systems.
Where I am speaking next
Podfest, Orlando FL, USA (Jan 15-18, 2026) tbc
Radiodays Europe, Riga, Latvia, (Mar 22-24, 2026) The future of audio is people-powered: The way people consume media is changing. James Cridland, the radio futurologist, takes a look at global trends in radio and on-demand. How will we listen - on which devices? How can we make our output truly unique? How do we do it in a resource-efficient way? And what part does video play in the future of audio? In this wide-ranging session, bringing together data from North America, Asia, Australia and Europe, we’ll learn why the future is bright - as long as we understand why our audience comes to us in the first place.
Supporters
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