James Cridland

Calls for legislation to protect Aussie radio, and BBC adds catch-up

Sydney, as I returned from Dallas on Sunday

In Australia, industry lobby group CRA has released a caps-lock-heavy release CAN YOU FIND THE RADIO IN YOUR NEW CAR? Urgent Call for Legislation to Ensure Access to Local Radio, accompanied by a paper entitled THE FAST FACTS: KEEP RADIO EASILY ACCESSIBLE ANYTIME, ANYWHERE.

Plucky little Australia - the #15 new vehicle market in the world with 1.2 million sold in 2024 - is asking for “prominent one-button access to Australian radio - AM, FM, DAB+ receivers and streaming audio - in all cars”, and for the government to “act now”. The factsheet also promotes streaming radio and even podcasts in the same breath as requiring AM, FM and DAB+ reception in cars.

The Australian radio industry has long mistakenly ignored the work from Radioplayer, which has been spending a lot of time to actively work with auto manufacturers to make the radio experience work better in cars: particularly, ensuring that receivers can automatically hand-over between FM, DAB and IP; and not just making sure that there’s a “radio” button, but setting clear UX guidelines to ensure that it’s easy and clear to use. The EBU is doing similar. It would be better for the CRA to work together with other global organisations here - rather than treat them as “not invented here” as the organisation has long done.

The requirement put forward by the CRA - that “connected cars and devices with a terrestrial receiver continue to provide prominent access to radio broadcasting services” - seems to leave the door wide open for manufacturers to just remove the terrestrial receiver altogether.

Better still - that the public want broadcast radio enough to request it in their cars, of course.

Meanwhile, it would be churlish to mention that the CRA’s implementation of DAB+ radio in this country is not quite what car receivers expect. Neither my Toyota Prius nor my MG 4 decodes the CRA-operated DAB signal correctly: the Prius can’t even get the audio without glitches, while the MG struggles to decode the program-type, the slideshow, or even the DLS in some cases - as well as a suspiciously long delay between tuning into a station and the audio actually coming. (The ABC/SBS multiplex is fine in both; and yes, I’ve reported it to all the right places).

RCS

  • Catch-up radio has been quietly added to some shows on BBC Radio 4 on the international BBC website. They appear in the schedule page - so we can now listen to the Today Programme, PM, and other long-form news programmes which don’t appear in podcast form. The schedule also seamlessly links to podcasts: so if you press “play” on The Archers, for example, it plays The Archers podcast complete with ads. As it should be.

    • However, this isn’t, yet, available in the BBC app, where if you manage to find your way to the programme schedules, you’ll not see these play buttons. (90%+ of all on-demand audio is listened-to on mobile).
    • The Archers podcast starts with a superfluous “BBC Sounds” ident. This really isn’t hard to get right - we shouldn’t hear that outside the UK.
    • I’ve updated my How to listen to BBC Radio outside the UK page.

  • Thank you to George Wright, who shares Tuning In: An American’s Guide to British Radio Culture - the massive difference between UK radio and that from the US (and why most US radio leaves me entirely cold).

  • In Australia, Steven Centofanti has updated his Radio Technologists Resources - and there’s plenty there.

  • Just released from the Radio TechCon conference - Radioland supporter Rupert Brun talking about “the pips”, the time signal you’ll hear on BBC Radio, especially BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. Some interesting information in here - particularly that the pips are produced every quarter hour, and the strenuous work that went on in the BBC to ensure that they don’t go out by mistake. (A big orange light didn’t work. Instead, the more sensible plan to automatically mute that channel between :05 to :55).

  • In my quest for a little travel radio that picks everything up, radio’s Steve Martin pointed me to this amazing looking thing, the ominously-named DP-666. First, it looks like an anorak’s dream with the kind of information the screen gives you; it uses a TEF6686 chip inside it, and is about AUD$100 (£50). The firmware for the chip is open-source, and the radio is capable of tuning to DAB bands (but not decoding the audio). But, blogs about it appear to indicate that you can also connect it to your computer, and treat it as an SDR receiver (so who knows whether that opens up additional things). And you can make it available as a web tuner. Of course, I now have one on the way…

  • Next weekend I fly to Radiodays Asia, which I’m looking forward to. I’m moderating some sessions, and playing MC for the Podcast Day. Will you be in Jakarta? I hope you can make it.

Where I am speaking next

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