Meliora consilia ex melioribus hominibus
Above: how the Swiss listen (total hours, I think) to the radio - red is “digital” (online and DAB+), grey is analogue AM/FM. From 50/50 in Q3 2015, it’s now 17% analogue, 83% digital (Q3 2024). FM has been turned off for public service broadcasters already, and for the commercials by the end of the year.
Clive Dickens - formerly of Oxford’s JACK FM, Absolute Radio, SCA, Seven West and Optus - has launched a new AI strategic advisory company called Meliora. Meliora, which is Latin for “better things”, includes as associates many of the brightest minds I’ve worked with in the past, including Tony Moorey, Ian Walker, Anthony Abbott and Clare Baker - all deep thinkers about where the future goes; and some great strategic partners including Edison Research, Xperi, TBI and Podcast Discovery. It’s an impressive line-up: and, I’m not just saying that because Meliora has become my latest newsletter supporter, either. Bright people are always good to work with, especially when they’re nice people too.
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In France, the regulator ARCOM organises a radio conference. During it, Pierre Bellanger made a speech called “Radio, for real”, where he talks about the real-ness of radio: a place for shared sincerity, he calls it. I agree with him - for a long time, I’ve been saying that radio does best when it’s “real and relevant”, and I believe this means a lot more than the trite, too-easy solution of “live and local”. “Real and relevant” is all about content; “Live and local” is all about technology.
You can watch Pierre’s speech in French, or read an English translation.
The three radio stations I spent most time working at in my early career were Pennine Radio, then The Pulse (and then Pulse 1 after my time there); Viking FM, and Hallam FM. On Friday, Bauer Media Group essentially completed their closure; with the last local breakfast shows going to air - in total, eleven breakfast shows ended. From today, the stations (called Hits Radio) will entirely be nationally programmed, though local news and travel (and ads) continue to be heard. You can hear the final links from each team via RadioToday’s story. Good for Bauer to let them all say goodbye; though it’s difficult to see how it benefits radio, long-term, to pull all local, relevant programming out of an area.
On Elon Musk’s X, another example of speaking in an announcer voice. Real and relevant, remember… (On a separate point, can someone help me understand if Elon Musk is still the baddie? He’s still a baddie, right?)
Radiodays Asia is coming to Jakarta, Indonesia, this September. I’m looking forward to going - never been to Jakarta before. The code
PODNEWSwill save you money on selected passes. The radioinfo Asia Podcast Awards are open for entry - the winners are announced at the event.I was on Steve Austin’s show on 612 ABC Brisbane earlier in the week. It’s always a pleasure to be on Steve’s program - he’s so connected to Brisbane and to the audience, and professionally curious about everything. We had a relaxed twenty minutes or so to talk about rediscovering the pleasures of the radio. Here’s the audio…
As above (if you’re on the web), captions are really easy to add to your audio players these days, since VTT support is built-in to any standard audio player in a browser. Great for accessibility. Here’s my latest code for an audio player with captions, which includes a fix for Safari on desktop, and a bit of browser text-balance to make it look nice.
Pioneer have released an in-car radio from the 1980s. It looks like an in-car cassette player, but is, in fact a DAB+ radio with Bluetooth. It’s also got FM and AM (AM!!), it’s also got a phone app for some reason, and you can even plug your iPod in, assuming you can still find it. It’s “just” €399 (£335, AUD $700, US $455). Quite a nice thing, I suppose, if you’re driving a classic car. I hope the three people who will ever buy this unit are happy with it.
BBC Radio 2 managed to play a week-old version of a radio show by mistake. Amusing to see the BBC now claim that the show that should have aired is now “exclusive to BBC Sounds”. Um, yes.
- Meanwhile, BBC Sounds is still running a banner saying it’s closing outside the UK in spring 2025. I can’t help notice that it’s summer in the UK now. Still no word of what’s happening there. If anyone tells me, I’ll let you know.
- While we’re on the BBC - the BBC website is still giving Australian viewers the Africa version of the live BBC News channel - with trailers promoting times in “CAT” and “EAT”. There is an Asia Pacific feed of the channel which would work better, which is available on TV here. Oddly, the BBC News channel isn’t available on the BBC website in Africa anyway, so I’m quite unclear why it’s there for us. Does anyone know?