News bulletins on radio, and AI

Above: Congratulations to the BBC for somehow working out how to get a shot of Kemi Badenoch speaking on LBC without a single LBC logo in shot. Quite the feat! It gave me a chuckle.

When I worked in commercial radio in the UK, every hour, on the hour, we broke for a live news bulletin. Even in today’s deregulated UK market, Ofcom expects regularly refreshed and locally gathered news bulletins, normally hourly, during daytimes. Canada expects a third of output to be “local”, and that news is “an essential aspect” of station output (minimums are agreed per station). Ireland’s requirement is particularly fierce for news and current affairs output: a negotiable standard of not less than 20% of all broadcast airtime and at least 120 minutes per day.

In Australia, as with many things, Australia’s media regulator ACMA is a little more relaxed - requiring (¶ 61CE) local radio broadcasters to broadcast a) at least one news bulletin a day, and b) at least 62.5 minutes of bulletins a week. (That’s a ninety second bulletin every hour during weekday daytimes - and you can’t just repeat them, either).

But producing news is expensive. A report in MediaWeek, reported further in entertaining fashion on the ABC’s MediaWatch, suggests that on SCA stations, bulletins are now being written by AI that scrapes local news from online sources - leaving one human newsreader to check and voice 39 local bulletins a day across four regions. (I also suspect the newsreader is actually not voicing complete bulletins, judging by the similarity of the intros.)

I’m not sure how possible it is to fact-check AI output at scale like this, and suspect there’s a lawsuit waiting to happen for brodcasting an unchecked story; only a few weeks ago, when producing an audio transcript for this very newsletter, I caught my own transcript-generation AI tool confidently giving me text about “an alleged and proven offence”. The audio actually said “an alleged, unproven offence”.

I also wonder how much local news actually exists for AI to scrape these days…

Classifieds

• Maths, Art or Magic? Radio scheduling and programming is easier when you know how to make it consistent and position it to succeed. Buy Robin Prior’s new book and discover clock-building, formatting, the forward-sell, music research, and much more.
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• Good news! After BBC Sounds was turned off in July, the BBC have restored on-demand access for flagship BBC Radio 4 programmes in the BBC international app, around four months later. I’ve updated my canonical guide on how to listen to BBC Radio outside the UK. Now, the only thing I’m keen to happen is for the BBC to stop promoting BBC Sounds outside the UK in its podcast trails. They have all the tools to do that already: it’s clear evidence of friction between Sounds and Studios, it seems to me.

• Triton Digital has rolled out an interesting product for radio sales. Known as AdBuilder AI, it allows smaller advertisers to make radio ads themselves using AI, then pay for their radio advertising using a credit card. It fixes some of the problems of local direct sales - that below a certain size of order, it’s not very viable to give a full-service three-call sell. Your station’s version is all branded with your own logos and stuff - it’s a clever application of technology, to free your salespeople up to give their full support to larger advertisers.

• Talking about radio advertising, this piece from AdsWizz suggests that they have the data to be able to give a better answer in terms of frequency (‘opportunities to hear’) than the oft-quoted “at least three”. It also links to SiriusXM, which suggests that the best value is “four or more”.

• In Estonia, Radio KUKU has reportedly announced that “due to high costs” it is to stop broadcasting on seven FM frequencies from mid January, replacing the coverage with a DAB+ signal.

• Last time, I wrote about my disappointment that there was no local content on my local ABC station after 7pm on a Sunday night. I discover that BBC Local Radio wants to stop bothering doing local radio on Sunday afternoons entirely, and instead, to network an “all-England” programme instead. David Lloyd makes a robust response to Ofcom - worth a read for anyone (like me) who wants to learn how to criticise properly!

Finally, to Brisbane, which I appreciate I’ve been banging on about recently and you’re probably not very interested, hence why it’s here at the bottom of this newsletter, and why I didn’t send out a newsletter last week for I had little to say that wasn’t Brisbane-related.

Having fired the current KISS 97.3 breakfast team in Brisbane (but correctly letting these professionals say their goodbyes - thank you), ARN has announced a surprising replacement. We’ll get Craig “Lowie” Low.

It’s a curious choice - he’s lived in the US since 2010 (as a comedy writer, performer, actor and director), and apparently only returned to Australia last month. He’s not done radio - or even any podcasts - since 2010.

It’s also interesting since, by rights, the $20mn-a-year Kyle and Jackie O should be there instead.

Also in January, ARN will also launch the Christian O’Connell breakfast show in Brisbane: tried and proven talent with a music format that works brilliantly in this market - but music that is only available on AM. It’s an obvious #1 FM station. Yet, Christian will only launch on DAB+, and not FM.

I just went to check whether the press release about “Lowie” said KIIS973 or just KIIS. Are ARN really going to squander this golden opportunity? I think there’s surprises still to come.

• Also: congratulations to Sofie Formica and Dean Miller, who have been given 4BC’s breakfast show next year. While I don’t know Dean, though I’ve met Sofie, who is a great and positive broadcaster; both are Brisbane-based and have known each other for twenty years. It fills me with some confidence that this show won’t just be an angry old man shouting about politics and stirring for divisive talking points. The ABC should be concerned - especially if 4BC’s owners, Channel Nine, uses its multimedia heft to promote the new show properly.

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
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