James Cridland

DAB+, DRM, Radio 4 LW and the death of radio news

My new little DAB radio

RCS

Classifieds

  • In The Quarter Hour with Wade Kingsley: what happened at the ARN AGM? Plus, an interview with Intern Pete, who is moving from Kyle & Jackie O to the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show. And a show all about how important “local” is to radio, with Spencer Howson and… me.
  • Supercharge your radio show with world-class prep: the right show prep delivered to you on time, EVERY day, without fail. Grab a £1 week-long trial of Show Prep and stop chasing round looking for things to use on your show, running out of time before the show, and trying to sight-read the newspapers!

  • AM Deathwatch: BBC Radio 4 LW is to close on Jun 27. I calculate that it costs £1.5mn in electricity costs per year to run the three transmitters (Droitwich at 500kW, Burghead and Westerglen at 50kW; add 20% to cover AM transmitter inefficiency) and I’d suspect that maintenance of it isn’t cheap either.

    • It’s fun to read how the BBC palms the reason off to “the company that owns and operates the LW broadcast equipment”. Those of us with memories will remember that “the company” was, er, the BBC - until the BBC sold their domestic transmitter network to Texas-based company Crown Castle for £250mn. Crown Castle, which also managed British Telecom’s mobile network, sold to National Grid Transco in 2004 for £1.1bn. National Grid Transco, renamed National Grid Wireless, was sold to Arqiva in 2007 for £2.5bn. Arqiva was owned by Australian bank Macquarie until March. It’s now owned by Polus Capital (an investment company), two Australian pension/superannuation companies - Aware and CareSuper, but the biggest shareholding, 48%, is owned by Digital 9, an owner of fibre and wireless networks which, um, decided in January that it’s going out of business and is trying to sell their share of Arqiva.

  • On my Freedom of Information Request to the ACMA, I got advice that I might want to ask the ACMA, in the meantime, for a version of the document with all the redactions ARN wanted. A reply came back, six days later, saying that no, I can’t have it. I’m not sure they’re right in this case - the right of review is for the additional information that the ACMA wanted to release to me that ARN didn’t - but I also don’t want to become a vexatious requestor, so I’ll now sit on my hands for the inevitable ARN request for review.

  • I’ve just been given a Radio Listening Diary for GfK - the diary that is given to people to note how they listen to the radio in this country. No, I’m not filling it in. But I’m looking forward to taking a proper look at it over the next few days. It’s interestingly similar - and different - to the RAJAR one: particularly in terms of the list of stations.

Where I am speaking next

  • The Podcast Show, London UK (May 20-21) - I’ll be keynoting at this event, as well as recording a Podnews Weekly Review, and moderating a panel about podcast research.
  • FWD, the Western Canada Media Conference, Kelowna BC (June 3-4) - I’ll be there, talking about “the future of audio is people-powered”.
  • Radiodays Asia, Jakarta Indonesia (Sep) - I’m usually a speaker at this event, and it’s a good one to be at.

Supporters

Thank you to the supporters below, plus Dafydd Furnham, Marty from New Yawk, Gavin Watson, Greg Strassell, Sam Phelps, Richard Hilton, Emma Gibbs, Jocelyn Abbey and James Masterton for being regular supporters.

If you’d like to support my work in any way, you can BuyMeACoffee - become a member to give regularly or just give a one-off coffee, or five. Here’s where to do that.

There’s a podcast version of this newsletter if you prefer that. I’m on Mastodon as @james@bne.social if you’re there too. And my website has more detail about who I am, and what I do, and whether I can help you further.

My newsletter is supported by:

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

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