James Cridland

Data from Europe and the US

Data from the EBU

  • The EBU released its Radio Trends Report 2026. Weekly reach across Europe is 81.3%, down 2.7% from five years ago. As above - time spent listening is 2h 10m per day - down 15 minutes on 5 years ago (and down 50 minutes from 20 years ago).

  • Nielsen released its Podcast Listen & Watch Report, though there’s information in there for radio as well. Particularly, it quotes Edison Research’s Share of Ear for Q1, which sys that 20% of time spent with ad-supported audio is podcasting: radio is more than three-times larger.

  • In Australia, Kyle Sandilands will start his paid-for live online show on August 10. It will cost AUD $99 for the year (£51, US$69) - listeners won’t be able to buy monthly. Game Changers Radio seems to think it will be easy to get 10,000 listeners paying that. Sandilands has said he needs 50,000 to “cover costs”. Prior to his sacking, his show had 1.1 million listeners, 96,000 of those online; he had 291,000 listeners to the podcast too. I’m fascinated to watch this.

  • I think this might be a world first - DAB+ being used to bring in a radio station from overseas. “The Rock”, a radio station from New Zealand, is soon to be available in Brisbane on DAB+, courtesy of NOVA. NOVA seems to be playing an interesting game - on NOVA Player it also has a feed from the UK’s talkSPORT, as well as two audio feeds from tv channels FOX SPORTS News and Sky News Radio. The appearance of The Rock on DAB+ is probably partially to help with music rights costs for the online app, but also, Brisbane’s probably a good fit musically.

  • The UK government has announced plans to ensure that UK-licenced radio stations must be available on smart speakers operated by Alexa, Google and Siri. A consultation has launched too. The news has been welcomed by commercial radio trade body Radiocentre.

  • ARN’s stock price means the company is quite affordable right now, and reportedly, SEG are interested in buying ARN. SEG are the owners of SEN, a set of sports radio stations in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Australian radio has an ownership limit of two licences per area, and ARN are already at that limit, so any merged company would need to bear that in mind.

  • In the UK, Times Radio (owned by News UK) and Boom Radio (entirely independent) promoted each other for six weeks. I wondered if there was any ad-sales connection, but no - Times Radio is sold entirely in-house, while Boom Radio is represented by Bauer Media; though for news, both are supplied by Independent Radio News. Both stations are, clearly, complementary; it’s interesting and refreshing to see them both promote each other.

  • In the UK, the BBC released its annual report and accounts. Notably, the previous year had a report entitled “Radio Performance By Service” which covered the cost of programming for each radio station. As one example: BBC Radio 2 - £49 million, or US $65mn for programming alone - working out to 1p per listener per hour; or BBC Radio 3, £37 million, 5p per listener per hour). This year, that page, and all those costs, are gone.

    • For all the hard commercial work of the past few years, commercial revenue is flat, and the dividend back to the public service is actually -3.5% lower this year.

RCS

Classifieds

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  • Ailing Brisbane talk station 4BC has removed its breakfast show: but gave them a final day to say goodbye to their audiences (which is good to see). Jason Matthews, the current host of mornings, will take over breakfast from Monday. Matthews is the fifth new breakfast show on the station since 2020.

    • In May, I noted with concern that the 4BC breakfast team - or any 4BC staff - didn’t feature on owner Tapt Media’s sizzle reel at all. The company replied to me that it was merely time constraints, and “in no way reflective of our commitment to 4BC and the 100% live and local content strategy in the Brisbane market”. That “live-and-local strategy” lasted two months: the weekday afternoon shift will be networked from Sydney; and the Saturday breakfast show will also be piped-in from New South Wales.

  • In Ireland, a community radio station might close, after a new board has discovered more than €40,000 of liabilities, and the station losing its broadcast licence.

  • Put Apple CarPlay or Android Auto into a car, and it’ll get used - according to new data from Edison Research. Some auto manufacturers in the US are considering removing these technologies. Mind, Nielsen is concerned that some manufacturers are also removing AM/FM radio, and gives data to show that it’s a multi-billion dollar gamble.

  • Cumulus Media has signed with Xperi for its AutoStage radio audience measurement service - the first commercial licensee of the tool. It’s in 16 million cars, and delivers lots of helpful analytics. Bob Walker, President of Operations, Cumulus Media, is quoted as saying: “The AutoStage heat maps are a particularly compelling example, visually illustrating where listening is concentrated, on an aggregated basis, relative to advertiser locations. By giving advertisers a richer understanding of audience distribution and listening trends, the platform helps them plan more effective campaigns, optimize audience-level planning, and maximize the impact of their radio investments.” (The car is the #1 listening place in the US; in the UK, only 26% is done in the car; 62% at home).

  • “Listeners heard one voice. It took dozens of people to make that voice trustworthy.” Larry Gifford writes about the closure of Rogers radio stations in Vancouver.

Where I am speaking next

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