Your emergency broadcaster - except when you're not

Above: plenty of lanyards. These were, I think, less than two years worth. Anyway, this clutter has now gone out of the office.

• Your emergency broadcaster? I’ve often been a little nervous about shouting that “radio works during emergencies when others don’t”. In Portugal, on Jan 28, Serra de Montejunto mast, operated by RDP, was brought down by strong winds as part of Storm Kristin, pulling eight FM radio stations off-air. And after a grass fire near Bendigo, large parts of regional Victoria in Australia lost access to all their television and most of their radio stations, after two transmission sites caught fire; impacting as many as 356,000 people. Yes, there are temporary, lower-power, transmitters now in place; but when we say that broadcast radio is resilient in emergencies, what we often mean is that broadcast radio has one point of failure - better than others, perhaps, but all you need is that one thing to fail. (Multiplatform radio, which is certainly the future, mitigates this somewhat).

• US broadcaster Audacy has removed a number of third-party podcasts from its radio and podcast app (including my own Podnews Weekly Review, which was here). An Audacy spokesperson told Podnews: “We’ve removed a number of lower-engagement third-party podcasts from the app which accounted for a very small percentage of overall listening." (but I’m sure they weren’t talking about my show… were they?)

• Last week, it was reported that the ABC in Australia were coming off the iHeart app in the country. From what I can work out, the ABC in Australia is also coming off TuneIn shortly, according to a conversation I’ve seen between ABC Audience Support and a listener. They’re coming off iHeart and TuneIn “for quite a variety of reasons around fault-resolution and licensing”, according to the ABC Audience Support person. In my book, if you’re a radio broadcaster that everyone in Australia pays for - I don’t have a choice where my tax goes - then you should be available for your audience in as many ways possible. Consistency isn’t the ABC’s strong point: it’ll remain on RadioApp, apparently. A disappointing decision - and it’ll harm the ABC’s audience figures long-term.

• One of the biggest Brisbane radio names has been reportedly forced away from the ABC after apparently falling foul of its conflict of interest policy. Spencer Howson is said to have been offered a permanent slot on Saturday breakfast for ABC Radio Brisbane: but only if he walked away from one of his Mon-Fri jobs as a media trainer for Media Potential. A potential workaround (that he’d not interview anyone he’d trained) wasn’t acceptable. Consistency isn’t the ABC’s strong point: Sharnelle Vella, who co-hosts ABC Radio Melbourne’s Mon-Fri breakfast - hardly a part-time gig - is also a media trainer. A disappointing decision - and it’ll harm the ABC’s audience figures long-term.

Classifieds

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• The FCC has told broadcasters that if a candidate appears on a talk program, they may require “equal time” for other candidates, writes media lawyer David Oxenford. The ruling appears to target shows like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert - Colbert’s predecessor David Letterman was once broadcast on the radio, but I don’t know whether that show still is these days. Howard Stern is also a potential focus of this, though the FCC don’t regulate satellite radio.

• Independent podcasts are set to be available on the Radio France app, after a new agreement with the PIA, the Syndicate of Independent Audio Producers. “Podcast inclusion is based on a principle of dual consent: studios put forward their programmes, while Radio France retains full editorial control over the final selection.”

  • It’s worth comparing Radio France’s strategy with the BBC’s. The BBC puts selected first-run shows onto BBC Sounds before anywhere else, but the archive is available to all; Radio France puts all its stuff everywhere, but keeps the archive within the Radio France app only. The BBC either commissions shows for itself, or very occasionally licences old versions of third-party shows for BBC Sounds; Radio France seems to have a different view here, too (I don’t see anything in the PIA’s press release talking about money, or about advertising).

• The former breakfast show on Hot 97 in New York, Ebro in the Morning, has popped up as one of the first signings for CreatorX, a “creator-led advertising exchange”. “Creators today are operating as independent media companies,” said Matty Staudt, Managing Director of CreatorX. “Our role is to provide the infrastructure and advertising access that allows talent to scale without sacrificing control.” Radio may have quite a talent drain on its hands if it doesn’t get this sort of thing right; it’s clearly behind many of iHeart’s savvy deals to work with their talent on networks like The Black Effect Podcast Network, which is a joint venture between Charlamagne tha God (a syndicated radio host) and iHeartMedia. Hot 97, on the other hand, is owned by MediaCo, which appears to be doing nothing in the podcast space.

• At last, a radio group that can organise a piss-up in a brewery. The big commercial radio talk stations in Australia, 2GB Sydney and 3AW Melbourne (as well as the less-big 4BC Brisbane and 6PR Perth) have been sold by Nine Networks to Arthur Laundy, for AUD $56mn (US $39mn). Mr Laundy owns 40 pubs in New South Wales, and is worth $1.75bn, so these radio stations cost him small change he presumably found behind the pokie machines. Seven years ago, Nine took control of the group at a valuation of $275mn. Most media commentators have talked about whether this is an acquisition that will pass “the pub test”, but I won’t be doing that. Talk has much more of a future than music-intensive radio, in my book anyway; though these are old stations with old audiences.

  • These stations used to stream live video online throughout all their programming; but those streams were yanked a few weeks ago for some reason.

• Fixing things by being grumpy in a newsletter - last week, I noted that the iHeartRadio app called Gold Brisbane “Just Great Hits” - didn’t take too long for that positioning statement to be fixed to match what they’re using on-air… thank you for reading, ARN!

Where I am speaking next

• The Radio Festival, New Delhi, India (Feb 10) I’ll be talking - on video - about the future of radio, and AI’s part in it.
• Radiodays Europe, Riga, Latvia, (Mar 22-24) The future of audio is people-powered: The way people consume media is changing. James Cridland, the radio futurologist, takes a look at global trends in radio and on-demand. How will we listen - on which devices? How can we make our output truly unique? How do we do it in a resource-efficient way? And what part does video play in the future of audio? In this wide-ranging session, bringing together data from North America, Asia, Australia and Europe, we’ll learn why the future is bright - as long as we understand why our audience comes to us in the first place.
• The Podcast Show, London UK (May 20-21) - I’ll be keynoting at this event, as well as recording a Podnews Weekly Review.

Supporters

Thank you to the supporters below, plus 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. Or, alternately, here’s a way direct with Stripe.

I’m on Mastodon as @james@bne.social

My website has more detail about who I am, and what I do, and whether I can help you further.

Selected bits from Radioland are in RadioInfo in Australia, and RAIN News in the US
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