The world of radio goes to Rīga

The radio world is in Rīga, Latvia - including me - for Radiodays Europe. As Nik Goodman said to me yesterday, it’s a feeling of “the band getting back together”, as you bump into people over breakfast at the hotel and in the bars across the city.

A Sunday of focused summits has been and gone; there are opening drinks tonight, and then the conference kicks into full swing tomorrow. I’m speaking on Tuesday morning about the future of radio (9am, track one), but also talking to Steve Jones about TuneIn and also talking about Kyle & Jackie O, of course.

The event is, as ever, well organised and the use of students as helpers across the day is a clever thing - it makes the event feel as if it’s full of young people. I wasn’t able to be here last year, so I’m just noticing that everyone looks two years older than I remembered them looking.

Thank you to many people who’ve said nice things about this newsletter. Whenever someone tells me they’re a reader, I’m always a little worried whether I’ve been mean to them.

Classifieds

• In The Quarter Hour with Wade Kingsley: Wade talks to Ben Cooper about the Kyle/Jackie situation to never let someone become too big for your station, and looks back at FIVEAA, a talkback station in Adelaide celebrating its 50th year.
• 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!

Kyle & Jackie O corner

On the same day as I sent this newsletter out last week, the Australian media regulator ACMA woke up and published new licence conditions for KIIS FM in Sydney and Melbourne, specifically about Kyle & Jackie O. The conditions only cover shows with Kyle and/or Jackie, so the company is free to get anyone else on-air to talk about the kind of stuff K&J were talking about; and should Kyle and/or Jackie pop up on a different station, they’d be fine to talk about that kind of stuff too.

The “Statement of Reasons” (here) highlights part of ARN’s response (which I’ve requested in full under the Freedom of Information Act). They have, correctly, removed a potential breach of “sexual innuendo” - indeed, they’ve whipped that out - and I think that’s sensible.

As I said way back in November, actually the ACMA have been a little constrained by the regulatory power that the law affords them; that’s no excuse for their tardy response, but as it is, it could be argued that the ACMA doesn’t actually have the powers it needs to be able to regulate broadcast radio effectively.

Anyway, ARN also sacked Kyle Sandilands officially, giving a statement to the ASX. Kyle released a long statement, essentially saying that his lawyers will be in touch, and that ARN hasn’t honoured the contract.

I was interviewed on Nine’s national breakfast television Today Show about this whole thing. What was quite instructive to me is how Nine took the interview, reposted it on YouTube, used clips in their news bulletins, and posted those to Instagram - really getting the most out of the content. Re-using and repeating material is something radio is surprisingly bad at.

• Australian radio released its first ratings of the year. They are, essentially, Kyle & Jackie O’s last figures (a 12.7% share for breakfast in Sydney, coming second behind 2GB’s 16.6%). As ever, Survey 1 is often an interesting book, since there has normally been a lot of change. Gold Sydney and Melbourne saw drops after Christian O’Connell’s show was started to be carried on both, but it’s much too early to be making a decision about that. ABC Radio Perth’s switch to FM was right at the end of this survey (it saw a small increase); plenty of other changes to monitor as well. In Adelaide, Mix 102.3 changed name to KIIS 102.3 (but apparently made no other changes) - just the name change alone cost them -3.3 share.

  • Something to watch out for - Survey 2 is based on numbers from Feb 8 to Apr 4; so that survey will still not tell the true story about whatever happens to K&J’s audience, nor will it tell the true story of ABC Radio Perth’s switch to FM; we’ll have to wait until Survey 3 for that, which comes out in June.

• CBS News Radio is to shut down in May. CBS News is the BBC’s news partner in the US (eek), and did news bulletins at the top and bottom of the hour, for 700 affiliated radio stations. You’d have thought that if the BBC was quick and nimble, they’d jump in and produce national news bulletins for the US as a commercial business?

Where I am speaking next

• 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.
  • I’m also talking with Steve Jones of Stingray, on TuneIn, Canadian radio, and more.
  • And I’m in a session about what happens when you lose your big star.
• 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 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. Or, alternately, here’s a way direct with Stripe.

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.

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