James Cridland

The MFWs, a new BBC station, and more from Canada

An Italian pirate radio kit

Above: a rather fabulous “pirate radio kit” that you could buy in Italy in the 1980s, which was a little FM radio transmitter. Here’s a YouTuber playing with one (which is fascinating, because the Italian voice has been redubbed into English and actually it works pretty well).

  • Hell has no fury like an MFW - Duncan Campbell, former content director of ARN, writes about the pressure group Mad Fudging Witches. “Make no mistake about it, Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands and Karl Stefanovic all lost their jobs because of MFW”, he claims. Not sure about Karl - probably uncritically interviewing Tommy Robinson did that for him - but, Campbell suggests we should be concerned that MFW have this kind of influence. MFW targets the advertisers who fund the shows, contacting them directly and making them aware of the content they’re funding. Campbell frames it as a free speech issue. (He’ll be at Radiodays Asia; I’ve put this through a link tracker since the original link has a naughty word in).

  • Spintrack is a “complete radio station on a Mac mini”, it claims. It’s probably understandable that there aren’t that many playout systems for the Mac, but it looks interesting to see - it includes voicetracking and live assist, along with hour templates and music scheduling.

  • Over in Podnews this week, SONARR has been advertising its awards. They’re a new audio awards for Australia, including radio, podcasts, audiobooks and voiceovers. You have until this Friday evening to enter, and it can be as low as $75 to enter. You’re guaranteed not to win if you don’t enter…

  • Some quite impressive radio analysis for the Sydney market. ARN’s Gold managed 15 minutes an hour of ads. “If you’re hearing an ad on Smooth, there’s a 50/50 chance WSFM is also in an ad at that exact moment”. (Yes, this person - who is clearly someone who cares about radio - calls it WSFM, despite it having rebranded over a year ago). The comments are, as ever, worth reading.

RCS

Classifieds

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  • BBC Radio 6 Music launched a new radio station, BBC Radio 6 Indie Forever. It isn’t listed on the BBC.com list of BBC radio stations - and appears to be unavailable from its BBC Sounds page internationally. The BBC has added a slew of new radio services recently, in a bid to attract more users to BBC Sounds and to claw back some listener share from commercial radio.

  • Paul Larsen writes about What the Rogers Closures Really Tell Us, highlighting the closure of six spoken-word stations across Canada a few weeks ago. He highlights the regulatory issues stopping Rogers from simply selling the stations: “I believe the current regulatory system is partly responsible for outcomes like the Rogers station closures.” - and he’s a man with experience, where the CRTC took almost twelve months to approve the sale of his station. (Interestingly, he suggests that twenty years ago, it took only 90 days. I wonder what changed?).

    • Another Radioland reader has pointed me to a “Tangible Benefits” requirement of the CRTC. If a radio company sells a licence, it must pay at least 6% of the sales value to a variety of organisations - 4.5% to musician funds, 0.5% to community radio, and 1% to a content development fund. These fees are required unless the station has made “significant financial losses” over at least five consecutive years. Handing the licences back means that Rogers isn’t liable for these payments.

  • I wrote an opinion piece for Podnews, suggesting that podcast apps should get a cut of the revenue from podcast advertising. About fifteen years ago, I worked for radio receiver manufacturer Pure for a while, and realised pretty quickly that radio receiver manufacturers have a totally different set of priorities than the radio broadcasters who depend on them. The same is true of podcast app developers; and I do think there’s something in my suggestions in the piece. I’d be appreciative of your comments (or sharing the article).

  • 42 Audacy radio stations are to be rebroadcast nationally by SiriusXM. Kind of. They’ll be in the SiriusXM app, and will be available in cars that have SiriusXM 360L, a hybrid delivery service that uses both satellites and IP to deliver the audio. It’s an interesting move, widening the choice available for SiriusXM users, and the reach of the Audacy channels.

Where I am speaking next

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