STV Radio launches, and more AM switchoffs

Above: this weekend I was inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame, a prestigious and frankly humbling experience. An emotional night, and I’m grateful for the support and recognition.

• With all the talk of closures last time round, let’s cover a new station. STV Radio went live in Scotland on DAB (“Never the same song all day long”). It’s owned by STV, the television company, and should therefore benefit from significant promotion on the TV airwaves. The main studio, in this picture from Facebook, looks larger than any studio I’ve ever seen.

  • Notable comments on Facebook: “I tried to get it on my google nest but it didn’t recognise you”, and “Good luck Alexa not picking u up tho”. Station launches are hard.

• James Masterton - a long-time supporter of this newsletter (even if he’s nothing to do with radio any more) - writes about a long day’s set of interviews about the Christmas Number One in the UK (he writes Chart Watch UK). My favourite bit - he appeared via Zoom for BBC Radio 2, in spite of being able to literally see the studio from his hotel room. Classic BBC!

  • It reminds me of appearing on BBC Radio 5 Live from a radio conference in 2007 or so: the BBC had blocked off half the hotel restaurant, set up a full mixing desk with a radio engineer looking after it (which took hours to set up), with Stephen Nolan being sent to chair a ten-minute panel. I remember thinking what a lot of effort it all was, but it turned slightly surreal when we finished the piece, I stood up, and for the first time looked across the street - to see the headquarters of BBC Ulster. A full, expensive, outside broadcast. To avoid crossing the road and sitting in a BBC studio.

• AM deathwatch:

  • A number of US broadcasters are asking the FCC to make it easier to switch their AM stations to FM. A complicated set of requests in this petition: David Oxenford does a good job of summarising them.
  • Desi Radio, an Asian station in Southall, London, closed on 1602 kHz on Dec 31. It continues on DAB+ and online.

Classifieds

• 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!

• In Germany, classical music station Klassik Radio completed its plans for FM switchoff. The station has handed more than thirty FM frequencies back since 2012. It’s available nationally on DAB+ and online. Also, Radio WSW (top 40) decided not to renew its FM licence on Dec 31, and is now DAB+ and online only. The station is now branded as Radio Sachsen Eins.

• In France: which is the #1 station by total listeners? It’s France Inter, according to this fancy graph from La Lettre Pro and RCS. All the top 5 stations went down in weekly reach, though - with SkyRock (rap and R&B) at #6 bucking the trend for younger stations everywhere.

• YouTube is used by more people in the UK than BBC television, according to some new analysis. The data measured so-called “three-minute” monthly reach: people who have used each platform for at least three minutes a month. However, in a parallel with podcasting figures, people don’t use YouTube for long - if you compare a “fifteen-minute” monthly reach, BBC tv still comfortably beats YouTube by 6 million users (and then there’s the radio and podcasts to add in).

• I hear that Virgin Radio UK has undergone a reworking, and now has (among many changes) Geoff Lloyd returning to the evening show. For the first time, seemingly, that station has decided to remind people of its glory days in the 1990s, with a music policy to match. Should be worth a listen,.

• Good luck to Christian O’Connell who starts his new national breakfast show in Australia; and to everyone returning to work for the first time today.

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.
• 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/fediverse as @james@bne.social - or you might find me on Threads or BlueSky.

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