Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Across Europe, they’ve been busy switching off AM, and the switchoff of FM is getting closer for one of the largest European countries.

New figures from RAJAR, the UK’s radio research company, came out last week. They revealed that 49.9% of all radio listening is to...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Young people are falling out of love with radio.

How do you know? You just have to ask a random guy you meet at the pub. He’ll tell you that his friend’s son doesn’t listen to the radio, and, by extrapolation, no young people in the entire world listen to the radio. You can take this knowledge back to your workplace and comfortably tell other people that young...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

This month will be another month of headlines about the end of radio - and this time it’ll be the British you can blame.

You’ll be familiar with the end of radio. All last year we heard about Norway, who has switched off FM broadcasting for almost all stations, replacing it with DAB+.

This time, the British are doing their best to give the press...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

I’ve worked with a ton of radio presenters over the past 28 years, and if I was going to make a general observation about them, it’s that they’re great at being radio presenters - the whole talking and communicating thing, they do that.

Few of them, however, are particularly brilliant at writing.

Now, that’s not to take away from those that are. There are a few presenters that can...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

All the research, of which there’s really quite a lot, seems to show that radio goes well with smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Data from the UK shows some very good results for radio when you look at total audio time with speakers.

I’ve a Google Home, and I use it for music and for live radio. It’s been pretty impressive, once I know what to call the station....

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Surprise! In a world of relatively flat radio revenue figures, radio revenue in the UK market went up by 11% in Q2/2017. Wow! How did they do that?

Well, first, it might have been 11% in one quarter, but UK radio will probably end the year about 4% up at around US$875m. 

Over a beer in a French bar - and I point this out not just so it makes claiming expenses easier - I had a chat with...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

There’s change in the air - literally - in the US, the world’s biggest radio market.

SInce 1934, the FCC has had a rule that a radio station must have a main studio within its transmission area, and must also have a “meaningful management and staff presence”, which means full-time staff during business hours.

The FCC have just voted to eliminate this rule. As a local radio station, you now...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

At Radio Alive, the newly-rebranded radio conference in Australia the other week, I sat through some well-produced discussions in the main room. Some very high quality speakers covered many areas of Australian radio, including much discussion about advertising, branding and commercial content.

These discussions are great to have: they bring advertising agencies and others to...

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Belfast in Northern Ireland is a city of regeneration and investment. I walked from the train station into the city, noting new buildings and renovated ones. The city appears to be a prosperous place. New brands have poured into the city in recent years.

There’s another new brand in Belfast: and I was on my way to see them. Q Radio has been broadcasting across parts of Northern Ireland...