Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Recently, my columns have been quite full of numbers and figures and statistics, so instead, this week, I’d like to do some thinking aloud instead.

I have a theory. It has almost no science behind it - yet; and probably very little proof - but nonetheless, I think it’s true.

I think that, for live radio, we should be focusing on getting our output on speakers, not headphones. Our...

20 August 2017

Saying thank you to your fans

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Sit in front of Twitter and watch @tonyblackburn’s account on a Saturday morning, and you’ll see something a little unusual.

Tony Blackburn is probably the most well-known radio presenter in the UK. On-air since 1964, he joined the BBC 50 years ago: in a video released last week, he tries to find the radio studio he first used in Broadcasting House. He was the first radio presenter...

13 August 2017

Social media goes massive for Slovenian radio hosts

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Here’s a useful pub quiz fact: Slovenia is the only country in the world with “love” in its name.

For a week in June, Slovenia was also the home of some of the most popular radio personalities on social media, anywhere in the world. Not bad for a country with only two million inhabitants.

Here’s how they did it.

Hitradio Center’s...

06 August 2017

The future of radio - according to our future listeners

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Radio is going multiplatform. Whenever I speak, wherever I speak, that’s the key piece of information I’d like the audience to remember.

AM and FM are ways of getting our audio to our audience - but they’re not the only way. There’s satellite, there’s DAB and HD, there’s the internet, and there’s other ways too.

Nowhere is this more the case than the UK, where radio listening to AM...

30 July 2017

Smart Speakers: Putting Radio back into Living Rooms

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

This week, Google launched its Google Home smart speaker in Australia. It’s been some time coming - the UK and the US have had it for a while - and it’ll be joined, at the end of the year, by Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s HomePod.

On the face of it, you might think these devices have little to do with radio. But you’d be wrong. They could be the way radio gets back into our living spaces.

In the...

23 July 2017

Zero-rated data - is it good news for radio?

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

In the UK, the curiously-named “Three” mobile phone network has just announced something called Go Binge. It’s a new service that lets you watch Netflix, listen to music service Deezer (and SoundCloud) but these services won’t come out of your monthly data allowance.

In Australia, Optus offers...

16 July 2017

Smart ads aren’t so smart - so when will we fix streaming?

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

I watched a TV show on-demand the other day. It was a quite aggravating experience.

Before the show started, there was an ad to get the TV network’s app on Apple TV. I was watching on a smart TV anyway, so there didn’t seem much point in trying to sell me something I didn’t need.

Then, in the first ad break - which started four seconds into the second part of the program - I saw an ad to...

02 July 2017

Radio engineers need to talk too

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

There are a group of people that make a surprising difference to the quality and creativity of radio programs across the world.

Yes, of course, Content Directors are important. A good producer perhaps more so. And, of course, good listeners. We all need those.

But, last weekend, I spent two days in a room full of other people.

These people work at your radio station, even though quite often they’re hidden away in a...

25 June 2017

Our younger listeners want on-demand content

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

Recently, RAJAR - the UK's radio listening research company - released their own "share of audio" figures as part of their MIDAS research, showing what kind of audio that the British put into their ears.

Of course, radio is the most popular type of audio: 77% of all audio listened-to is live radio. That's the headline figure from the UK: and similar research in the US, Canada and...

18 June 2017

Learning about Radio in Asia

Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland

I’ve had an interesting few days in Qingdao, China - taking part in a special radio day before the Asian Media Summit.

Asia is an interesting radio market, with some countries having very advanced commercial-sounding stations, and others where controls on private broadcasters have only relatively recently begun to be lifted.

Technology is different in China, and a little challenging - China...

11 June 2017