Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
And get the facts right too!
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
This week, with the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester England, we saw another reminder - should we need one - of the benefit of radio in an emergency: and of its localness.
During a terrorist incident, mobile phone networks can quickly become overloaded. Worse: in the immediate aftermath of an incident, false facts abound. In this case, there...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
A friend of mine has treated himself to a subscription to Scientific American, and is currently excitedly reading the archives, which come with his purchase.
Back in February 1941, the magazine published a piece about the introduction of FM radio. It attempts to predict the future, but then adds this caution:
“The...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I spent last week, partially, at the Worldwide Radio Summit in Los Angeles. This is the most interesting US broadcast radio conference I’ve been to - focusing much more on music programming than on business, sales and technology. My congratulations to the AllAccess team who put this together.
Seeing and hearing the assault of commercial messages when I landed in Los Angeles reminded me of the...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I’ve been thinking of a different type of newspaper website.
Along the top navigation bar you’d find a section detailing all the journalists. You could read their biographies, and see photographs of them.
There would be a full section talking about where you could get the newspaper. Probably a list of different stores, maybe a nice map.
There would be a competition section, because it...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Podcasting and online radio is all very well - but, as anyone will tell you, the numbers are small. More than that - it’s hard to get people to find your show, too. It’s rather easier to get people to listen to you if you’re on the radio.
If you want to play music, it gets harder still. You can’t play music in podcasts (well, full music tracks that anyone’s heard of), so the only real way to play an hour’s worth of music that you...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Last week, during the holidays, I did a lot of driving. It turns out that Australia, my home country, is quite big: and a trip from Melbourne to Orbost, which looks tiny on the map, is actually four and a half hours.
I’d claim that I listened to a lot of radio while I was driving that distance; but my four year-old wouldn’t hear of it, and so I was “treated” to the entire available work of My Little Pony on...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
In a bar in Canada, two men jabbed their fingers at me - in a friendly way - and asked me a simple question. Where is the best-sounding radio in the world? What a great question.
I avoided the answer. We discussed it a bit. And I think we got broad agreement on what helps make great-sounding radio and the things you need.
First - the question expected a country as an answer. I don’t think that’s...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I’m fascinated by marketing for radio stations.
I used to write radio commercials for a living, for around eight years. I’ve sat with clients and honed their message to make sure it works, and works well.
I’d end up being relatively firm with clients. I’d end up hearing myself saying: It’s not enough to promote that you offer “a great selection of beds all under one roof”. So does...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Run by Apple and available exclusively on Apple Music, Beats 1 was launched at the end of June 2015 - most audaciously, grabbing presenter Zane Lowe from BBC Radio 1 at the time.
The programming is good, and high quality. It's great to see Apple invest in radio - and invest they have, with three great-looking studios in LA, New York and London; and some great broadcasters. However...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I write this having attended Radiodays Europe for the past few days. It’s a big radio conference - the biggest in the world, in fact, with 1,500 people going there.
The conference rotates country in Europe: this year it was in Amsterdam in The Netherlands, next year it’ll be in Vienna, Austria. Four tracks of well-produced content always leads to some interesting thoughts, and a difficult...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
I do quite a lot of award judging. I'd recommend it. It's quite a useful thing to do - it forces you to listen to things you'd otherwise not listen to, and you get a good, whirlwind, view of a particular sector or market than you'd otherwise not have got.
It's particularly interesting for me, since I don't make radio. I've not been on the air for ten years (though I'd love to again);...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Jump into a brand new Volkswagen, or Skoda, and you’ll notice the radio - part of the “VW Infotainment” in car option.
There’s a lot to like. For a start, there’s a big button marked ‘radio’ on the dashboard. Surprisingly, these buttons are disappearing in some cars, in spite of radio being the most-used audio source in the car.
There are also big tuning and volume controls....
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
The way we make radio is changing. My first job in radio was carrying a heavy Uher tape recorder to an interview for a news reporter - we needed specialist equipment then, costing hundreds or even thousands. Today, we’ve most of the equipment already. But you still probably need a decent microphone.
The Shure MV51 is an old-fashioned looking large-diaphragm microphone, but it is anything...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
The UK’s commercial radio industry is about to get probably the biggest shakeup of its life.
Commercial radio in the UK is comparatively new - it only started in 1973. Until then, the country had four national radio stations provided by the BBC - a part-time top40 station that launched in 1967 (Radio 1), a more adult light music station (Radio 2), classical music on Radio 3 and news and drama on...
Radioplayer Car is the world’s first voice-controlled hybrid radio adaptor, offering an easy upgrade for car stereos. It’s a ‘smart radio’ system, able to switch intelligently between DAB, FM or streaming, to find the strongest signal.
A small box, professionally fitted behind the...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Depending who you listen-to, podcasting is the future of radio, and we should all get on it as quickly as we can. Yet, according to Edison Research, only 55% of people in the US actually know what one is (Podcast Study, Spring 2016) - and podcasting is more advanced there than anywhere else.
On both sides of the world, however, podcasting is growing rapidly - fast enough ot only for Helen Zaltzman...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
One of the talks I do is all about making the most of your content. I’ve done it in a number of different ways now to individual radio teams, including to an audience in Malaysia of over a hundred people.
The basic point I make, again and again, is that even your most fanatical listeners don’t listen to everything you broadcast. And your most fanatical listeners are already your fans....
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Norway is switching FM transmitters off: if you want to keep listening, you’ll find most channels will only be on DAB+ (and online and on the telly).
But: that’s not the only transmitter switchoff happening in radio. AM radio is being switched off, slowly and surely, across the globe.
The national broadcasters in France and Germany...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
The internet. A fantastically useful service - a way of getting great audio contributions from across the world, a tool for research, a method of getting your signal to new people, and a big gaping security headache for you, particularly in times of unrest or instability.
Four large radio stations in Australia were...
Radio Tomorrow with James Cridland
Did you have one? I did. The iPhone. The original iPhone.
Launched in a blaze of Steve Jobs alternative reality, it was an exciting rethink of how a smartphone could be. It didn’t have any apps - those came later - but it was a fabulous device with a decent web browser, built-in Google Maps, Google’s new acquisition YouTube, and email.
I got mine from the basement of Selfridges in London....
Twitter Likes