Radioland, with James Cridland - radio futurologist

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Goodness me!

Links and more to read and listen to over here...

https://james.crid.land/update/ken-bruce

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The UK continues its effective switch-off of the AM waveband. The station I knew as “Virgin 1215”, more latterly “Absolute Radio”, comes off AM this month in the UK. After working for Virgin for a number of years, it’s sad to see the AM signal go.

In the same press release - the first station I worked behind a mixing desk for - the station I knew as Classic Gold West Yorkshire on 1278 and 1530, will also be turned off.

The first commercial radio station I ever listened-to at home, which I knew as Signal Radio 257, is also being turned off.

And the first commercial radio station I listened to while being stuck at school, Radio Tees (also 257), will also see the big switch-off by the end of this month.

It’s almost as if Bauer are doing this personally!

No wonder, really: according to a government official, AM radio in the UK has about 2% of UK radio’s listening hours, yet costs 35% in electricity costs. It’s eye-wateringly expensive to be on AM if you look at the power costs.

Adam Bowie knows more than most, and has blogged about the intricate details of one of the UK’s special INR analogue licences coming off the AM band. He suggests it’s “a healthy six figure sum” to broadcast a national radio station on AM.

Steven Goldstein, blogging from CES, notes that Tesla, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, and Ford have all removed AM from their electric vehicles. Some suggest that it’s an interference issue; that’s probably part of the reason, though my hybrid Toyota Prius manages AM just fine - I also suspect it’s the cost of antennas and shielding.

Remaining on the AM dial in the UK - and using the same, shared, transmitter network - are talkSPORT and BBC Radio Five Live. It’s likely that this will, long term, mean that their costs increase.

AM radio is clearly on its last legs - regardless of what the DRM Consortium will tell you - and what happens in the US and Europe will have its effects elsewhere in the world.

Here in Australia, the ABC’s flagship speech services (ABC Local Radio, News Radio, and Radio National) are all on AM in the capital cities. Their presence on DAB - surely one of the escape rafts for these services - is never once mentioned. Each of those services is in decline. I worry.

• Interesting to spot new, frequency-free logos for Nine’s radio services, like 4BC in Brisbane, and 2GB Sydney. I hope that they will be accompanied by the AM frequency in marketing (since that’s still important to market), but as a long-term change, it’s one that makes sense.
• A good piece from Valerie Geller in 2006 - which radio programmers would have been wise to have listened to: arguing for doubling-down on radio’s unique selling proposition, rather than cutting it out and relying on syndicated stuff.
• Devices used when listening to audio in the home....

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All the links and things are over here: https://james.crid.land/update/radio-marketing

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Links! Interesting things! Pictures! Over here: https://james.crid.land/update/rajar-midas-local-bbc

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You can find all the links at https://james.crid.land/update/bbc-sounds-flat

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I never listened much to Steve Wright In The Afternoon when he was on Radio 1. The show coincided with afternoon classes (if you went to a fancy boarding school). But when I did occasionally dip into it, it was full of characters, fun and excitement.

Ahead of his final show later today, Geoff Jein has shared some of the secrets of the show that he worked on for a while.

Steve Wright was the stuff of legends: and when the beers flowed and someone from Radio 2 was present, inevitably the stories would flow. Not all of those stories were positive, it should be acknowledged; but “Steve Wright” was a shared piece of all of our childhood and, for many of us, one of the reasons that we got into radio in the first place.

The magic, for me, was on Radio 1, on a crackly, pre-FM signal with David Bowie asking Steve what the time was (and, of course, what the temperature was). It probably was time, Steve, sorry.

But even so, his last weekday show today feels like another chapter closing; another piece of unwelcome change; and the onset of a bit of melancholy.

That’s the power of radio.

Steve Wright isn’t the only bit of the BBC that is disappearing.

Today, we learn that more than 380 jobs are to go from the BBC World Service.

There will be no more language services in Arabic, Hindi or Chinese. Many other language services will go online-only.

The last time I heard the BBC World Service was as a news bulletin on Fabulous 103, a radio station in Thailand. But that, too, appears to be going away. “The BBC will also shift its focus away from providing news bulletins to overseas broadcasters and instead try to convince audiences to use the BBC’s own outlets and website.”

In 2010, the awful, shortsighted, mendacious Conservative government forced the weak Director General Mark Thompson into accepting no more government funding for the BBC World Service. It needed to be funded from the UK licence fee instead. That started in 2014.

It, too, was better in the old days - a carefully, sensitively produced network-wide sound of station in 2007, written by David Lowe made the station sound both cohesive but diverse - something many stations could benefit from today. The Mcasso 2018 remix, with the bland tagline “the world’s radio station”, has never really grabbed me.

The BBC World Service is available in Australia, 24 hours a day, 50 weeks of the year (yes, I know) on DAB+ via SBS Radio 3. It’s also available in great swathes over the weekend on ABC News Radio. I listen to it a fair amount.

It is still a fine-sounding radio station: one that is still a source of pride as a British citizen, and one that has incredible reach and power. The UK government appear to be dismantling the very best bits of the country.

What makes this senseless gutting of the BBC World Service more galling is that it happens at the same week as 

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Charts! Graphs! Numbers! All at https://james.crid.land/update/multiplatform-figures-rda22

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All the links are over here: https://james.crid.land/update/bbc-kenny-breakfast

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https://james.crid.land/update/more-value-from-radio-archive has all the notes and links!

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I take a peek at the full numbers. https://james.crid.land/update/bbc-sounds-macca for more