Radioland, with James Cridland - radio futurologist

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I still remember my first look round a radio station. In spite of writing to Signal Radio in Stoke-on-Trent and being ignored (shame on you, Signal), Radio Aire in Leeds held an open day, and I got to look round the studios. I remember being amazed by the equipment, and was astonished at how great the jingles sounded on the decent studio monitors; and the equipment everywhere.

Do you need an on-site playout system? The BBC’s ViLOR solution for their local radio stations keeps the fancy studios, but moves all the playout equipment into a few regional centres - so, as a presenter on a local station, you’re not pressing “play” on a computer in the basement any more, but one a few hundred miles away. The benefits here are obvious - easier maintenance, more efficient air-conditioning, cheaper studio facilities.

Speaking at Next Radio, RCS’s Philippe Generali unveiled a cloud-based system called Raptor, that moves all of the playout software for a typical radio station into “the cloud”: so RCS look after the racks and the transmitter link, rather than your radio station.

Do you need a music library? OmniPlayer’s playout system uses Spotify (as well as your local audio) so you’ll have access to any song that you need, almost.

Do you need expensive soundproofed studios? A few years ago, I wrote about Vista Radio, a company that I’ve been proudly working with for the last two years, who don’t have radio studios in their new facilities. Instead, their “open-air” studios are part of their office space. If you’re doing music programming, it’s unlikely you need the type of heavy soundproofing that legacy studios have; and if the only speech blocks are at breakfast, your office is quiet then anyway.

Do you need studios at all? For UK-based EDM station This Is Electric, their presenters are at home, using their own home studio (typically, a USB microphone into a laptop), controlling the playout software which is hosted for them by the UK company Broadcast Radio. The station is on DAB and on the internet.

Do you need offices at all? Google’s G-Suite or Microsoft’s Office 365 offers all the functionality for office work, alongside planning systems like WideOrbit or Aquira. For most jobs, there’s little need for anything other than a web browser.

The team at Aiir, who do radio websites, apps and many more things, don’t have a head office at all: and all work remotely from home. There’s no reason to spend all that money on rent and office space if your team are all remote workers.

I’m now hearing about FM stations in the UK who operate entirely virtually - no offices at all, presenters doing their shows from home (both live and voicetracked), and all back-office work being done by home-workers on systems based in the cloud. Many sales operations already work this way.

The discussion in the US earlier this year was all about “the local studio rule”, but, it seems the discussion for some forward-looking radio stations is whether they need a building at all.

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New technology enables us to delight our listeners even more - particularly, radio operators are now offering more choice than ever before.

In Australia, Southern Cross Austereo have been doing a crafty job of launching additional brand extensions for rock and sport station Triple M, and top 40 channel Hit - so listeners can now enjoy Triple M branded stations playing modern rock, or classic hits, for example; while listeners who enjoy R’n’B Fridays on Hit can now find a channel that plays that music 24/7. The stations are available on DAB+ and online.

SCA’s work has resulted in 12% more audience for the radio company, in what they call a “brand-safe environment”.

104.6 RTL in Berlin, Germany, have also started doing something new just      last week that has helped offer more choice to their listeners - Arno and the Morning Crew, the live breakfast show from the station, is now available through their website and in their app with three different types of music. It’s the same live radio show that broadcasts on the #2-rated Hot AC station in Germany’s capital city, but now you can enjoy a version playing top 40 (“nothing but new hits”), or the show with a greatest hits format with songs from the 70s to now.

This is the first outing of this technology in Germany - Berlin’s “funniest morning show” plus three different music streams, all automatically stitched in.

In Vienna, Austria, Kronehit has a service within their app that allows you to listen to the station you enjoy, but skip songs or other elements that you don’t want to listen to. It automatically plays other, brand-relevant music, but continues to have the same presenters, weather, news and travel. They’ve been running this since June 2017.

And if you listen to Heart or Capital in the UK, you’ll hear a fair amount of national programming - but with presenter breaks that are occasionally local when they need to be. This method of “smart networking” allows a national presenter to still react to local events when they need to - from helping audiences with a power cut, to being able to promote their local breakfast shows when required.

New technology often has a bad name within radio chatrooms and forums: and there’s no doubt that poor voicetracking or networking is pretty obvious to listeners. But this new technology makes radio sound better and better able to compete against the world of Spotify and podcasting.

As Marc Haberland, PD at 104.6 RTL says, “radio’s strengths are music and the spoken word: presenters to move and entertain you, and news and information to keep you up to date and help you through your day.” Anything that helps keep radio’s strengths, but adds new choices to audiences, must be a good thing.

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I had a conversation a while ago about FM RDS, that thing which tells you what radio station you’re listening to on a big screen in your car, so you don’t forget. For some reason, this US radio company that I was talking to didn’t have RDS. The fundamental question from the radio guy? “Yeah, but how can I earn money from it?”

There was an interesting article recently in a US publication - Can Podcasting Increase Your Ratings? - and another from Dick Taylor, asking What’s Radio’s Why? - in essence, what’s the point of radio?

For some reason, these two articles made a lot of things make sense. It reminded me of what drives people.

Some people reading this will think that they do radio to get ratings and revenue. That’s the reason why we do anything - ratings or revenue (and ideally both).

Others, though, think that they do radio for a different reason - and it’s a little simpler than “get ratings or get revenue”. Simply, we do radio (or a podcast, or a website, or a newsletter, or a conference, or any type of work) for one reason alone: to delight someone.

If we delight someone, ratings and revenue will surely follow. But I suspect that for many people, ratings and revenue isn’t why they’re in the business. They’re in it because they have an overwhelming urge to delight other human beings.

We can delight them by doing a good job covering stories they’re interested in. We can delight them by playing songs they love. We can delight them by being good company when they need it.

Global, the media and entertainment company headquartered in London, has an “Obsession Statement” rather than a corporate one. It’s a great thing, and I’ve been known to read it aloud in meetings where people are violently disagreeing or getting highly emotional about what they do. Because it’s OK to feel strongly sometimes.

Valerie Geller, when speaking at Next Radio about four years ago, said that our listeners’ health and safety should be our first priority. She didn’t say ratings and revenue (though she’s also seen plenty of that). Instead, caring for our audiences is number one.

Perhaps those who are in radio for the “ratings and revenue” lack the passion of those who are in it to delight audiences. And maybe, just maybe, that lack of passion results in some of what we hear on the air.

Are you in the business of ratings and revenue? Or are you in the business of delighting our audience?

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Some clips of some of the best speakers at the radio ideas conference.

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I’m writing this in London, where the doors are (as I type) just about to open for Next Radio, the radio conference that I run here with my friend Matt Deegan. It’s a positive radio conference with an uplifting feel.

Go to a radio conference in the US or Canada, and there won’t be very many smiling faces. There’s a general feeling in the US and Canada that radio is managing decline. But in other countries, radio is behaving differently.

The UK commercial industry has grown, over the past year, by 5.2%. It’s now a US $887m market.

Australian commercial radio has grown too - over the past year, metro stations growing 3.8% to a US $573m market (and there’s more from the regions, too).

Commercial radio in Finland is growing, too. Their figures are harder to decipher, but July grew by 6.6% over June; and June grew by 17% over May. The market’s comparatively small at about US $93m - but it’s doing better than the UK if you bear in mind Finland’s small population.

These aren’t the stories you hear from the US and Canada; and I’m often asked why.

It’s not an easy answer.

The UK’s seen relaxation of some regulations, and has a strongly multiplatform market (with AM/FM listening at under 50%). Brand consolidation has been an important part of the industry, as has national broadcasting.

Australia’s regulation has historically been quite relaxed, too, but it isn’t particularly multiplatform. Brand consolidation has occurred here as well, with great swathes of radio stations losing their heritage callsigns in favour of more straightforward national branding.

Finland has rejected digital radio, so isn’t multiplatform to any great extent. Much of radio is national, though there are a good number of local stations too. There’s no particular story of brand consolidation either.

So - at first glance, there’s nothing in common particularly to these markets. Except, I think, there is. And it’s probably rather more simple than you’d think.

In the UK, commercial radio has an effective industry body, Radiocentre. They promote the medium to agencies, lobby government, and sing radio’s praises. They’re really very good at it.

In Australia, commercial radio, too, has an effective industry body. It’s called Commercial Radio Australia, and they, too, promote the medium to agencies, lobby government, and sing radio’s praises. They’re tenacious and efficient.

And in Finland, their industry body is Radio Media. They lobby government, promote the medium to agencies, and market radio as well: to great effect.

Unlike North America, these industry bodies only look after radio. They don’t represent television broadcasters as well. There’s no conflict of interest here. Their only concern is a healthy radio industry. And they do that one job very successfully.

And, unlike North America, there’s one organisation doing everything from advertising promotion to lobbying and research. One, simple, straightforward organisation, made up of a membership of commercial radio broadcasters.

Perhaps one of the ways for a successful, growing,...

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So, Chris Evans, the current presenter of adult-contemporary BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show - the largest breakfast show in Europe, by cume - has announced that he’s leaving the station later this year.

He’s off to Virgin Radio, where he’s going to do the breakfast show.

Side note: it’s the same “Virgin Radio” brand, owned by Virgin Enterprises, but not the same station. The original Virgin Radio was bought (and sold) by Chris Evans himself, but after a few more ownership changes, it was rebranded as Absolute Radio. The Virgin Radio brand is now licensed to News UK, part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Evans once described business discussions with Murdoch as “dealing with the devil”.

The current Virgin Radio is a station on DAB Digital Radio, and has no outlet on FM. It broadcasts - in mono - on a transmitter network that only currently covers 77% of households.

It’s a competitive market, too. It’s one of 44 national radio stations in the UK, and typically a radio listener will have a further fifteen or so local radio stations available too on their DAB set - and that’s before the obvious additional choices of Spotify and podcasts.

Virgin Radio has 413,000 weekly listeners (BBC Radio 2 has 14.9m).

So, why on earth would Evans make the leap?

It strikes me that there are a few questions here:

This is real investment in radio - especially digital radio. I hope it works out for everyone concerned.

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“If you could own a radio station, what would you call it?”, posted a man called Nick in a radio discussion board on Facebook the other day.

Now, this Facebook group is mostly comprised of people complaining about how words are being pronounced in radio news bulletins, or photographs of car registration plates that vaguely look like call letters, so this was a welcome change of pace. I grabbed some popcorn and started reading.

Quite a few imaginary station names ended with “FM”. Some used a frequency, too. I’d suggest that neither of these are a particularly good idea.

Jacobs Media have recently done a study of public radio listeners in the US, and one of the findings lept out at me as being a good indicator of the changing world of radio consumption.

They asked respondents how they listened to their “home” public radio station. 69% of the time, listeners used a radio. 29% of the time, they were using some form of digital device (a “computer stream” being twice as popular, incidentally, as a mobile app).

Now, these are public radio listeners. The average age of the respondents was over 59. These are long-term, traditional, radio listeners - albeit ones who are internet savvy enough to complete a questionnaire on their favourite radio station’s website. But even these people are spending nearly a third of their time listening to the radio on something other than an AM/FM receiver.

So, I’d warn against using a frequency, or “FM”, in your station name if you can avoid it; since more and more listeners aren’t using either of those things to listen.

Back in the Facebook group, other people were coming up with interesting names. “The Pit”. “The Local”. “Vault”. “Planet Mate”.

In a book The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, he discusses things he calls “affordances” - little clues to help us understand how something works. A really good example of an “affordance” is that metal strip on a office door: it’s put on the side of the door that you push, and it’s there precisely to let you know that you can push this door, and which side to push it.

“FM” or “105.9” is a little clue - an affordance - that this is a radio station. There’s a radio station in the UK called Jazz FM that hasn’t broadcast on FM since 2005; but people know, at least, that it’s a radio station (even if they’re confused as to why they can’t find it on their FM dial).

So, while I love the idea of calling a rock station “The Pit”: at least off-air, in its logo, it needs an affordance, too. I’d make the logo read “The Pit Radio”. Without it, after all, “The Pit” could be anything. The early days of digital radio in the UK were full of radio stations with random names - “The Groove” was one - that needed always clarifying with “we’re a radio station” afterwards, and that made no sense at all.

The world of smart speakers makes station names doubly important: since frequencies or wavebands are pointless on these devices.

It’s certainly the case that branding radio stations is more complicated now than it’s ever been. The word “Radio” might be the most important brand we have.

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Last week, a small fluffy bundle arrived in our house. We now have a small puppy - she’s lovely, thank you - and the effect to my radio listening has been interesting.

Next to the sofa was a jumble of wires - something to charge an iPad, some USB-C connectors to charge laptops and mobile phones, and a different USB connector to charge an ebook reader and, oh god, my doorbell, I have a wifi doorbell, it needs charging every so often, heaven help me, what has happened.

Anyway, you’re probably well ahead of me: but for some reason, wires and puppies seem to have a fatal attraction for one another, so after seeing at least one of those cables being chewed and ruined, the charging station is in the much less satisfactory location of the kitchen.

Like any normal household, we don’t have enough plug sockets. I could unplug the microwave, but that would be foolish, so instead, I unplugged the only other thing I could unplug: the radio. Yes, the radio is gone. And this receiver is the one I use most often (particularly now, given puppy’s little bladder means she gets us up at 5.45am).

In the radio’s place, in one of the six USB ports that I now have available, is a little Google Home mini speaker. It is this that I’m now having to use as a radio.

This has been interesting. Instead of the 60-odd stations available to me on DAB+ in Brisbane, I now have probably a hundred thousand to choose from; and many more podcasts, too.

My listening habits have changed - but probably not in the way you think.

I’m still listening to my local public radio station, ABC Radio Brisbane, given it’s got decent local news and I recognise the voices there. I ask “Hey, Google, listen to ABC Radio Brisbane” and it responds that it’s playing “Six hundred and twelve ABC Brisbane”, which ought to be “six-twelve ABC Brisbane”, except this branding was dropped 20 months ago. It works, though.

But I’m also listening much more to my local community music radio station, 4ZZZ. This station doesn’t broadcast on DAB+ here in Brisbane, and so I listened very rarely to it. Being on the level playing field of the internet, however, I’m remembering to ask for it rather more often. “Listen to 4-zee-zee-zee” is the strange incantation that I have to use: the station’s branding of “four-triple-zed” doesn’t work, of course.

I’m also listening to on-demand news (which, I might point out, can now include “Podnews podcasting news”, my daily news service, on both Google and Alexa speakers). But no, I’m not listening to any overseas radio. (Few people ever do, says the research).

There’s no doubt that smart speakers are being used more than ever to listen to the radio, and that’s good news for the industry. I’ve certainly discovered that it is a very viable replacement for a kitchen radio. But it’s been interesting how it’s changed my radio habits, too - rediscovering a radio station on an inconvenient waveband, and hearing a bit more on-demand content, too.

Checking how your station is presented on these speakers is probably a good idea. I’m not of the opinion that you need “a skill” necessarily; but you certainly need to ensure that the service works as you’d expect, and with the spoken brand you’re using on-air. Both a Google Home Mini and an Amazon Echo Dot are very cheap to buy, and you probably ought to.

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“Object-based media” sounds very techie. But as I stumbled across a BBC Research & Development web page last week highlighting where they've got with it, I am reminded how powerful the idea is (and how much it could play a part in the future of radio).

So, what is object-based media?

If you're recording a radio program, typically the only thing that you record is the output of the board - just a stereo recording of the stuff you've done. That's just fine; later, you'll take that recording and play it on the radio, and it'll sound okay.

But instead of just recording the output of the board, you could record a little more than that.

Imagine if you recorded the audio from every single channel on the board - and also record the position of every single fader on the board in real time.

With the right kit, that would enable you to recreate the entire program, if you wanted to. But because it's recorded every single thing that went into the program - every ‘object’ - it allows you to do much more.

You could make adjustments based on your audience's needs. You could remove music beds to make it easier to be heard; or you could take all the current music out and replace it with 80s songs (and still hear the presenter effortlessly talk to the vocals, including their fader pumping).

You could extract a good interview, without any music bed, for use in news bulletins or podcasts.

You could tweak and polish - correcting an over-eager fade there, or a correspondent who you cut slightly early here, or to fix the levels for an enthusiastic phone caller.

Or be rather more radical - you could much more easily telescope a three-hour program to fit a two-hour repeat.

Given the right additional information from a producer in the form of metadata, you could even make different lengths automatically. Perhaps automatically make a version that's as long as a listener wants it for their commute. Perhaps strip all the music out.

Object-based media is a brilliant idea: made by engineers who understand the radio production process. And it’s also just as applicable for TV as radio.

The BBC have explained what they’re doing over on this website - you should take a look.

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iHeartRadio has done something clever this week.

In the US, the iHeartRadio app contains a bunch of features - not just live radio streams, but podcasts, algorithmic radio stations and (if you pay for it) a music service much like Spotify.

A few weeks ago, it added a feature that brings it up to parity with Spotify - its own version of “Discover Weekly”, that feature that uncannily works out the kind of music you enjoy listening to and gives you more new stuff that you've otherwise not heard. This service is the main reason I stick with Spotify: so it's interesting seeing iHeartRadio adding its own.

Last week, it added something that even Spotify doesn’t have - intelligent segues. Up until now, every music service has essentially played a set of songs one after another, with great big gaps between them. Many bright young programmers were quite happy with this - because they hadn’t come from a world of radio, where you can do some lovely things with a proper segue. I’ve lost count of the amount of music services I’ve spoken to who have looked at me with a blank stare when I talked about what a segue was.

iHeartRadio appears to have fixed this, though - working with some outfit called Super Hi-Fi to produce proper, decent segues, whatever you’re playing on the service. And, yes, volume levelling too.

In the UK, the latest MIDAS survey from RAJAR, which came out very recently, shows that during the work day, about 17% of the UK listens to the radio, but about 12% are listening to on-demand music services (slide 17). That’s a considerable amount of listening to music services (in a country that doesn’t have Pandora or iHeartRadio, but does have Spotify and a number of other services).

iHeartRadio’s strategy appears to be to invest in a product that competes with radio, and might one day take it over. That must have been quite a hard sell. But as they continue growing that product, it seems more sensible by the month.

Up until now, radio’s main promotional tool has been to promote their music policies, to the exclusion of all else. But when you’ve online music services which are now capable of music discovery and even the subtle effect of a decent segue, now’s the time to focus, surely, on the other things that radio has to offer.

After all - why promote “the best music from the 80s, 90s and now” - when you could be promoting, instead, the thing that makes your product unique - the human beings.

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