Radio in car: shock new figures

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! I write a decent newsletter called Radioland. Below is the top story; otherwise, it's all at https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/time-spent-listening-australian-commercial-radio/

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! My newsletter in full is over here: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/4bh-brisbane-number-one/ Here's the top story!

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! My full newsletter is here: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/to-london-and-back/ These are the first few stories. To London, and then on to Germany. As a former trustee of the Radio Academy - now the Audio Academy - I never actually got to speak at the Radio Festival; so it was great to speak at the Audio Festival, in a full room. Always lovely to see so many friendly faces: though plenty of new, younger, faces in the crowd. They tell you that none of the kids are interested in radio these days; but the Audio Festival was clear that there are plenty of younger people. Good. And, also, good to see the Community Media Association later that weekend, with many more people who were enthusiastic and excited about the state of the medium. It’s been very clear, from my LinkedIn feed, that Canadian radio is running out of patience with the CRTC, who promised a year ago to review parts of its regulation of the industry - regulation widely suspected to be holding the industry back - only to do absolutely nothing. I write a full piece, what’s the CRTC even doing?, elsewhere on my blog. The Canadian industry is in a mess; and the CRTC is partially responsible. The Playdate, a little black and white games console, now has a radio player in it. The Peedee ICF-390 app, just $3, just lets you scan through the dial using the crank on the side of the device: no searching, just serendipitous discovery of radio stations. It’s rather fine. Tom Webster writes Smart TV Killed the Smart Speaker Star, which is clearly a lazy Buggles headline - though he apologises for it - and to me - in the first paragraph. “As a conduit for podcasting, the smart speaker is objectively a failure.” Apple Music opened a fancy new music recording space in London. Meanwhile, I was able to have a look round Bauer Media’s new “Playground” - which has the capability to become a recording space in the basement of The Lantern, its home in London. Someone I worked with in Germany this week was excited after visiting a public radio station in the US with its own performance space (“they get people in! hundreds of people!”). It’s interesting to see more broadcasters highlight what they’re good at - getting people together, a community of common interest. Of course, podcasting is doing similar too. I realised something about advertising these days - the art of copywriting has disappeared from magazine ads, out of home, posters, and other parts of advertising. In a blog post I write a little about this - dimly realising that if the skills required for great copywriting are disappearing, what happens to those media that still require great copy: including radio and podcasting?

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! I’ll be on RRI in Indonesia a little later this week: the station was founded on 11 September 1945, so it’s celebrating its 81st anniversary this week. The broadcaster has four networks and 90 local stations. Radio is 101 years old in Indonesia: the first station in the country broadcast in Dutch,. I’ve been in Indonesia for the past week at Radiodays Asia. You can find a bunch of interviews in the RadioToday podcast - and more to come in RD. The Radiodays Europe Podcast too. I do enjoy the event: there’s plenty going on in Asia that doesn’t get the coverage it deserves. Next year, the event will be in Taipei, Taiwan - a place I’ve never been: should be fascinating. While in Indonesia, I took my ludicrously geeky radio with me, and tuned around the dial one afternoon. I discovered Padel Corner 89.6FM - a radio station that seemingly is run by a sports club in the city, with music and an advert for the sports club itself (I can tell you it has six padel courts, a sauna and it does food). I wonder how those licences work - an interesting idea, if you can keep the costs low enough, to run your own service on the FM dial! In the UK, there’s real concern that turning off television broadcasts could put radio services at risk. Radiocentre has released some research suggesting that transmission costs for radio broadcasters could increase by more than 50%. They’ve not shared the full research, and I’m surprised that it’s only a 50% increase - but even so, it’s a real concern, especially if that happens in 2034, one of the dates being considered. I wonder if this has been costed in other countries? The UK can’t be alone in looking to turn off free-to-air television; but perhaps the shared infrastructure that the UK uses makes it a little different. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been driving my daughter home from school listening to the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show. My goodness, the production on that radio station is phenomenal: I can only assume that someone is pre-producing all the segues ahead-of-time, because the quality of them all is really impressive. Worth a critical listen. RCS and Triton Digital have produced programmatic advertising for over-the-air radio, which they’ve demonstrated this week at IBC. A very clever idea to connect a playout system to this kind of tool: I gather that broadcasters approve audio creative before it gets broadcast (probably for the best), and that Triton are also working on getting it integrated with other playout systems. (Although, in deference to my sponsor, what other playout systems are there? Are there any?) At some point in the last month or so, the BBC international app has finally got a proper video player for the live stream of BBC News, so it’s now (finally) possible to watch the channel in full-screen, for example. Not sure what took them so long, but it’s very welcome.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! “Radio is still where people go to discover music”, we keep hearing. New data from Edison Research shows that, actually, streaming music services now reach more Americans than AM/FM radio does. I’m of the opinion that music really isn’t the reason people tune into the radio any more. It’s not a very fashionable opinion. But this data does show that if radio broadcasters are relying on music to be their “unique selling proposition”, then they’re on borrowed time. As you’ll hear in my opening keynote at Radiodays Asia, radio’s secret weapon is our people. In Australia, you’re probably aware that Kyle Sandilands has started his subscription-based radio service. He has yet to do a full week - he cancelled the first Friday show for technical reasons: the studio just failed to work; and Friday just gone, he was off sick. But - can it work as a business? I took a long look at the business behind his new app, working out what his costs might be; and it seems clear to me that there is not a chance that he can be operating at a profit. Mind you, we’ll never know - the numbers will be confidential to everyone. Well, nearly everyone: his former employer, ARN, gets a 19.9% share of revenue, and will therefore have the numbers. Let’s hope they don’t leak out.It appears that the show is also available as a private podcast, if you’re a subscriber and you know who to ask. He’s using the Canadian Transistor as a podcast host.