Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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To The Dogs by Louise Welsh
Louise Welsh has a way of presenting a slightly seedier side of life, and To The Dogs is no different. Taking place in a world of higher education, our protagonist Jim Brennan is doing well. A high achiever in terms of bringing in money to the university, his career looks to be heading from strength…
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Polite Message to The New York Times: No, I Don’t Want To Upgrade
I’m a paid subscriber to digital version of The New York Times. My monthly bill is £8.50 a month which is not insignificant. And The New York Times has been doing very well with subscriptions of late. It recently reported having over 10 million subscribers! But like any subscription scheme, they’re very keen that I…
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Premier League Rights 2025/26 – 2028/29 UK TV Deal
This evening, the first games in Amazon’s deal for TV rights to two rounds of the Premier League get underway. But Amazon’s coverage ends after next season’s Festive period games, because from the 2025/26 season, they will no longer have live rights. Amazon, you will recall, have the rights to a midweek round of games…
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Most Popular Apple (& Spotify) Podcasts of 2023
Updated to include Spotify’s Top Podcasts. See below. It may only be 28th November, but Apple is trying to get ahead of other streaming music and audio services by publishing its year-end round ups early. And today they’ve announced the Most Popular Podcasts of 2023… at least amongst listeners who use the Apple Podcasts app.…
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RAJAR Audio MIDAS Research – Autumn 2023
RAJAR released its latest MIDAS research report at the end of last week, and it’s always worth examining. A reminder that MIDAS recontacts 2,410 previous RAJAR survey listeners to dive deeper into how they listen to digital audio. RAJAR publishes a summary report on its website, although subscribers get more detailed access to the data.…
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GCN+ Closing Down
There was some sad news on Wednesday, when Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced that GCN+ will be closing down in December this year. Unfortunately, it perhaps wasn’t surprising news set against a plurality of WBD sports brands and a massive need for WBD to cut costs throughout its business to service an enormous debt load.…
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The Rising Cost of Streaming
There seems to be barely a week that goes by right now when a streaming service doesn’t announce a price hike of some description. And I’ve just had an email from Netflix about their price increase. Here, as far as I can tell, are some of the UK price rises coming soon. Netflix says that…
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Trent Park – Autumn 2023
It has been a while since I made a drone video and published it here, so here’s one shot at the weekend in Trent Park, just at the northern tip of London. The changing colours have come late this year. The following day, I was racing through the same park as part of a team…
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L’Étape du Tour 2023
This entry is also available as an episode of Explore from The Cycling Podcast much of which I recorded at this year’s Étape. Listen to the episode below. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! In October each year, ASO, the organisers of the Tour de France and now the Tour de France Femmes, announce the…
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RAJAR Q3 2023
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
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YouTube Podcasts in the UK and the YouTube Advertising Conundrum
This is something of a follow-up to my recent piece about YouTube and podcasts. As ever, these are my personal views and don’t represent those of my employer. This week, YouTube officially launched podcasts in YouTube Music in the UK. Separately, some details of how advertising in podcasts on the YouTube platform might work. From…
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Premier League UK TV Rights – More Games, Fewer Packages
Regular readers will know that I’m a little obsessed with the TV rights to Premier League football, and I only last wrote about the upcoming rights round a month ago. According to the very well connected FT (£), the Premier League is likely to offer fewer rights packages this time around, but with more games…
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Edison Podcast Metrics UK – Addendum
Last week I wrote about Edison Research’s newly published Top 25 UK podcasts in Q2 2023. Go back and read that if you haven’t already. Melissa Kiesche is Senior Vice President at Edison Research and is responsible for the data, and James Cridland interviewed her on this week’s Podnews Weekly Review and it’s well worth…
Hadrian’s Wall
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