Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Plus ça Change, Plus c’est la Même Chose
Back in 2024, I noted that the area near where I work, was seeing the final bicycle shops in the area close down. We’d gone from a surfeit of bike shops to basically none at all. The final shop to shut was Evans, now owned by Mike Ashley (Sports Direct et al), which shut its…
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Whitewebbs XC 2025
My running club hosted its first ever race this weekend. I was one of a small crew on Saturday afternoon laying out the course. Then a much larger crew helped marshal the course, be timekeepers, car park attendants, hand out race numbers and much more. Overall, a massively successful event with more than 100 runners…
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Summer Reading
It has been ages since I wrote about what I’ve been reading, so here’s what I’ve read over the last couple of summer months. Apple in China by Patrick McGee This is a fascinating account of Apple’s history seen through the lens of its manufacturing, how over time that morphed into a growing dependence, and…
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“Half the people on the planet will be AI…”
Huh? This is a quote from the CEO of a new podcast company in a piece in the Hollywood Reporter. Jeanine Wright was formerly Chief Operating Officer at Wondery and is now heading up Inception Point AI which basically plans to flood the market with AI generated podcasts which might be produced for less than…
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Ice Road: Vengeance
I have watched this so that you don’t have to. Ice Road: Vengeance is one of those films that once upon a time would have been on the shelves of Blockbuster as you quizzically looked at the box, trying to remember whether you could recall the film’s cinema release. You couldn’t, because it didn’t get…
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Edison Research Top 25 Podcasts in the UK: Q2 2025
Last week, Edison Research published their latest list of the Top 25 podcasts in the UK for Q2 2025. This is the most visible chart of which podcasts are being listened to, since the charts from providers like Apple and Spotify aren’t true charts for the whole industry, and tend to be tweaked for newness…
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Sports Streaming Update 2025/26 Season
Long-time readers of this blog will know I’m slightly obsessed with TV coverage of sports, and the rights situation. As football begins its new seasons across most of Europe, I thought it would be interesting to see the state of play across a range of leagues and look at some of the themes. Premier League…
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RAJAR Q2 2025
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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What Is Adobe Doing About Audio?
I can’t help thinking that Adobe isn’t giving audio as much attention as it might. More specifically, the software giant is not giving its audio products as much attention as it should. Adobe makes a lot of software, and much of it is available to subscribers of their Creative Cloud bundle. I’ve been paying for…
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Archiving Podcasts
This week, it was announced that WTF with Marc Maron would be ending its run after 16 years. The show will end sometime in the autumn (aka ‘fall’) having produced more than 1,600 episodes over that time. Maron’s podcast was one of the big early titles, and it’s fair to say that although Maron was…
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Ofcom Podcast Survey and Audio Report 2025
Ofcom has just published it’s annual Podcast Survey for 2025, alongside its wider Audio Survey. Regular readers of this blog will know that Ofcom has been publishing this data for several years now, and I’ve always been keen to dig into the data here. This year, the release has coincided with The Podcast Show where…
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The Infinite Dial UK 2025 – Teaser
There is a wealth of podcast data coming out for the UK at the moment. During this week’s Podcast Show, Edison Research’s Senior Director of Research, Gabriel Soto, and AdsWizz’s Regional Director, UK & Ireland, Ollie Chadwick presented some early findings from The Infinite Dial UK 2025 survey. This is a report that Edison runs…
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Edison Research Top 25 Podcasts in the UK: Q1 2025
On the eve of The Podcast Show in London (Note: I’ll be speaking! Come see me at 14:10 on Wednesday on the Talking Podcasts 1 Stage), Edison Research has just published its new Top 25 list for UK podcasts. A reminder that this data is based on a survey of at least 2,000 weekly podcast…
Hadrian’s Wall
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