Category: Radio
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Chris Evans – Ad Free?
Christmas Eve sees Chris Evans present his last Radio 2 breakfast show. Then he takes a few weeks off, before he reappears in brand new studios over in The News Building, just under The Shard by London Bridge station. There he’ll begin his new Virgin Radio breakfast show from the 21st January 2019. When I…
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Setting Radio Alarms with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
First a note of caution. This piece was published in November 2018, and it’s entirely possible – indeed probable – that things will have changed if you’re reading this at any point after that date. It’s also worth noting that I’m in the UK, and these solutions may not work in your region. Also, I’m…
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Greatest Hits Radio
Interesting news from Bauer Media this morning. They’re launching Greatest Hits Radio nationally from January 7th, to sit alongside Hits Radio. Together they will form the Hits Radio Network. It sounds like this new mostly networked service is being positioned as a slightly older version of Absolute Radio Network. It will target 40-59 “Reclaimers,” playing…
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Trends in Podcasting: News Podcasts
In January last year, The New York Times launched a new podcast called The Daily. Spinning off to an extent from what the paper had been doing during the 2016 Presidential election, The Daily quickly developed a following. With a strong voice – both authorial and audible – in Michael Barbaro, it grew quickly. For…
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Localness
Ofcom has published an update today on what it considers localness in commercial radio. The tl;dr is that it’s not very local any more. Your mileage may vary on whether this is a good thing or not. But for now, stations that provide local news regularly throughout the day, must only broadcast three hours between 6am and…
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RAJAR Q3 2018
As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 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…
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Eddie Mair on LBC
So now we know. Eddie Mair will be taking over drivetime from Iain Dale on LBC, broadcasting 4-6pm Monday to Friday. He settles into his new desk next Monday, while previous incumbent, Iain Dale, shuffles into the evening 7-10pm slot. Interestingly, this also means that Mair has the “pleasure” of handing over to Nigel Farage…
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Bauer Buys Jazz FM
Bauer today announced it was buying Jazz FM, which is good news for the continued existence of a musically important station. I imagine that they’ll be squeezing into Golden Square away from their current Margaret Street studios which will save some money. But I suspect that the key thing in this deal is that Bauer’s…
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Overly Mannered Podcast Presentation
I wrote this as a podcast thread last week, but thought it was worth re-visiting a little more here. If there is one thing I hate in many podcasts (or radio programmes), it’s a presentation style that I would describe as overly mannered. What I’m talking about is a podcast that’s likely to be scripted,…
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RAJAR Q2 2018
As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 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…
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Radio is Fastest
If you wanted to know what was happening in Moscow as fast as possible last night, your best bet was the radio. I’ve mentioned before that when a big fixture goes to penalties, I always listen on the radio, because I get the news first. More regularly, if there’s a match that’s both being covered…
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Google Podcasts
Without an enormous amount of fanfare, Google yesterday launched Google Podcasts for Android yesterday, with the possibility of being game changing. I’ve long argued that for the Android/iOS podcasting gap to be closed, Google needed to get involved and create a generic app. Apple Podcasts is a pre-installed app on every iPhone sold, and with…