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Radioland, with James Cridland - radio futurologist

Radioland, with James Cridland - radio futurologist

Hosted by James Cridland

Episodes

251

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN

About the show

A regular audio column with the most interesting news about radio's future. James is a radio futurologist - a writer, speaker and consultant concentrating on the effect that new platforms and technology are having on the radio business across the world. He has a website at https://james.cridland.net where you can subscribe to Radioland, his newsletter.

Listen to episodes

60 recent
August 10, 20266 min

Kyle's first online show 'a disaster'

Kyle Sandilands went on-air this morning with his paid-for show. It looked to be a bit of a technical mess; his most chummy media partner called it chaotic, and detailed some of the content we all missed out on. Radioinfo says the issue was that you needed to watch the video to be able to listen; “Not an easy listen this morning, and not just because of the teething problems”. Nine suggests it was a disaster - “never-ending audio issues that ended up sounding like a drive-thru speaker in a thunderstorm.” It seems that the content of the show was as much of a disaster as the technicals surrounding it; the tech can be fixed, but can the lurid content? (The whole show is on-demand, seemingly - it’ll cost you AUD $99 for a year). Nice to see friend-of-this-newsletter Waaaade Kingsley on Channel Nine talking about it. To come at some point this week, a deep-dive into Kyle’s show and what is needed for it to work financially.

July 29, 20268 min

The MFWs, a new BBC station, and more from Canada

Hell has no fury like an MFW - Duncan Campbell, former content director of ARN, writes about the pressure group Mad Fudging Witches. “Make no mistake about it, Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands and Karl Stefanovic all lost their jobs because of MFW”, he claims. Not sure about Karl - probably uncritically interviewing Tommy Robinson did that for him - but, Campbell suggests we should be concerned that MFW have this kind of influence. MFW targets the advertisers who fund the shows, contacting them directly and making them aware of the content they’re funding. Campbell frames it as a free speech issue. (He’ll be at Radiodays Asia; I’ve put this through a link tracker since the original link has a naughty word in).Spintrack is a “complete radio station on a Mac mini”, it claims. It’s probably understandable that there aren’t that many playout systems for the Mac, but it looks interesting to see - it includes voicetracking and live assist, along with hour templates and music scheduling.Over in Podnews this week, SONARR has been advertising its awards. They’re a new audio awards for Australia, including radio, podcasts, audiobooks and voiceovers. You have until this Friday evening to enter, and it can be as low as $75 to enter. You’re guaranteed not to win if you don’t enter…Some quite impressive radio analysis for the Sydney market. ARN’s Gold managed 15 minutes an hour of ads. “If you’re hearing an ad on Smooth, there’s a 50/50 chance WSFM is also in an ad at that exact moment”. (Yes, this person - who is clearly someone who cares about radio - calls it WSFM, despite it having rebranded over a year ago). The comments are, as ever, worth reading.

July 19, 202610 min

Radio listening data from Europe and the US

The EBU released its Radio Trends Report 2026. Weekly reach across Europe is 81.3%, down 2.7% from five years ago. As above - time spent listening is 2h 10m per day - down 15 minutes on 5 years ago (and down 50 minutes from 20 years ago).Nielsen released its Podcast Listen & Watch Report, though there’s information in there for radio as well. Particularly, it quotes Edison Research’s Share of Ear for Q1, which sys that 20% of time spent with ad-supported audio is podcasting: radio is more than three-times larger.In Australia, Kyle Sandilands will start his paid-for live online show on August 10. It will cost AUD $99 for the year (£51, US$69) - listeners won’t be able to buy monthly. Game Changers Radio seems to think it will be easy to get 10,000 listeners paying that. Sandilands has said he needs 50,000 to “cover costs”. Prior to his sacking, his show had 1.1 million listeners, 96,000 of those online; he had 291,000 listeners to the podcast too. I’m fascinated to watch this.

July 12, 20265 min

AI gets a number 1 song

Links and much more to read at https://radioland.email

July 6, 20269 min

Linear audio vs ondemand audio

Data from Edison Research makes me question what radio is marketing for.

June 27, 20269 min

BBC Radio 4 long-wave closes down

More at https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/radio-4-longwave-closes/

June 20, 202612 min

What Kyle does next; and doing shows away from your studio

More at https://radioland.email

June 15, 20268 min

No more Kyle and Jackie O: the effect on radio overall

All the links are here: https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/no-kyle-jackie-no-switchoff/

June 4, 20265 min

ARN's thoughts about the ACMA licence conditions

More over at https://radioland.email

May 29, 20268 min

Should the ABC merge with the SBS?

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2026/abc-sbs/ is where to go to find links for all these stories

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