The figures below, however, also include radio station brands: we're treating "Heart" or "Kiss" as one station here, rather than each individual local radio service. This gives a clearer view of the popularity of station brands. These figures are based on RAJAR audience research ending June 2019.

The quick answer? The biggest radio station in the UK is BBC Radio 2. But it's a little more complicated than that.

The top 10 radio stations with the most listeners

Normally, when people ask for the most popular radio station, they mean the one with the most amount of listeners. This will always give national or London stations as a result, and ignore smaller, local radio stations - even though, in many areas, the most popular station is a local one.

1. BBC Radio 2 (14.5m listeners every week)
2. BBC Radio 4 (10.6m)
3. BBC Radio 1 (9.6m)
4. Heart (8.5m)
5. Capital (7.2m)
6. Classic FM (5.6m)
7. BBC Radio 5 live (5.2m)
8. Smooth (5.1m)
9. KISS (4.2m)
10. Magic (3.3m)

Notes:

• Hits Radio Brand, a group of local radio stations from Bauer which shares some programming and branding elements, reaches 6.5m listeners, which would place it at #6 on this chart.

The top 10 radio owners with the most listeners

It's also important to look at radio owners, since they have the market in commercial terms. Click through to discover the stations they own.

1. BBC national radio (31.5m listeners every week)
2. Global Radio (24.0m)
3. Bauer Media (18m)
4. BBC local/regional radio (7.6m)
5. Wireless Group (5.1m)
6. Communicorp UK (3.4m)
7. BBC World Service (1.5m)
8. UKRD (0.7m)
9. Celador Radio (0.6m)
10. Lincs FM Group (0.5m)

• Bauer Media now own the bottom three of this list - UKRD, Celador and Lincs FM - though currently these operate as separate businesses.

The top 10 radio stations with the highest amount of listeners in their area

If you want to look at popularity based on how many people listen in their area (and thus, take on board local radio stations as well as national), then the 'reach percent' is the best figure to examine. This shows you people who've listened for at least five minutes a week, and takes no account of whether they listen any longer than that. Typically, this shows local radio stations in remote areas.

1. Island FM (58% of people in their area tune in every week)
2. Channel 103 FM (55%)
3. Moray Firth Radio (46%)
4. Radio Borders (43%)
5. Yorkshire Coast Radio (42%)
6. 3FM (38%)
7. Wessex FM (38%)
8. Northsound 1 (38%)
9. IOW Radio (35%)
10. Tay FM (35%)

The top 10 radio stations with the highest listening share in their area

The share of listening in a station's broadcast area is normally the best way of monitoring how popular a radio station is. This makes it easier to work out how popular the station's entire broadcasting output is, in comparison to others in its area.

1. Island FM (40.3% of all radio listening in their area is to this station)
2. Channel 103 (35.4%)
3. Radio Borders (30.9%)
4. West Sound (25.5%)
5. Moray Firth Radio (24.4%)
6. Yorkshire Coast Radio (21.6%)
7. Lincs FM 102.2 (19.4%)
8. BBC Radio Ulster (19%)
9. Manx Radio (18.3%)

Actually, the biggest radio station in the UK is really...

If you purely count radio stations by the total amount of listeners they have — irrespective of whether they choose to listen — then the in-store station for ASDA supermarkets, ASDA FM, is the most listened-to radio station in the UK. It reaches 18,000,000 shoppers, and a further 167,500 staff, each week.

Sky TV can be expensive.

As at February 2017, a full subscription to Sky, including HD, costs £80 a month - that's £960 a year. Even a cheap subscription to Sky+, excluding the movies and the sport, costs £22 a month - that's £264 a year. And all those costs are on top of the TV Licence fee, a charge of £145.50 which pays for the BBC domestic TV services, radio, and some S4C programmes.

After you've been with Sky for many years, you can miss the advances on other platforms. And the benefits of Sky+ or Sky Q - one touch recording that records every single episode - are often cited as a good reason to keep Sky and the accompanying fees.

In fact, you can get rid of Sky and still keep a large choice of channels - as well as all the benefits from a hard-disc recorder like Sky+. Here's what to look for.

Have you got anything else from Sky?

By offering a bundle including broadband internet and cheaper phone calls, Sky can make it harder for you to move away from Sky. If you went the whole hog and got broadband and telephone calls, you'll need to think about what you do.

But don't worry. If you decide to switch your telephone away from Sky, you can keep your current phone number. Switching broadband should be relatively painless, too.

What channels do you watch?

Pop into the bit of the Sky EPG that has your recorded programmes, and take a look at your most-watched channels. If they're Sky brands, particularly Sky Movies or Sky Sports, you're better off staying put with Sky. These are available through Virgin Media, BT or talktalk, but you'd be swapping one large monthly fee for another.

If HD is important to you, Sky has the vast majority of HD channels available in the UK. Without a monthly fee, Freeview has 15, and Freesat only 13. However, both Freeview and Freesat offer the 'big' channels (like the BBC and Channel 4) in HD quality.

Make your choice of platform

To drop the monthly fee, you've got a number of different choices.

You'll get FreeSat From Sky if you cancel your Sky subscription completely, and pay a one-off £25 for a FreeSat From Sky viewing card. You get all of the free-to-view channels available on satellite - here's a list. But your Sky+ box will stop recording - the Sky+ service is actually a £10 monthly cost, incorporated into most Sky bundles. If you think £120 a year is a good deal for this functionality, then that's fine. We'd probably caution against it. In any case, your EPG will be full of channels that you can no longer watch.

Freesat is the free satellite service, operated by the BBC and ITV. Freesat uses your existing satellite dish, so you can unplug your Sky box and plug a new Freesat one in. It, too, picks up the free-to-view channels available on satellite - here's a list. There are no subscription costs at all with Freesat, so once you've bought the box, you're sorted. A typical Freesat box will offer both HD and SD channels, and an integral hard-disc recorder. Most boxes also include access to services like the BBC iPlayer for catch-up TV. We'd recommend looking a Freesat+ box for the best experience, which lets you pause and record live TV. A box costs as little as £90. Browse through Amazon's Freesat boxes. ("Free Time", which you may see here, is an old name for Freesat+).

Freeview is television through your aerial, rather than through your satellite dish. This picks up a different, and smaller, choice of channels - here's a list. So: why on earth would you want it? First, you still get many of the decent channels: Dave, in particular, is paid-for on satellite but free on Freeview. You can also get HD for all the BBC channels (except BBC Parliament), ITV, Channel 4, 4seven, and Al Jazeera. It works through your aerial, so it doesn't matter if your Sky dish looks ugly or has stopped working. Amazon has a good list of Freeview boxes.

YouView is like Freeview, but a little more. A YouView box connects to the internet as well as your aerial, and gets you catchup services from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Dave. There are no subscriptions for the main service: go and buy the box and you're away. You can get the box free with BT or talktalk (and a bunch more channels), but then you're back into paying for your TV using a monthly fee again. You can also pay-as-you-go for movies and other things by using apps on the box, and extra channels are also available via the internet. Amazon.co.uk lists a number of Youview boxes on its website.

A new television is not cheap; but the latest televisions do contain catch-up apps. Most include BBC iPlayer, the ITV player, 4OD and the Channel 5 player. In our experience, the user experience is unpleasant, and for the price, you're better going to YouView. The same goes for a new, connected, Bluray player. Genuinely, unless you really need a new TV, your current one is probably just fine. But if you insist, here's a good starting place.

A Google Chromecast might also be worth looking at. At around £30, it plugs into your television, and you control it using a phone, tablet or laptop. It works with a variety of different apps including the BBC iPlayer, BT Sport and YouTube, as well as Netflix and Google Play's movie and TV service. It's a little fiddly to use, but for the price it's hard to beat. Amazon don't sell them because they have some kind of fight with Google; so instead you'll find them in PC World and similar stores.

A NOW TV box is slightly cheaper. Controlled via a little remote control, you also get access to the catchup services from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. We find it a little more fiddly than using a phone or a tablet, but for £25 you can't go wrong. It's powered by Sky, and it does also offer you day-passes for Sky Sports channels, so if you want to keep Sky Sports for occasional use, this might be a good plan.

You can also buy a Roku stick or box. These offer the same as a NOW TV box - hardly surprising, because NOW TV boxes are made by Roku - but are not subsidised by Sky and therefore have rather more apps and channels available, like YouTube and other video services. Most are rubbish, but some are OK and useful, esoteric, additions.

Amazon will also try to flog you their Amazon Fire Stick or their Fire TV. It's a decent enough device, and includes catchup from BBC iPlayer, Netflix, ITV, Channel 4 and more. You'll only get the most out of it if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, though: but that might be a good alternative.

And finally, the Apple TV (which, again, Amazon don't stock) may offer something for you if you're invested in the Apple platform. As ever with Apple, it's quite locked-down but you may find new services and channels that you'd like to use.

Extending your choice

It's likely you'll get a lot of options from any of the devices above - from additional TV programmes, catch-up and movies, and new channels.

If you have a Roku box, you might want to search for Roku private channels - these are unpublicised (and sometimes slightly dubious) apps for your Roku. We like XTV which links to live TV channels from around the world, though others are available (some which are charged-for). We'd recommend you avoided the paid-for ones, but the free private channels can work quite well. (Some are run by fans and are donation-driven: we've donated to some of our favourite developers).

The adventurous might want to use services called "smart DNS", which do some clever things with your internet connection to make you appear to be in the US or elsewhere. That enables you to watch geo-locked services that you otherwise can't get. We've had success with Getflix which allows you, among other things, to access Netflix's US catalogue as well as TV channels from across the world. It means a bit of technical fiddling with your router, as well as (for set-top boxes) trying to get apps you shouldn't be able to get.

And if you're even more adventurous, look for Kodi - a free and complex system for media management which you can run on your PC, tablet, or even your X-Box. It comes with a ton of plugins, some of which allow you to access many different programmes and channels. This isn't your grandma's television option, we'll be honest - it's clunky and confusing; but you may find it enables you to access the kind of content you're looking for.

In conclusion

However you do it, junking the Sky box might end up being a good money saver. You'll easily save a couple of hundred pounds a year, maybe much more - and speaking from experience, it's unlikely you'll miss most of the choice of Sky. Good luck - and happy choosing.

He will join Seven West Media as Chief Digital Officer in early 2015.

Seven West Media operates "7", a free-to-air terrestrial television channel across Australia; Australia's second largest magazine group; Yahoo!7, an online portal; and some local media titles in Western Australia, including nine radio stations. It also owns a third of Sky News Australia.

Australian media site Mumbrella reports that he will be leading the company's drive to HBBTV, the connected TV platform that's roughly similar to Freeview Connect here in the UK.

Clive's known in the UK for being the COO of TIML Radio, the company that operated Absolute Radio. He's the co-owner of JACKfm Oxfordshire and sister station Jack2, was the Group Head of Programmes for Capital Radio plc, and worked for eleven years at Chiltern Radio.

Correction - while the SWM website claims the company owns nine radio licences, in a tweet, Clive clarifies they own 21 radio stations. The licences held are all local licences in Western Australia.

Press Release

Seven West Media appoints Chief Digital Officer

9 October 2014 -- Seven West Media Limited today announced the appointment of Clive Dickens as Chief Digital Officer, as the company’s expands on its leadership and further builds the development and integration of its businesses into new forms of content delivery.

Mr Dickens joins Seven from Southern Cross Austereo where he is currently Director of Digital and Innovation, responsible for all strategic and operational aspects of that company’s digital content and digital revenues.

He is also a non-executive director at Digital Radio Broadcasting and an HbbTV Steering Committee member at Freeview Australia.

Mr Dickens joins Seven West Media in early 2015. He will report to the Chief Executive Officer of Seven West Media, Tim Worner.

Commenting, Tim Worner, CEO of Seven West Media, said: “Clive is well-known to the market as a champion of new and emerging digital platforms, and as an identifier of new opportunities for growth. He joins us at an exciting time. Seven West Media has some of the most successful brands and franchises in the country. We are focused on the delivery of our market-leading content anywhere, anytime to the biggest audiences possible. Our drive into new forms of delivery represents an important cornerstone in our strategy and Clive will lead that push with passion.”

Mr Dickens brings extensive digital and broadcasting experience across digital and broadcasting across three decades in Australia, North America, the United Kingdom and Europe to Seven West Media. Prior to joining Southern Cross Austereo, Mr Dickens was a co-founder and non-executive director of Radioplayer, a joint venture between the BBC and UK commercial broadcasters, and Co-Founder and COO at Absolute Radio.

He has also been an adviser to the founders of Shazam and numerous other digital start-ups.

Mr Dickens said: “I am thrilled to be joining Seven West Media and really look forward to working with some of the world’s most compelling brands and channels. Seven creates more premium content than any other Australian media company and I can’t wait to further extend its consumption via more connected devices to even larger audiences.”

This only takes a minute or so. Most radio sets will give you a little display that shows the radio tuning around and discovering new stations. You may even get a number appearing of the total stations your radio set can pick up.

It's always worth doing this every so often: you might be missing out on new radio stations that have started broadcasting since you got your radio.

Before you begin

• Make sure put the antenna right up. DAB usually works best with the antenna vertical.
• If you can, move your radio to your windowsill. Sometimes, digital signals don't reach indoors as well as they could.

Do the auto-tune

• If your digital radio has an auto-tune or auto-scan button, press it.
• If there's no obvious auto-tune or auto-scan button, press the 'menu' button and go through the options until you find something marked 'auto-tune' or 'auto-scan', and select that.

Try doing a full scan

With some radio receivers, an 'auto-tune' isn't enough: it'll not check for any new transmitters. That's easily fixed by finding a 'full scan' option.

• If your digital radio has an auto-tune or auto-scan button, hold it down until a full scan begins.
• If you have a "full scan" option in your menu, choose that one.

Or, try a factory reset

Your radio will also probably have a factory reset option. Especially if you move house, you probably want this one: it'll get rid of all the old settings in the radio, including old radio stations that no longer broadcast. This will remove any presets, though.

• Press and hold the 'select' or 'info' button on your radio until your radio asks you for a System Reset or a Factory Reset
• or, press and hold the menu button for three seconds, then confirm the reset by pressing the tune button within three seconds
• Or hunt for a factory reset option in your menu.

Having problems? We can help. Leave us a comment below, and we'll tell you how to retune or reset your radio.

A Q&A portion started, and when the subject of podcasting came up, they discussed how much of a fan they were of podcasting: and that they’d started listening to them when Serial came out.

I checked. Serial came out in 2014. Podcasts started more than ten years earlier.

Listen: I get it. It’s hard to balance the time investment here. That’s why you have digital people in your team. But, given that typically CEOs are outside the age range of the listeners their company is trying to attract, it’s becoming more important that you, too, are confident and savvy with some of this new technology.

The more you know this stuff, the less that digital people can throw around their accusation that radio people just don’t “get” the internet. Being ten years late to the party doesn’t help.

So, CEOs of radio companies - and GMs, and PDs - here are ten investments of time (and, yes, investments of money, too) that you might wish to make:

1. Get your IT department to fix you up with the latest iPhone or Nexus-branded Android phone. Pay for some one-on-one training on it, so you’re confident about using it, and replace your existing phone. (And pay for one-on-one training for the below, too, if you’re keen to do things right). I’d also recommend buying this stuff for your partner and other close relatives to watch how they use them, too.
2. Install and use Twitter. Follow Twitter accounts from your own company, competitors, your favourite journalists, and others. Look through the account of @markscott - the former Managing Director of the Australian ABC - for a great way to use it: sharing great content from his own organisation, publicly congratulating his teams, and adding a little personal thought, too. This is how you can reach and inspire employees throughout your company as well as learn how Twitter is used as an information source for all.
3. Install and use Facebook. This is the major news source for a large chunk of your audience, and an important place to meet your fans. Learn how private/public works, and watch how others use Facebook to market themselves (paid or organic).
4. Install some of your company’s apps. See if you use those apps on a daily or weekly basis: and if not, ask yourself why.
5. Listen to some podcasts - from your own company and from other organisations. Don’t stick to traditional broadcasters: trawl through some of the recommendations and top charts, and choose some at random. Listen for the commercial opportunities, too: and see how differently they’re being monetised to radio.
6. Use your company websites on this phone - that’s how most people are consuming your websites these days. If it’s hard to read, get that fixed.
7. Visit your car dealership. Ask them to ‘pair’ your phone with your car’s audio system. And, while you’re there, ask them about the dashboards of their newest models: can you get Pandora, or Spotify on them? Ask how the audio works, and see a demonstration.
8. If you run news radio, install NPR One. Use it on your daily commute for a few days. As the system learns from what you like and don’t like, ask yourself whether this is a better listen than your own service; or what your company can learn from it.
9. If you run music radio, install Spotify or Pandora, keeping it on the free, ad-supported, setting. Use it on your daily commute, or round the house. Ask yourself whether your promise of “the best mix of the 80s, 90s and now” is still relevant. And ask yourself whether the advertising you hear is revenue you might have got.
10. Er, and hire a radio futurologist that can help you with trend-spotting. Keep them on a monthly retainer so you’ve always got an independent voice to help you, or get them to do an audit on what your company is doing. I know a very good one. Cough.

Multi-platform radio - making the most of content across all technologies - is the future of radio. It’s never been more important to get multi-platform CEOs who understand this stuff.

Bill has been on Classic FM since March, but is a recognised name for many in the UK after being a part of BBC Breakfast television for many years.

The radio industry is keen to claim that presenters are a 'trusted guide' to music, and the press release accompanying this release is keen to stress the 'personal curation' from Bill Turnbull himself in producing this three CD compilation.

As a way of navigating through a sometimes unfamiliar world of classical music, this looks like an ideal christmas gift for someone. You can buy it at amazon.co.uk, and at all good record stores, assuming you know of any.

Press Release

Sony Classical invites you to relax with Bill Turnbull
Released November 18th, 2016

Sony Classical is delighted to announce that it has teamed up with broadcasting legend Bill Turnbull, to present a brand-new album: ‘Bill Turnbull’s Relaxing Classics’ – released November 18th on Sony Classical. This eagerly-anticipated 3CD set showcases some of the world’s most beautiful and relaxing classical music, all personally curated by Bill Turnbull himself.

It includes such gems from Bill Turnbull’s own collection as Barber’s Adagio for Strings; Faure’s Pavane, Liszt’s Liebestraum, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto; Pachelbel’s Canon and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, alongside a host of other perennial favourites. This handsome set which features an orchestral, an instrumental and a vocal side features many acclaimed artists of the day, including Joshua Bell, Amy Dickson, Sol Gabetta, Lang Lang and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as glorious music by such leading heritage artists as Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein and Eugene Ormandy.

Bill Turnbull is one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters. He began his career as a reporter for Radio Clyde in Glasgow and went on to work in London and New York before graduating to television in 1988. As a BBC correspondent, Bill Turnbull reported from more than 30 countries, including a four year stint in Washington. On his return, he became a presenter on News 24, (now the BBC News Channel) and for fifteen years was an anchor on the popular BBC Breakfast show, twice being voted Best Newscaster.

Away from the BBC Breakfast sofa, in 2005 Bill Turnbull was a contestant on the third series of Strictly Come Dancing. Other challenges have included a sleep deprivation experiment for the One Show and winning £150,000 for charity on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. He has survived the spotlight of the famous black leather chair on Celebrity Mastermind and took part in the documentary remake of Around the World in 80 Days. Since recently leaving BBC Breakfast, Bill Turnbull has been host of the BBC1 quiz show Think Tank, currently in its second series. He’s appeared on a raft of other programmes, including A Question of Sport, Room 101, University Challenge, the Sarah Millican Television Programme and Would I Lie to You. He has also been a regular presenter on Songs of Praise and more recently co-presented the One Show with Alex Jones on BBC One. As well as his television work, Bill Turnbull also presents a three-hour music programme on Classic FM every Saturday and Sunday morning.

The app uses technology that monitors what songs radio stations are playing in real time. A search for a popular artist gives a list of stations who have just started playing the song - mostly within 6 seconds, hence the name.

I tested it out: artists like Taylor Swift do well, with lots of plays as you'd expect.

I searched for The Eels, and found "Rad Rock Radio" playing Susan's House. As promised, it was close to the start of the track, and sounded good. The app displayed the wrong album artwork - Wonderful Glorious instead of Beautiful Freak, but album artwork is, in general, a mess anyway, so I don't hold this app responsible.

Of course, since I'd tuned into a radio station to hear the song, the station continues going into another bunch of songs: and it's likely that these songs will be related. In this case, the plethora of automated, non-stop music stations online is a benefit, since it allows the app to offer a Pandora-like music service.

It also enables listeners to discover new stations they weren't aware of. A user can favourite a station for later use, though currently can't discover any more information about the station. Rad Rock Radio is an online-only station from Seattle, it turns out; but I needed to jump out of the app to discover that.

If you suffer from "search blindness", the app also offers a choice of different genres, too. Unlike some free music services, it offers unlimited skips, naturally.

Weirdly, because metadata is pushed quicker than the audio in some cases, you can sometimes catch a song before it even begins, too.

As a discovery mechanism for radio stations, this is pretty good. Being able to favourite the stations gives potential of repeat listeners; and it's likely to surface a bunch of new radio stations. If radio stations are well-branded they should benefit from appearing in this app.

Unlike some services, this appears a win-win for music radio stations. They'll certainly get in front of a whole new set of audiences; and the playing-field for SEO is entirely flat, being driven purely by now-playing information.

The app could do with a little design love, and appears not to always quit correctly on Android - leaving a now-playing notification going even when the app is apparently exited - but it's early days, and it'll be interesting to see how this app continues to develop.

Press release

6 Seconds Turns The World of Radio Into A Personal Jukebox

A new free mobile music experience from digital music pioneer Michael Robertson

6 Seconds is a new music experience which turns the entire world of radio into a personal jukebox. The free experience gives music fans greater control and flexibility to hear more of the music they want on their smartphone than ever before. It’s available immediately on Android and iOS at http://www.UnlimitedSkips.com.

Those familiar with Pandora will recognize a familiar artist or genre based radio experience with the added benefit of unlimited skips. Selecting a genre plays the most popular songs from that style as determined by what stations DJs are playing. Skipping songs is performed by a quick swipe anywhere on the screen. Unlimited skips ensures listeners never get stuck on a song they don’t like and can always find a song for any mood.

6 Seconds has a powerful search capability that helps users find a specific song or artist to play. In under a second, users can scan 100,000 online radio stations for a specific song or artist. If located, they can tune into the broadcast with a simple click on the title which will connect them directly to that station. A huge library of stations and smart algorithms connects to most popular songs within 6 seconds of the beginning.

"6 Seconds is the first free mobile music experience with unlimited skips and search so music listeners can hear the songs they desire, more often," says Robertson.

"Listeners can favorite any song and at anytime, quickly search for their faves playing anywhere in the world. This “song hunting” makes the listening experience fun and personal.”

An easy to use, gesture based interface drives 6 Seconds. A swipe left skips. Up swipe reveals a search interface. Down swipe displays genres and any favorite song currently playing anywhere in the radio universe.

A database of 100,000 digital stations powers 6 Seconds. Internet only and online AM/FM stations around the world are cataloged and then continually indexed to detect their currently playing artist and song. This information is collected into a radio search engine.

The app is on Android and iOS.

Most inbuilt radio receivers in devices like this have been placed there as an afterthought: with poor sensitivity and poor user interface, so I thought I’d give the DAB+ part a test in both London and Brisbane to see how it fared.

My tests

My LG Stylus 2 is using the production-release firmware. I wasn’t given a pair of headphones, so I used a personal pair of Sennheiser bud earphones which have a very thin wire. I’m telling you this because the headphones act as the antenna, rather than an unwieldy and breakable separate antenna.

LG intends radio broadcasters to use the API to make their own apps better: and that's the game-changer here. That said, it comes with a default DAB+ app, which itself is basic but does the job: it presents an alphabetical list of stations. The battery appears to decline by 5% an hour when listening to the DAB+ app (with mobile data switched off). Naturally, you can turn the screen off and still listen.

London

Reception on the Eurostar was, politely, patchy. My first experience of the DAB+ reception was listening in Kent: never the best place to listen to DAB, given its proximity to France and lower transmission power. Reception was, however, rock solid on the train in London (overground) on the approach to St Pancras, and relatively good in the basement of the station. I tried a number of stations including the new SDL multiplex, listening to some of the test transmissions for talkRADIO and Virgin, as well as some of the splashy-sounding DAB+ services.

BBC DAB coverage in central London is mostly supplied by an 800W transmitter on the BT Tower (plus many more, including a 10kW transmitter at Crystal Palace, 16km away). While walking in London, mostly on the Euston Road, reception of all multiplexes was solid - no breaks, just great-sounding audio, sounding significantly more robust that you ever get from portable FM. A bus between Kings Cross and Paddington station gave perfect reception of BBC Radio 6 music.

The experience wasn't as good on the Heathrow Connect train. In fact, reception of any station was almost zero. Whether they put some coating on the windows, I don't know - but while it was flawless on the bus, it was useless on the train. Given the use-case of a commuter, this is disappointing.

Brisbane

Unlike London, which is a patchwork of lower-powered transmitters on a single-frequency network, Brisbane’s DAB is one big 12.5kW transmitter on top of Mount Coot-tha, which overlooks the city centre 8km away. I tested the LG Stylus 2 while in a bus (with advertising mesh on the windows) from the Mount Coot-tha foothills into the city centre - low-rise suburbs to a difficult terrain of high-rise buildings on the way down to the river. I listened to 973, a music station on the Brisbane 1 multiplex.

Reception wasn't flawless on the twenty-minute journey, but there were only three glitches (towards the beginning of the journey). In the city centre, while walking round amidst the high-rise buildings, reception was perfect. One big powerful transmitter ought to give ‘shadows’: areas where there is no useful coverage; and perhaps that’s what I was getting at the start of the journey; however, reception in the city centre was surprisingly good.

Audio quality

Australian DAB stations, all using DAB+, are in stereo and sound relatively rich and sonorous. 973 sounded good, if a little splashy at high frequencies, with a good stereo signal, and nice dynamic processing. It turns out it's just 48kbps DAB+, which surprised me. (There isn’t any way to see bitrate from the standard tuner).

London? While BBC Radio 6 Music sounded excellent, most of the commercial stations I tried to listen to sounded fairly poor. This isn't the fault of the LG phone: more that mono simply doesn't sound as good as stereo when using earbuds. With no stereo separation, commercial radio was, simply, a poor choice in comparison to the BBC. I found myself listening less: and distinctly underwhelmed by the Virgin tests.

The experience in Australia; yes, it has an FM radio too (with RDS); and in the UK

Slideshow

When listening to radio in the UK, the screen is mostly blank. DLS (“livetext”, the scrolly text thing) displays, but that’s as far as you get. (I believe, though I didn’t think to try it, that Capital carries slides).

In Australia, almost every channel has a slideshow of some sort. ABC Radio National carries a simple slide with a logo, but 973 has a rotating set of information slides including pictures of the current presenters, a weather slide, and a news slide - though that one was partially broken. The slides display on the LG phone perfectly.

The radio in conclusion

My tests - both, admittedly, in relatively strong signal areas - show that the LG Stylus 2 does a great job of pulling in a DAB signal. I’ve tried using a portable DAB set in central Brisbane before: not to great results; but this device was a solid performer. Better, you could keep it in a pocket like an ordinary mobile phone, since there’s no antenna to wave around. Reception is great, and if I was travelling into work by bus every morning, this would be a brilliant phone to have: hardly any battery consumption and rock-solid sound.

The software's fine, though bespoke software will be better. I hope LG allow more people to produce new DAB+ tuners; I'm sure there's a market for one that shows all the possible data from the multiplex, as well as others which will look better for a normal listener.

Indeed, the only let-down was the UK's mono stations, and whatever was hampering the coverage on the Heathrow Connect. Neither are LG's fault, though both are significant.

And the rest of the phone

In terms of specifications, the phone itself might have a large screen, but it displays the same amount of information as LG's flagship Nexus 5 phone (from October 2013), at a worse dpi. It has a larger battery (which is removable), but a little less RAM. It runs Android 6.0, and has access to the Android monthly security patches. It's certainly a mid-range phone, and a little unfair to compare it to the Nexus 5 (but that's what I'm going to do, since I own one).

It runs well, has some strange LG customisations over the top of Android, and the stylus is a nice gimmick (though I suspect most users will never take it out after the second day of owning it). The power button and volume control are on the back of the phone, in a placement that LG are proud of, but in one I found a little annoying.

The phone itself was launched in Barcelona last month, but that launch didn't mention the DAB+ capability. It's now a game of wait-and-see to see whether consumers see the benefit of a capable radio inside a mobile phone: or, even, whether they know it's there. I hope they do - because it's pretty good.

Although I planned to run this TV through a set-top box, and therefore not to plug it into the antenna, I thought it worthwhile to run a full setup so that I could see what user interface I was missing. The whole lot is powered by Android TV, even the setup and EPG; and this was the first disappointment - Android TV itself is in 1080p, and not 4K. Close to the screen, the upscaled text is quite blocky.

Set-up pulled all the channels in fine. But the EPG tries to show channel logos: and in spite of this set being on the Philips Australia website and being presumably certified to carry the Freeview Plus logo, it shows an incorrect logo for "ONE" and "ELEVEN" (these crazy Australian channel names), a vaguely correct logo for Food Network, and nothing else.

More concerningly, the picture was quite substantially behind the audio. Which for an inbuilt television tuner, that's a bit poor.

I plugged the HDMI set-top box in. It looks awful. And the picture is behind the audio.

At this point, I'm fearing that I've bought a dud. And I have. But I want to make the best of it, so I fiddle.

Removing all the video special effects has the effect of significantly making the image look better; particularly killing the over-sharpness and removing any of the dynamic contrast control. The picture is closer in sync to the audio, but still not perfect. There is an audio delay control in the menu, but it's only applicable to sound bars.

Worse, the delay appears to be a bit random. Sometimes, it's close-ish. Sometimes it's miles out.

Then I discover that you can change the picture to "game" or "computer". I don't know what the difference is, and a cursory Google Search won't help me, so I choose "game", because I'm thinking that games contain movement whereas computer screens don't. Anyway, this turns off even more picture processing, and the sound/picture sync is now acceptable, if not entirely fixed.

When the set is in TV tuner mode, you can't choose "game" or "computer". It is impossible, therefore, to match picture and sound using the inbuilt TV tuner on the inbuilt TV speakers.

Genuinely, therefore, this is a TV that actually fails at its primary purpose of being a TV.

But, let's continue.

The Android TV bit is quite nice - though it suffers from picture/sound sync issues. The Spotify app, when you open it, acts as a "Spotify Connect" device so you can control music from your phone or your laptop, while playing on your telly. There are also a surprising amount of decent apps for the system, including Haystack TV (a quite clever news aggregation tool). Android TV doesn't support any of the catch-up services here (there's no ABC iView or SBS On Demand) but both the Chromecast and the Freeview Plus functionality help you out here. This set runs Android Lollipop, which is nowhere near the latest version.

Android TV, as you'll know, is driven by voice. The screen excitedly tells you to "speak to search". Which is great, but there isn't a microphone in the TV, nor in the remote control, so you'll do no speaking on this device. (You could install an app on your phone, I think).

The special Philips menu contains a few additional apps to install that aren't present on Google Play, including Amazon Video, which was a nice discovery. That appears to run in 4K, and the picture quality is excellent. If it weren't for the sound sync issues, it would be a great experience.

Ambilight - the LEDs on the side of the TV that light up the wall - are surprisingly effective at adding an additional immersive feel to the picture. After only a few weeks, one of the LEDs second from the top have developed an intermittent flicker, so I've had to turn them off.

The TV comes with inbuilt Google Cast - a Chromecast, essentially, but without a backdrop or anything. The first thing I did was find a 4K video on YouTube and try casting it - and while it does play in 4K, there were a lot of dropped frames and corrupted video. I've discovered a lot of incompatibility with the built-in Chromecast. Plugging in a Chromecast Ultra into one of the HDMI ports works flawlessly: so that's what I do. $99 to fix this issue.

I spent another $299 buying a soundbar to fix the picture/sound sync issues (and, being fair, to get a better sound). For maximum compatibility, I bought a Philips soundbar, and it's plugged into one of the ARC HDMI outputs (I believe they are all ARC capable). This is supposed to let the TV control the soundbar, and turn it on and off when the TV turns on and off. It does, 80% of the time. It doesn't 20% of the time.

All in all, this is a relatively obvious tale. If you pay peanuts, you get rubbish - even if there's a Philips logo on it. And that's the issue here: this isn't a Philips TV, just a TV made by a company called TP Vision, who licence the Philips name.

So - the Philips 55PUT6820 might look like it's too good to be true: but that's because it probably is.

The Go comes in a range of colours - "deep sea green, frosty white, carbon black and fiery red" - colours which already communicate Scandinavian cool. The packaging - a forgotten part of the consumer experience by almost every company - is beautifully produced; two sides of the box contain hand-drawn images that reflect Norwegian country life (I can identify pine cones, mushrooms, a traditional Norwegian wooden house, an axe, a warm jacket, a wellington boot). The list of specifications are on the bottom of the box, not cluttering up one side with techno-babble.

Those specifications, then, before we go any further: this is a DAB+/FM RDS radio, with an inbuilt rechargeable battery that promises "well over 24 hours of playback". It comes with an international power adaptor with plugs for Europe, the UK and Australia. It has an AUX input, and a headphone output. It's difficult to judge the size from the press photographs, but it's smaller than you might guess - I've added my coffee cup, above, for scale.

The unboxing experience is a good one. Opening the box reveals a black card box containing an AUX cable (a nice expensive-looking braided one, not a cheap plastic thing). Underneath, two manuals, then the radio itself, cushioned in foam; and finally the power block. The first manual you see says "Tusen takk" on the front - Norwegian for 'thank you'. Underneath that is another, in English. The manual is a classy, two-color booklet on untreated paper, running to sixteen pages.

At the bottom of the box, in the manual, and at the bottom of the radio comes the company signature "Designed in Norway". What's already clear - even before turning the unit on - is how much detail has gone into the design. The company tell me it's taken one and a half years to develop. It shows.

So, to the radio itself. After selecting a language (it defaults to English - a wise design decision), the set performs a quick auto-tune on both FM and DAB+, and there we go. The user interface is deliberately simple - there's a red power button (marked 'Pinell'), three tuning buttons, and a menu button. On the top, a large rotary volume control, which feels reassuringly well-built. The antenna has a neat little recess on the back of the case to position it perfectly upright, as well as to stow it away.

The set's screen is a swish-looking display which appears visible from all angles, and yet understated in terms of brightness. It is incredibly clear. Again, this has had a lot of thought put into it: the typeface is proportional, not fixed-width; the station name is large and in bold, the additional information beneath is not; and the 'scrolly text' only scrolls when it has to: a simple but crucial detail. A small 'DAB' indicator, a signal strength bar, and a battery indicator are the only other things on the display. The focus is clearly on the station name: something that's crucial in the UK and Australia, where PPMs are yet to take hold.

I was impressed, too, at the unit's sensitivity. Giving it a go in my kitchen, which has issues with a few of the local multiplexes for London, I got all of them plus broadcasts from Herts/Beds/Bucks and Essex: way more than any other device in the same position has received.

The sound is crisp and clear: a tighter bass than Pure's Evoke-1 or Oasis, which I both find a little too 'boomy'. Unlike the Pure devices, there is also an EQ setting for both treble/bass in the settings. It goes quite loud, too.

One slight criticism - the lack of presets for DAB. You could argue that presets aren't needed: we don't have presets for digital TV, we just tune up and down to the right channel name. But the TV paradigm also has channel numbers, whereas with DAB, a flick between BBC Radio 2 and Magic takes 29 clicks (in London). In FM mode, the middle tuning button switches between scanning and preset tuning mode; but on DAB, that middle button gives you irrelevant information like ensemble name, genre and bitrate. I'd make that more consistent between the two modes if it were me.

Long term - after two years of use, this radio is still a fine thing. The battery holds up whenever I take it outside to do the gardening (not that often), and it's loud enough for that purpose too. If I had any niggles, it would be a lack of Bluetooth, and a slightly irritatingly-positioned AUX input on the right-hand side. (I'd stop the socket being an active one, and move it to the rear of the unit.) But that, frankly, isn't much of an issue. Two years' use has revealed no other hidden bugbears or annoyances.

This is not a cheap radio - but a nicely designed one that works well. RRP is £199, though at the time of updating this article it's retailing for £155 at amazon.co.uk. For £155, I think it's worth it.

In short, then - it's lovely to see a premium DAB+/FM radio with genuinely good design. At last. If you want the best, you'll probably want one of these.

Disclosure: I was sent this radio to review and keep. It's now in my kitchen. This is an update of an original review article from July 2013.

AM and FM

The original way of broadcasting radio, 'Amplitude Modulation', was supplanted by a higher quality transmission method in the late 1950s, called Frequency Modulation. Unlike AM, FM transmissions can include a stereo effect, as well as, because of their higher transmission frequencies and different modulation format, a greater resistance to interference.

AM/FM is used everywhere in the world; though the US and Canada use different frequency spacing to Europe, and some parts of the world, notably Japan, uses different frequencies. FM also has subtle differences between different continents in terms of "pre-emphasis", which essentially means that a European-bought radio won't sound as good in the US as a US-bought one.

FM was formerly known as UKW ('Ultrakurzwelle') in some parts of Europe; AM was also known as "MW", or Medium Wave, though AM is technically correct for Short Wave, Medium Wave and Long Wave.

• Benefits: Everyone's got a radio. Robust reception for many uses.
• Drawbacks: AM can sound awful for music, particularly at night. FM can be subject to interference from pirate radio stations and occasionally atmospheric effects; as well as poor signal strength. Finite frequency resorce can mean a lack of choice.
• Potential listeners: Transmissions can be targeted at a small local area, or much larger. Every household has on average 4.5 radios.
• Current listeners: 56.6% of all radio listening in the UK is to AM or FM. (RAJAR Q2 2014).
• Sound quality: AM is highly variable and mono. A good FM signal can sound excellent.
• Transmission cost: Around £40,000 per year to run a single local FM transmitter. Rental can cost significantly more. National networks are far higher.
• Reception cost: Receivers are anything from £1 upwards.
• Coverage: From a few miles to hundreds of miles each.
• Pay-radio capable: No
• Now playing capability: limited information via an RDS-equipped FM set
• Schedule capability: None
• Display: station name and limited information via an RDS-equipped FM set
• Best for: most radio listeners who are comfortable with the current sound quality of their current station, who don't want or need extra choice.

Digital Satellite Radio via TV

In the days of analogue satellite television, all television channels came with around nine mono audio channels, primarily meant for transmitting different language versions of the same television programme. While some channels used this, notably Eurosport, many channels sublet their audio carriers to radio stations. Tuning in to radio in this way was difficult, and confusing - since the picture of the hosting channel remained on the screen - and consequently few people knew of the facility, let alone tried it.

With the advent of digital satellite transmissions in late 1999, radio stations were given their own channel numbers and displays, so publicly-accessible digital satellite radio became a reality. Sky and Freesat are the only satellite systems aimed specifically at the UK, and there are currently a large number of channels on the system. Radio stations are accompanied by a 'soft' dark-blue display, including information related to the current programme. On Freesat, some BBC stations are accompanied by a logo and now-playing information similar to DAB.

Digital Satellite Radio via TV in this way is also available in some parts of the world, notably South Africa and Australia.

Note: in the US, there is a satellite radio service called Sirius XM, which uses a number of terrestrial transmitters and satellites to broadcast a US-wide service of a few hundred stations. There is no such service in Europe, and due to the economics, no such service is likely.

• Benefits: Satellite can deliver high quality audio over a large coverage area. Large choice.
• Drawbacks: Few local radio stations use the system. No dynamic 'now playing' information on Sky. Limited information on Freesat. Fixed antennas only, so no mobile coverage.
• Potential listeners: Around 2m FreeSat households; 7m Sky households (Ofcom, 2012)
• Current listeners: Unrecorded (separately) by RAJAR. 4.8% of all radio listening is via the television (RAJAR Q2 2014).
• Sound quality: Digital, between 96 and 192k, MP2 encoded.
• Transmission cost: Around £20,000 for transponder space, and £20,000 for appearance in Sky's Electronic Programme Guide (and therefore allocation of a channel). Freesat also charges for appearance in their EPG.
• Reception cost: A digibox is free with commencement of a SkyDigital subscription (the cheapest is around £258 a year), or you can buy without any subscription for a one-off £175. No subscription is required to receive the majority of radio stations. A FreeSat box is normally a one-off charge from £50.
• Coverage: UK-wide (in practice, most of mainland Europe), to fixed antenna
• Pay-radio capable: Yes (Sky only)
• Now playing capability: None on Sky; limited on Freesat
• Schedule capability: Now/Next only on Sky; a full schedule on Freesat
• Display: limited to text in a standard format
• Best for: people who don't want local information, but a wide choice of music, including the ethnic and the unusual. High amount of speech-based programming.

Digital Terrestrial Television

Freeview, launched on 30th October 2002, is a bouquet of entirely free channels through your aerial, including radio channels. Just like Sky, viewers can select a channel - starting at channel 700 - to listen to a limited choice of radio services.

Radio in this way is also available in other countries, notably in Australia.

• Benefit: High quality audio.
• Drawbacks: Limited station choice. A significant lack of choice for commercial radio stations. No ethnic programming except that provided by the BBC.
• Potential listeners: 12 million homes claim that Freeview is their primary television supplier (Ofcom, 2012). It should be noted that Freeview, due to its low cost, is a good second-set option (for bedrooms and kitchens) so total potential audience is rather higher.
• Current listeners: Unrecorded (separately) by RAJAR. 4.8% of all radio listening is via the television (RAJAR Q2 2014).
• Sound quality: Digital, between 96 and 192k, MP2 encoded.
• Transmission cost: Rumoured to be upwards of £120,000 per year for a channel. Space is very limited.
• Reception cost: DTV set-top boxes available from one-off £19.
• Coverage: Dependent on transmitter multiplex, but total coverage approaching 99% of the population. Fixed antenna only.
• Pay-radio capable: No
• Now playing capability: Limited
• Schedule capability: Yes - for up to seven days in advance
• Display: text and a station graphic; some stations have interactive applications
• Best for: people who want a few extra stations for free with their television - including the BBC's digital bouquet.

DAB Digital Radio

The oldest of all digital transmission facilities, DAB Digital Radio started in 1990, with a London-wide transmitter network by 1994. DAB Digital Radio uses a network of local transmitters covering particular areas of the country - transmitters which are designed to work together, unlike current AM, FM and TV transmissions.

• Benefit: Existing stations mostly available on DAB Digital Radio, and extra choice. Great audio difference between AM and DAB; higher signal-to-noise ratio than FM. Portable and easy to tune.
• Drawbacks: Variable audio quality and coverage
• Potential listeners: Over 50% of all adults live in a household with a DAB receiver
• Current listeners: 24.1% of all radio listening is to DAB (RAJAR Q2 2014)
• Sound quality: Digital. Music stations from 112k to 192k (most at 128k) MP2 stereo. Some lower and mono.
• Transmission cost: Around £30,000 for carriage on a local multiplex. Higher in London. Dependent on bitrate.
• Reception cost: Receivers available for less than £15.
• Coverage: Around 92% of population, and growing. Some blackspots. Designed for mobile reception.
• Pay-radio capable: No
• Now playing capability: Yes
• Schedule capability: On supporting sets from supporting broadcasters. In practice, few sets and broadcasters support the EPG.
• Display: constantly-updating 128 character display. Limited use of DAB slideshow (full-colour images) on suitably-equipped radios.
• Best for: people who want to listen to their current stations, as well as gain more choice and higher quality than AM transmissions. Best choice for high quality mobile reception subject to local reception conditions.

DAB+ Digital Radio

An update to the original MP2 digital radio that the UK uses, DAB+ is in use in many countries across the world: from Germany to Norway, Australia to Belgium. Any DAB+ radio will also pick up DAB transmissions; most new DAB sets support DAB+ as well. Any radio with the UK's Digital Radio tickmark is DAB+ capable.

Benefits to DAB+ over original DAB are mostly related to a better audio compression codec, AACplus, which allows broadcasters to squeeze more stations into the same space. Usage elsewhere would seem to suggest that DAB+ does not appear to result in higher quality audio. Additionally, there is a better error correction on DAB+, which subtly improves reception in marginal areas.

DAB+ in the UK is currently limited to a trial in the Wrexham area, but it is likely that the new national commercial digital radio multiplex will carry some DAB+ services.

Cable

Digital radio on digital cable carries a smaller choice than digital satellite, and is normally sourced direct from digital satellite (therefore audio quality is at least similar, if not inferior, to digital satellite). Normally available through the TV, not (as in some countries) on FM rebroadcast.

• Benefit: Some extra choice.
• Drawbacks: Fixed reception, and limited choice.
• Potential listeners: Around 4,000,000 subscribers to Virgin Media.
• Current listeners: Unrecorded (separately) by RAJAR. 4.8% of all radio listening is via the television (RAJAR Q2 2014).
• Sound quality: Digital. Similar to digital satellite, but may be subject to extra encoding/decoding generation.
• Transmission cost: Rumoured to be around £15,000 for carriage per cable network.
• Reception cost: Cable boxes normally free with subscription.
• Coverage: Cable unavailable in many areas.
• Pay-radio capable: Yes
• Now playing capability: Limited (offered by BBC only)
• Schedule capability: Some providers do have full EPG, but sources for schedules may not be direct from the radio station so can be out of date.
• Display: Limited to programme information for most. For BBC, similar to Freeview.
• Best for: people who appreciate some extra choice, but who already have cable.

Internet Radio to desktop

With the uptake of broadband, the internet can be used for reception of radio stations from around the world: either on a laptop computer or a standalone internet radio.

• Benefit: Huge extra choice, including everything from international stations to one-man-band stations. Much larger amounts of interactivity, like webcams and direct chat to the presenters.
• Drawbacks: Many stations have poor audio quality, sometimes as bad as AM. Unreliability ('buffering' and unavailability)
• Potential listeners: Hundreds of millions worldwide.
• Current listeners: 6.2% of all radio listening in the UK is via the internet. (RAJAR Q2/2014)
• Sound quality: Variable. Some stations sound better than DAB or FM, at up to 192kbps AAC. Some stations sound poor.
• Transmission cost: Dependent on listener base, but from £20 a month to hundreds of thousands.
• Reception cost: Compatible computers can start from £180. Standalone internet radios start from £99. Broadband internet is £10 a month.
• Coverage: Worldwide, subject to rights
• Pay-radio capable: Yes
• Now playing capability: Yes
• chedule capability: Full EPGs from websites, though a lack of co-ordinated information.
• Display: Video and text is virtually unlimited
• Best for: people who listen to a wide variety of eclectic styles, or want to hear speech programming worldwide.

Internet Radio to mobile apps

Mobile apps are marketed by many as the future of radio. The reality is less clear-cut. Listeners do use mobile apps, but for an extremely limited time each week. Listening time to internet radio on mobile is dwarfed by desktop. It remains an important medium for radio, however.

• Benefit: Huge extra choice and relatively mobile.
• Drawbacks: Coverage via 3G/4G is patchy, and can cause unreliability in listening. A typical listener walking down a high street will also latch onto captive wifi networks, too: some of which require logging-in before offering full connectivity.
• Potential listeners: Hundreds of millions worldwide.
• Current listeners: 6.7% of all radio listening in the UK is via the internet. Industry estimates are that less than 20% of this is done on a mobile device.
• Sound quality: Variable, but typically 48kbps on a mobile stream, which can sound less than hifi quality.
• Transmission cost: Dependent on listener base, but from £20 a month to hundreds of thousands.
• Reception cost: The listener needs a data connection and adequate amounts of bandwidth in their contract. These start from around £15 a month. A smartphone is also required (anywhere from £0 to hundreds of pounds). Battery life is also a consideration, with 4G especially using significant amounts of battery life while mobile. Most listening, however, is via domestic or work wifi.
• Coverage: Worldwide, subject to rights
• Pay-radio capable: Yes
• Now playing capability: Yes
• Schedule capability: Full EPGs from websites, though a lack of co-ordinated information.
• Display: Video and text is virtually unlimited
• Best for: people who listen to a wide variety of eclectic styles, or want to hear speech programming worldwide.

There's plenty more detail here: and the author has also done significant research into the relative benefits of broadcast vs IP. For a presentation or more information, contact the author directly at james@cridland.net

It's easy to produce the audio. It might seem easy to sound just as good as the other radio stations, too. But you need to ensure you have the proper licences. Internet Radio broadcasters that have music as a part of their programming need to have licences from the owners of the copyright in both the recordings that they play and in the underlying songs.

You will probably need to have at least two licences. For many situations (if you plan to make radio advertisements, for example) you'll need to investigate further licences as well.

PRS for Music

This organisation represent the performers and publishers of the work. They offer two sets of licences: first, a limited online exploitation licence, which is for people earning less than £12,500 a year from online use of music (and a maximum usage). Annual licence fees start from £122 + VAT.

If you're earning more than that, PRS have a set of licences called "LOML+", which are aimed at people who are larger operators; and then their full online music licences. The full licence starts at 0.05p per song per listener.

PPL

PPL represents the record companies, and therefore the recordings you'd like to use. Again, they start with a small radio service licence, which costs £195.05 + VAT, but is intended for people who are making less than £5,000 from online music (and no more than 270,000 total song streams per year).

For larger broadcasters, PPL have a larger, standard, radio service. This full licence starts, for a commercial radio service, at 0.0722p per song per listener.

Total costs

So, total costs for a licence to run a large(ish) radio station online are 0.1222 per song, per listener. If you assume 12 songs an hour, that figure is just under 1.5p per listener, per hour - to which you need, of course, to add your bandwidth costs (and your own staff time).

To put this into context: in Q4 2012, Absolute Radio 90s had 436,000 listeners a week. In total, listeners tune in for 4.7 hours each, meaning a total of 2,039,000 listener hours per week. If this were only an online radio station, the music costs would be £30,580 a week, or £1,590,420 per annum.

As you might guess from the above, it might be cheaper to actually broadcast your radio station on DAB as well as online: there's space available in parts of the UK, and that makes your music costs a straight percentage of your revenue (currently around 10.5%).

"I am totally perplexed", said one person. Another "I was just Googling the same question." Later, one radio professional said "I've been trying to listen for over an hour, but I can't get in. So I won't bother."

It turned out that I needed an OS upgrade: one that was so new the iPad had yet to notify me there was one available. So I settled into the upgrade routine. At least Apple, unlike Android, lets you force-update a device.

As I sat, watching the device download and then install the new update, I listened to an illicit rebroadcast of the Beats 1 stream, and heard the station going live. The first three tracks: Spring King's City, Beck's Dreams and Jamie xx's Gosh.

I'm not a radio programmer, but I loathe radio DJs singing along to songs. I hate people who play jingles over the top of songs badly. (If you're going to do that, pre-produce your drops to beat-match and respect the music). Talking over the middle break, or badly talking over a song that ends, is really, really fucking annoying. There is a special place in hell for radio presenters who attempt to do any of these things. Zane Lowe will spend his entire afterlife there.

I'm not a radio programmer, but I found it curious that the first promo we heard was for Julie Adenuga promoting "her next show". Given that she hadn't been on the radio station, it should have been a promo made specially telling people to join her for "her first show".

I'm not a radio programmer, but a random promo for a hitherto unannounced programme that tells us that "people have been writing in" to ask for songs treats the audience as if we're gullible idiots, and a promo that doesn't actually explain that it's a) a radio programme, and b) when to listen appears a little strange.

I do, however, have some technical understanding, so was confused to hear looping audio, and the same segment of link about three times. It wasn't just me: everyone got that. Streaming audio is not complicated - we've been doing it for years. So how come Apple screwed it up?

I got the app up and running, and after some curious error messages, I was in. After running a music radio website for years, I'm aware what people want to know when listening to a radio station. The top thing is "what song did I just hear?" - and there's no way of swiping back through the song history to find out. Any time spent with radio professionals would have told Apple that.

The app displays a static cover image, and three horizontal dots hides a context menu with more options - to launch an artist station, to add the song to a playlist, and one presumes to play the album in full, though I don't subscribe to Apple Music. One music professional described these links as "astonishing". But since every radio station in TuneIn does similar (including buy links), and I was even doing "add this song to a playlist" on the Virgin Radio website in 2004, I found the astonishment astonishing. This is the bare minimum. I couldn't connect with artists in Connect; I couldn't tweet the artist; I couldn't see if they were playing live anywhere. Any time spent with radio professionals would have told Apple that.

The app doesn't display any station branding, nor any links to schedules, any way of interacting with the live programming, or anything else. Any time spent with radio professionals would have told Apple how useful that would have been.

The Apple Music app comes with a big link to genre radio stations, and - surprisingly - other stations too. In the US, they have ESPN, NPR and Radio Disney there. In the UK we get one: the BBC World Service, which is exactly the wrong radio station to highlight: it should be either Radio 1, Radio 2 or Radio 4, since the World Service is not aimed at a UK audience. Or, frankly, talkSPORT or Capital. Any time spent with radio professionals from each Apple Music territory could have told them this.

In all, then, I found it a distinctly underwhelming experience. Apple have launched a live, linear radio station - something you'll see in this presentation just doesn't work on mobile phones. They've done the bare minimum in terms of integration. The radio producers have been lazy with their production. Tuning in is unintuitive on iOS, and was impossible on OSX at launch. The launch was botched, confused, lazy, uninspiring and most of all, deeply ignorant.

But at least they've tried, right?

---postscript---

It might be worthwhile pointing out that I applaud Apple for trying to run a live radio station. I applaud its use of radio presenters, and even if I don't much care for the programming, I applaud that they're trying. Human curation is a good thing. We should see more of it.

Apple is a company who has innovated with so much of what it's done. It's pulled a lot of industries up to its level. Smartphones were dreadful before Apple came along. Laptops were great big ugly beasts. UX, in general, owes a great debt to Apple's work. Apple's stuff is normally consistently ahead of the game.

If Beats 1 was launched by any other company, I'd be pretty impressed at what it had achieved. I think I'm just disappointed that Apple has done such a mediocre job - for Apple - at this. Great expectations, and all that. That is the source of my disappointment.

There’s a lot to like. For a start, there’s a big button marked ‘radio’ on the dashboard. Surprisingly, these buttons are disappearing in some cars, in spite of radio being the most-used audio source in the car.

There are also big tuning and volume controls. Physical buttons you can reach out and change without taking your eyes off the road.

And there’s a big, bright, full-colour screen. Glowing like a little iPad in the middle of your dashboard, it’s a great experience.

Tune in to your favourite station, and the name is in big letters in the centre of the screen: great for reminding the driver what they’re listening to, just in case they have to fill in a diary or get called by a research company later.

Just below is the RadioText, which shows useful information like the song that’s now playing, or more details on what you’re listening to.

And just below that - your presets, with some pretty logos to help you tune in.

Ah.

That’s the idea. But no, you don’t get any logos. When delivered, the car will have lots of black squares on the screen. No logos. Nothing to make this receiver really shine. Nothing to promote radio’s consumption on this thing. Just some ugly black squares.

There are places to get logos. Visit Volkswagen’s website, and you’ll find some logos. They’re not actually the right size for their own car radio, so they look fuzzy and rubbish. And many of the logos are out of date. Fuzzy, out-of-date logos? Hmm.

But then - what’s Volkswagen to do? Contact each and every radio company? Hardly their business to talk to tens of thousands of different organisations.

Aggregators like TuneIn could help - but why should they? Broadcasting is in competition with their app, after all.

Industry groups could step up. Yet, they’re not normally wholly inclusive. Commercial, community and public radio rarely all play together. And do we really expect VW to research and contact three or four industry groups in every single country?

“Radio” needs to step up its game here. Because TuneIn, Pandora, Spotify, Google or Apple already offer an easy route for Volkswagen to make everything look pretty. Everything, that is, apart from broadcast radio.

Where’s the one-stop shop for broadcast radio? How can Volkswagen make radio look stunning in their new cars with just one call?

Those people who really want to play with laptops and SD cards can download individually-sized station logos for their radio off this media information website. (It’s been quite popular, which probably tells you something). But really, this isn’t the answer.

How can “radio” make this easy? Because our competition is...

First, watch this. It's the folks behind RadioFlag talking about it at TED. Not the TED, but a TEDx thing in Navesink. Here are two folks explaining about what RadioFlag is, while denigrating broadcast radio in the same breath, in the annoying way that digital types do. It might help explain what it is.

RadioFlag is available for iOS, Windows, BlackBerry (I know!), and Android, which is what I loaded it on. First impressions aren't brilliant. The app looks like a very old Android build, with some of the old Android v2 animations, and a splash screen (something that Google specifically tells developers not to do).

There's no onboarding experience. I tried "Flagcasts", what I presumed was the special sauce of the app, only to be told that I needed to "program my listening profile by selecting your favorite listeners. Then you will have filtered Flags here, authored by listeners you have 'tuned in' as favorites". I have literally no idea what to do here. How do I find a listener?

So I hit 'stations', and navigated into Australia, to see the second disappointment: it's been coded by Americans so used to callsigns that they've not realised they're not used in other parts of the world. Want to listen to chill-out station Buddha? That's called iBDHA-AUS, and illustrated with a very low-res icon. Want TripleJ? That's - oddly - iJJJ-AUS (this one does have callsigns actually, but in Australia the callsigns differ per Australian state). Tuning into the station gives me a listen screen that works, at least; though no now-playing information or anything other than a logo. Swiping to the right reveals messages from other Radioflag users ("listeners"?). The last was posted over a year ago. There's no way to find more information about the station.

Radio stations listed in the UK are odd; BBC1-GBR is there (yes, that's Radio 1); along with VRLM-GBR (Radio Verulam). Halfway down the list, miles away from BBC1-GBR, up pops iBBC2-GBR. There's nothing from Capital, Heart, Absolute, or any of the large commercial brands. Oh, no, I tell a lie - XTRA-GBR is there at the bottom of the list. As you'll not guess, it's Capital Xtra. Not 1Xtra. And Capital isn't there. I counted at least five stations that haven't broadcast for six months.

There's a button marked "Broadcast", which looks interesting, so I hit that, to be given a few twitter-like messages from a few radio stations I've never heard of. I try tuning in to one of them, and it's another radio station. I'm unclear what this feature is.

I searched for The Eels - one of my relatively standard searches - and find a tweet-like message from a radio station from seven months ago saying they were going to play it.

I try a flip through genres, and settle on tuning into an 80s station called KKBG, which is from Hawaii apparently, though "Loading Failure" meant that I couldn't listen to it.

Finally, there's a 'trending' tab, which contains mostly hashtags and isn't scrollable. Many of the hashtags are literally one letter. I have no idea what these are. I hit a hashtag marked #baltimoretruth to find a set of tweet-like messages promoting a programme on WLOY between noon and 2pm. WLOY comes from Baltimore, so this looks quite interesting; yet it's after 2pm EST where I am now, and the station's audio stream doesn't actually load.

I have to say I have no idea what this app is here to solve; no idea how to get the most out of it; and am completely confused by much of the outdated UI which looks like a poor iOS port with no acknowledgement of Android UX patterns. The lack of an onboarding experience and of any form of clear help is baffling. The radio station list is poor, the use of call-letters ignorant.

The 'flags', the tweet-like comments that are apparently supposed to act as navigation, aren't unique; TuneIn has comments, and TripleJ's last comment on TuneIn was posted 17 minutes ago as I type this, in spite of it not being 7.00am there yet. The last comment on RadioFlag was in March. In 2014.

And as a post-script, as I tidied this review for publishing, my phone burst into life, ten minutes after I'd closed Radioflag down, with the last station I'd tried tuning into. It's now uninstalled.

In short, while I recommend many radio apps for people to play with, I can't recommend this one. Sorry.

Paul Simon's Graceland plays around once every 25 minutes somewhere in the world on the radio. You might be able to tune in onrad.io/Paul.Simon.Graceland but I'll bet there'll be some onrad.io/Paul.Simon to listen to somewhere; and you'll be able to set an alert to catch it playing next time.

Unlike a song on YouTube, the URLs are human readable and relatively forgiving; so a link to onrad.io/Taylor.Swift.Wildest.Dreams is rather easier than leaving your chat session, going off to YouTube and discovering a URL like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdneKLhsWOQ, then copying it, switching back to the app you were using, and then pasting it in. There's a lot to be said for human-readable URLs.

All this is courtesy of Michael Robertson's newest company, OnRad.io - a nifty way of linking to your favourite song. Since it uses simple URLs, it works via SMS, webchat, Twitter, or any other URL-based service; and since it uses radio streams, it's free for everyone. Write a URL yourself, and it makes a good guess as to what you're looking for (normalising the URL in the process). It's simple and nicely done.

If this is sounding familiar, it's using the same kind of data behind his 6 Seconds app that he released in April - except, this new service works on desktop too, and is now granular enough to deal with songs as well as simply artists. And, like 6 Seconds, this is a great trial mechanism for new listeners. Discover a station because it's playing the Coldplay track you like, and it's then up to the station to keep you listening once it's finished with another decent song or some great content.

Any service like this is, of course, highly reliant on the data available: and it's not perfect. Some stations are slow at updating their now-playing data on which this service relies, so you get some other song entirely. (It would be good to be able to report this to flag up errant broadcasters, so the system can give a preference to more accurate ones).

What this service does do, however, is highlight the need for a search engine that isn't just music-based. "I want to hear something that'll make me laugh", "Tell me more about the Brussels news", "Is anyone talking about schoolies on the radio?", "Find me an interview with Peter Mandelson sounding catty", "Which radio station is Ed Sheeran being interviewed on now?", "Give me a nice story about cats", or even just "Keep me company on this drive". Radio excels in all these things, too: but Google is blind to them.

Perhaps Google's move into podcasting will give them the data they need for real-time audio indexing. Here's hoping so.

Here's a video showing it working; and a press release.

Press Release

OnRad.io, A New Company Brings Search Engine to Online Radio, Brings Listeners to Their Sought-After-Songs in the Exact Moment it Airs

OnRad.io Find the Songs and enables Sharing on any Messaging Platform

SAN DIEGO, CA (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 19, 2015 - OnRad.io, a new company from digital music pioneer Michael Robertson, is making online radio more discoverable while enabling users on messaging apps to share music instantly. Artists in this innovative configuration are still being compensated.

The new search technology tracks free online radio stations every second and determines what songs are being played at that exact moment. This technology opens up a vast library of popular songs, all of which can be searched, found and played in real time.

"Because Google doesn't index online radio streams, radio is invisible to searchers and radio companies are missing out on more than 100 million users per day,” says Chief Executive Officer of OnRad.io, Michael Robertson. "Our goal at OnRad.io is to make it one-click easy to find any song playing on the radio and to easily share those songs with friends, this ultimately drives more listeners to the great content on radio.” OnRad.io introduces three significant advancements for online radio.

Search and Play any Song Playing Anywhere in the World on Radio: Music fans can use OnRad.io to find songs or artists from free stations from around the world. Mobile users can use free Android or iOS apps while desktop users can use OnRad.io via a browser. Searches scan about 100,000 stations in under 100ms looking for matching songs. For songs available on multiple stations, the station nearest the beginning of the song will be suggested to users first. To hear a song, users connect directly to the broadcasting station where they'll hear whatever material is broadcast.

Song Sharing in any Messaging App: Using OnRad.io music lovers can share songs in any messaging app including Snapchat, WeChat, Twitter, Gmail, WhatsApp and others. To send a song users simply construct an OnRad.io URL appending either a song or artist name to the URL and send it to another user. A smart algorithm detects whether the link is a song or artist name, even if it is a partial name.

When the recipient clicks the received URL, the free OnRad.io app will open and play the desired song or artist. If the song is not immediately available anywhere on radio, the user is notified when the song is expected to play on radio. A notification will be sent to the user when the song starts and they can tune to that station if they desire. See Video Demo of Song Sharing in Snapchat:

Every song now has a freely accessible web page with Listening and Statistics: A web page has been constructed for every song played on radio. These web pages make it easy to listen to the song either immediately or to be notified the next time it’s broadcast anywhere on radio. Statistics are displayed showing song popularity, the stations that play the song and when the song is expected to play on radio. Anyone can access these URLs to listen with no subscription fee, login or registration required. To listen, users are connected directly to broadcasters playing the song.

Benefits to Radio Companies And Artists

OnRad.io benefits radio companies and artists. Artists get paid for every radio listen of their songs. OnRad.io helps artists get their songs heard on radio which leads to higher royalty payments. Online radio companies can expect a significant influx of customers who will find their station and heart their songs as well as the programmed audio advertising, as expected on traditional radio. For the first time, online radio stations can receive direct search traffic to their station. This will help them garner more listeners and better compete with Pandora.

To experience OnRad.io users can go to OnRad.io from their computers or smartphone. Using mobile phones, they'll be invited to install the free OnRad.io app. Those on desktop computers will get a web based experience.

About OnRad.io

OnRad.io is a search engine company to help music lovers find the ideal online radio station by giving them up-to-the second accuracy about what every station is playing in real time. Artists get paid when people listen to their songs on the radio so support your favorite artist and online radio by using OnRad.io. Digital music pioneer Michael Robertson leads the OnRad.io team. Robertson is best known as the founder and former CEO of MP3.com. Other companies founded by him include desktop Linux company Linspire and VOIP company Gizmo5, which sold to Google.

I got hold of the more expensive unit, the WAKE clock radio alarm, which retails at $159.

The radio comes packed in recyclable cardboard, and comes with a mains adaptor and a twenty-page manual.

Initial impressions are of a well built device. All the controls are on the top, so the unit doesn't slide backwards as you press buttons on it.

As a bedside unit, this may well be operated by a user not wearing glasses, and the manufacturers have considered this with large buttons which are easy to feel and of differing sizes. They depress with a click, which is useful to give instant feedback, if a little irritating when setting the alarm.

Round the back of the unit is socket for the mains adaptor, an AUX-in jack, a headphone or pillow-speaker connection, and a USB charging port for your mobile phone. This is rated at 2A, so should act as a rapid-charge port for a variety of devices. This is a nice feature for a bedside radio.

The antenna for the unit is a black wire, which hangs down from the unit. I'm not a particular fan of these as DAB+ antennas: they don't perform as well as a proper extendable metal antenna and they're a bit ugly. After a bit of repositioning, however, it appears to pull in the signal just fine. DAB stations display complete with the scrolly-text.

Using the Frontier Silicon Verona 2 module, the radio behaves as you'd expect. Press the tune button, then twirl the volume control to find the station you want: and then press the volume control in. In many cases, according to multiple pieces of research, you'll probably never change channel in the morning; but the radio does have presets too.

The sound quality is good, as you'd expect from a loudspeaker brand: a clear sound with no excessive bass, comfortable with both speech and music (and adjustable with an EQ setting). The speaker fires at you, rather than to the side or behind the unit: this is a good thing. The alarm in the morning slowly fades in.

The display lacks a light sensor, but can be set to go very dark. I'm normally someone who puts a radio on their lowest setting, but with this I've ended up using the second-from-lowest, which is a welcome change: a radio display that actually goes too dark for even me.

The interesting thing for this receiver is its Bluetooth implementation: important, given that recent research appears to show (in the UK) that the amount of listeners to podcasts at night are higher than the amount of listeners to the radio.

With a phone that has NFC inside (i.e. almost any Android phone), the method of playing back a podcast or music is just to tap your phone to the NFC logo on the top of the device. This both pairs your phone, and also switches the input to Bluetooth. When you've done, tap your phone again: it unpairs the phone, and also switches the input back to wherever it was before.

This makes this device perfect for podcast listeners, allowing you to both charge your phone and listen to a podcast as you go to sleep. The radio can then wake you up to a digital radio station (or FM, or a buzzer) the next morning.

The Richter WAKE is available from selected specialist stockists, and from the Richter website.

(Of note: I've deliberately not chosen station-specific apps. Some of these are great, too, but that's for another day.)

TuneIn Radio

Free, Pro version £2.38

TuneIn Radio contains over 70,000 radio stations from all over the globe, and on-demand content too. It contains alternative streaming addresses to allow rock-solid reception or top quality audio. Its database is the most up-to-date I can find, too.

TuneIn isn't that good at UK radio, though, making its US background clear. BBC local radio stations are marked as 'community', FM frequencies for national stations like BBC Radio 1 are seemingly picked at random, and I can't quite believe that Absolute Radio wants to promote their 1215kHz frequency over all else.

A rewrite in the first half of 2014, bringing a social network element to TuneIn, has not been well-received. Many radio stations report a dramatic drop in listeners following the redesign. However, this is a best of breed app for a global radio listener. There's a paid-for version which offers recording.

Radioplayer

Free

An official app allowing access to all UK radio stations. Where TuneIn fails, Radioplayer works - with accurate data and unparallelled information that accurately knows your local stations and recommends new stuff to listen to, based on local area and trending stations. The Android version lacks, as yet, all the BBC's on-demand content. A mid-2014 update has dramatically improved the look and feel of the app, and made it more natively Android in its design. It is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and accurate service for UK radio.

Pocket Casts

£2.49

A reliable podcast-catcher that works offline, Pocket Casts is a well-written and fully-featured app, including commercial skipping, playback of video podcasts (including, to save your battery, playback of video podcasts in audio-only form), and a host of other extras. It has a decent catalogue of podcasts, with the ability to add new podcasts yourself. Regularly updated, Pocket Casts also works well with Chromecast and Android Wear, and sports a well-edited section for discovery of new podcasts to listen-to. It also syncs across different devices, so you never hear the same podcast twice.

NPR News

Free

Peculiarly-named app - because it has access to all of NPR's programming (not just news) in chapterised form - so you can listen to individual stories, as well as segments of full programmes (or, indeed, those programmes in full). Grab each chapter and playlist them, so you can create your own bizarrely-intonated NPR station. This is a much better way of enjoying radio than, for example, an unyielding lump of 3 hours of BBC Radio 4's Today programme on iPlayer. The app also includes music and arts programming (including Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (aka The News Quiz), and Radiolab (aka The Best Show On Earth), along with Cartalk and TED Radio. Oh, and it also includes all NPR station live feeds too. BBC? This is how to do a radio app.

Player FM

Free

Player FM lets you follow topics, not shows - with a carefully curated podcast service that surfaces new radio shows for you. A companion to a fully-featured website, this app is regularly updated, and works well with Chromecast and Android Wear. I found it a confusing experience, and one that rejoiced in playing me multiple episodes of the same podcast back-to-back; but it's an interesting tool, if you can learn the user interface, to discover new and interesting podcasts.

There are plenty more to choose from: and I'd love to hear your favourites, too.

In the UK

This television has a Freesat tuner inside it. I've not used it though - I don't have a satellite dish (five years ago it was either a dish or a neighbour's tree, and I preferred the tree).

This television also has a Freeview UK tuner inside it. A software update made it understand Freeview HD, which was nice. After my YouView box broke (the hard-drive expired), it was good to use the inbuilt Freeview and discover that it was rather better than at first thought, with a decent programme guide and everything.

I tend to switch off anything that looks 'clever' on a television: noise reduction, enhanced blacks, etc etc: I don't trust it. I also prefer to see the whole picture, something Samsung calls "Screen Fit": normally, a television cuts off a little of the outside of the image, and then zooms in slightly. This, like any other fiddling with the image after reception, causes extra artifacts - it can't do otherwise - which is why I turn it off. With those settings duly changed, Freeview in HD looks great. SD channels look as good as they probably can.

This TV has a bunch of inputs - no VGA, but lots of HDMI inputs, and it also deals happily with a USB key with video on it. Picture quality and settings are separate for every single input, making me quite happy that I can tweak them. It deals well with a USB key containing a bunch of video in MP4 format.

And it's a connected TV - one that connects to the internet. It has something called Samsung SmartHub, which contains a bunch of apps.

In the UK, there are catchup apps from BBC iPlayer, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Towards the end of my time in the UK, I used these all the time. Buffering issues had disappeared, and they worked pretty well.

Skype on this TV is now no longer available: Microsoft and Samsung had a big fallout, which was a shame since I'd spent some money on a special camera for the TV to enable decent Skyping. It was never really very good.

In Australia

I then moved to Australia, and brought this television with me, assuming it would work okay. It didn't. It picked up a very small amount of channels, and put them on the wrong channel numbers.

I thought that I could reset it somehow, and then tell it that it was now in Australia and it would be happy. After a lot of Googling, I did a full reset, to discover that it gave me the choice of the UK and Ireland, and that was it.

But I wasn't to be foxed. After a lot more Googling, I was able to find the hidden service mode. This, it turns out, almost always sends this television into a hideous boot loop. To fix that, you need to open up the television, short-circuit two pins to erase the internal memory, power up the TV, keep short-circuiting the pins as you power it down and go into service mode, change Local Set to AD_AU_NZ (don’t be tempted by AD_AU_NZ2), change the Type to the highest one starting with 32, and then reset it. This trial and error took four hours.

It deals with Freeview (yes, it's called that here too) happily, including the programme guide, though it isn't as smooth since there's no cross-multiplex EPG. It gets all the HD channels.

It doesn't deal with Freeview Plus, also known as HBBtv. (If you choose the German setting, it does: but it's slow and underwhelming, and in any case, the German setting doesn't get all the channels).

The Australian apps - those that I've tried - are good. ABC iView had an upgrade since I last saw it, and is rather good. SBS's service is technically excellent and a bit bewildering. The YouTube app works very well, and handles live streaming. The only frustration is the continually-changing interface to get there: the latest version from Samsung won't let you get into the Smart Hub for about 30 seconds after turning the telly on, which is a bit annoying.

With a fast enough USB key, you can record on this TV (you need a USB 3.0 stick). The UX is awful, but you can do it; the USB key I have isn't large enough to record more than 50 minutes, though: that would be an issue if I wanted to record anything really, but I don't, having a Telstra TV box with catchup from all the main broadcasters.

The USB ports are plentiful enough to also power a Chromecast and a Roku stick. The Chromecast is used for a bunch of things, mostly movies and music. The Roku stick isn't supported here in Australia at all.

In conclusion

As a thing that shows telly, I'm very happy with it. I never used half of the features until recently, but have found they work pretty well.

It's probably no accident that they use Samsung televisions in Buckingham Palace.

Radioplayer has a strong history of innovation, from being one of the first radio apps to work with Android Wear and Apple Watch, to being the first app in Europe to work with Apple CarPlay.

Android Auto, which is the competitor to Apple's in-car system, is now available in the new Hyundai Sonata as standard, and is also available as an option for installation from companies like Pioneer and others.

Radioplayer is also planning a hybrid radio, which will use FM, DAB and IP, later this year.

Press release

Radioplayer, the listening platform for radio in the UK and several other European countries*, is making it even easier to listen on the move.

The Radioplayer app is now compatible with Android Auto, Google’s operating system for the car dashboard. This follows the news earlier this year that Radioplayer was the first European radio app to work with Apple CarPlay.

Android Auto synchronises a smartphone to the integrated touchscreen on a car dashboard. The phone can be plugged in to charge, and safely stowed out of sight.

Drivers can then use approved apps 'hands-free' - such as Google Maps, Google Play Music - and now Radioplayer.

More than 30 car manufacturers are backing the system and will offer Android Auto in new cars in the coming months. Drivers can also convert existing cars by fitting a compatible stereo system. Several companies are offering these, including Pioneer.

Michael Hill, Managing Director of Radioplayer said: “Radio remains the perfect medium for in-car listening. Radioplayer's proud to help radio maintain a competitive position in the digital dashboards of the future."

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have different interfaces but provide similar capabilities, allowing the user to control a selection of apps via voice commands and access other features available on the infotainment screen.

Radioplayer worked with All In Media to develop the Android Auto capability.

As well as integrating radio streaming apps with vehicle systems like Android Auto and CarPlay, Radioplayer is working on revolutionary ‘hybrid’ radio technology for cars. The system, which was prototyped last year, will automatically select the best platform to deliver a chosen station, switching between DAB, FM or streaming, as reception varies. It is expected to launch later this summer.

Not got a Google Chromecast? They're inexpensive devices that plug straight into your TV. While Amazon don't sell them, you'll find them in your local Best Buy, JB-Hifi or Currys.

Via YouTube

Click on the below link to open these channels in YouTube, and then hit the 'cast' button to get them on your television. These links also work in most YouTube-enabled smart TVs and set-top boxes, and work on Android and iOS phones.

• ABC News 24 - Australia only
• Al Jazeera English
• Channels TV from Nigeria
• France 24
• i24News from Israel
• India Today
• Newsmax TV - US election news channel
• Sky News [UK] - geoblocked in some countries

YouTube doesn't give live streams a permanent link, so these links may have changed. However, you should be able to search to find their new pages.

From your Android phone or Chromebook

A little more clunky, but with an Android phone or Chromebook, you'll find a Cast button in the video of the following channels by visiting the websites below. Where an official feed exists, we've used it rather than third-party aggregators.

• BBC News Channel [domestic]
• CCTV
• DW
• Euronews
• Press TV
• Nasa TV [mobiles only]

Using your laptop's tab-casting feature

Even more clunky than above, but if you are running Chrome with the Chromecast extension on your laptop, you can view these channels on your TV by clicking the Cast extension logo and casting a live tab. This is unlikely to work brilliantly, but it's better than nothing...

• BBC World News
• CNN [domestic]
• CNBC [international]
• Fox News
• NHK World

Know of any more? Have any links changed? Let us know in the comments!

While you could always listen-again to programmes from the BBC inside the app, to do this required a steady internet connection. In some of the key use-cases for "listen-again" - listening on a bus, the tube, or even just driving - a steady internet connection simply isn't available. You can now download any programme - music, speech, whatever you like - and listen for 30 days after transmission.

And this on-demand functionality is why I've installed it: after relying on Tunein and Radioplayer for live radio for so long. So, I'm looking at this through fresh eyes.

It sounds superb

I'm guessing that the app is using the BBC's new HLS streaming. If you're unfamiliar with HLS, it ought to offer a significantly better stream on the move: it is adaptive for varying bandwidth speeds, and copes well with short periods of no signal. It's in use by Beats 1, too - I've written more about it in this piece in radioinfo.com.au.

For all of their national stations, the BBC offers HLS streams in 320kbps, 128kbps, 96kbps and 48kbps - I believe they're all AAC variants. If the tech's set up correctly in the app, which I expect it to be, your phone should automatically get the best quality stream it can handle, and switch between them almost invisibly.

Listening on a coffee-shop wifi connection, the signal is clearly very high quality. Unlike many online radio apps, particularly on mobile, there's no digital artifacts that I could hear.

Playback is instant (unlike TuneIn, which takes time to buffer). Switching between stations, you do sometimes get a little glitch a few seconds in, as it works out what signal to use, but after that it appears to be rock solid. I heard one short gap in prolonged listening (and even then, unsure whether that's my phone's multitasking failing, my Bluetooth headphones, or the stream).

Downloads are all 320kbps, it seems. That means some massive files - given that many radio shows are three hours long, that's 420MB to fill up your phone. Those downloads take their time, too, even on fast wifi. But iPlayer Radio sensibly defaults to only allowing downloads on wifi, and the audio quality for these will be superb. My incredulity at such a high bitrate quickly turned to quiet admiration.

The signal quality, from a technical point of view, is the highest quality that you'll get from the BBC across any platform. It's higher bitrate than any broadcasts (DAB or DTT); and is less heavily processed than FM (and no hiss). If you are a hifi listener at home, a quality tablet connected to a hifi system will give you better than anything the BBC is broadcasting.

It's great for music

The app offers now-playing information, including artwork. Even, I notice, for BBC Radio 3, the corporation's classical music service, which is quite impressive (since photographs of dead guys are relatively hard to come by).

A button links to the BBC Playlister service, which allows you to take a note of the music you're discovering via the app. It appears to be well used according to their usage figures. If you've not signed-in to the BBC's website, here's where you'll be prompted to do so: a good user experience, leaving this until you have to sign in.

It works great on the move

As luck would have it, I had an hours' drive this morning, through patches of 4G coverage and relatively good 3G coverage. I had the sound through the car speakers, and it didn't drop the audio once. I was also expecting the bandwidth bill to be crippling, given that a download of a half-hour programme is 70MB. In the event, for probably 75 minutes of listening, it used only 42.2MB, which surprised me; and chomped through just 6% of battery. Excellently done.

The User Experience

The BBC's Global Experience Language - their building blocks for online experiences - is used throughout this app. I've mixed views on this: on an Android phone, it's different enough from Android's clear design guidelines to be a little confusing. A unified experience for the BBC across devices is a worthy ambition, but when it expects users to re-learn how to control their device, that's less good.

That said, it's full of little tweaks and nice elements - enough to give Little Big Details, one of my favourite blogs, material to go on for a while:

• As you'd expect from a radio, there's a rotary tuning dial allowing you to flick between stations (importantly, though, it doesn't look olde-worlde).
• The play/pause button has a circle around it, showing the listener how far they are through the programme.
• In the full-screen view, this circle is also draggable, allowing you to quickly go forward/backwards.
• The 'play' icon is replaced with the very similar-looking iPlayer Radio play icon, for effective branding throughout the app
• Icons and buttons glow when pressed, to give instant feedback even when the audio might not start instantly

A few more tweaks are probably needed. There are a few confusing iOS things - not least the appearance of a persistent volume control on-screen (huh?!), and a non-standard menu - and a few places where you need to hit a programme image to play it, which isn't very intuitive.

Update: October 21 They're not joking when they repeatedly say "thanks for your feedback". The persistent volume control, on iOS, has gone; and play buttons have been added to the programme images. Clearer and cleaner.

It's impressive to see access to 'highlights' (editorially-curated programmes and clips from stations), access to podcasts - still useful, since they're often edited highlights, and a full navigable schedule. Clicking a programme on this afternoon gives a "sorry, this programme is not available" error: if it were me, that would say "Add this to your calendar to remind you?", with integration with the system calendar.

It's a shame about

• There are no 'share' buttons. Anywhere. BBC Radio 1's strategy, "Listen, Watch, Share" seems particularly strange alongside this app.

Update: October 21 Share buttons were added in September. Neatly, when listening to a music network, you can share both the programme but also the track currently playing, which leads to a permanent URL for that actual track (and more links, if they exist, on the BBC website).

• Unlike iPlayer (TV), there is still no support for Chromecast. It's my office hifi, but I also listen to a lot of radio through the TV/hifi downstairs too. TuneIn will still have to stay on my phone for now.

Update: October 21 They added Chromecast support today. It's elegant, if a bit dull, on the TV - after visual confirmation that you are, indeed, listening to the radio station that you've casted live, the screen very quickly dims to leave nothing but a slight watermark of the radio station logo. Casted listen-again content has a dimmed programme image instead. It appears rock solid and works well - I'd emulate other services on Chromecast and add some now-playing information and a progress indicator if it were me.

• The BBC iPlayer Radio Tablet app, which you might be offered on Android, doesn't have downloads. Don't use it - the 'proper' BBC iPlayer Radio app is an updated version of the tablet app. Confused? You will be. They should have removed this from the Play store already (and should never have launched it.)

Update: October 21 It's not there any more.

• Android Wear support isn't great. It gives now-playing information on the watch, with just a standard 'music playing' image, which is a bit poor, and a play/pause button that doesn't play/pause; albeit volume controls that do work. Shame. (They could learn from Radioplayer).

Update: October 21 The play/pause button now works on Android Wear. The now-playing image for on-demand programming, at least, is now there; though it isn't there for live radio.

• There's no landscape mode, which makes it less than useful for the car. And, presumably, no Android Auto integration, unlike Radioplayer.

In short

It's been a long time coming. But, if you want the best audio quality possible, on any platform; or to listen to full radio programmes via download, then this is the app for you. And with the continual updates, it's now an even better proposition.

Through TuneIn, I can access almost any radio station on the planet. (Not quite - some aren't compatible - but most are). With Google Play Music (or others), I can listen to my own music and have access to millions of tracks on subscription. Using NPR One, I can enjoy interesting quality speech radio, as well as all my favourite podcasts with Player FM. It's really easy to control. And it sounds amazing.

I previously managed this with a Chromecast, and an HDMI dongle. But with the release of the Chromecast Audio, it's now even easier.

A Chromecast Audio is a little puck-shaped thing that almost literally connects the internet to your speakers.

This means I can control everything using my phone, a computer (PC, Mac or Chromebook), or a relatively underpowered tablet. Or all three. The Chromecast Audio does all the hard work of getting the audio and streaming it, so your tablet doesn't need to be amazing. I'd recommend the Tesco Hudl if you needed a tablet, for under a hundred quid. (That's the difference between a Chromecast and a Bluetooth dongle - Chromecast does all the streaming for you, and your phone or tablet just tells it what to play. So, no battery nightmares, and no horrid transcoded audio.)

The hardware...

• An LP-2020A+ Lepai Mini Audio Amplifier - really cheap, single-source amplifier, recommended by music professionals
• A Google Chromecast Audio. You can't buy these from Amazon, because of some bizarre policy, but you'll find them in most other stores: in the UK you'll find them in Currys, and in Australia, they're in JB-Hifi. It comes with a suitable cable.
• Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers and speaker cable

The software...

• Google Play Music All Access for music - Android iOS. You could also use Blinkbox Music, Deezer, or Rdio among others.
• TuneIn for live radio - Android iOS.
• NPR One for personalised talk radio - Android iOS
• Player FM for podcasts - Android. For iOS (or Android), try Pocketcasts.

With Android, you can also cast your whole screen, including the audio, to your hifi for any unsupported apps you might use. You can also cast a whole browser tab in Chrome, too, on your laptop. (Like Bluetooth or Apple Airplay, this does use lots of battery and transcodes the audio).

Great speakers with proper stereo separation (!) makes an amazing difference to the quality of the audio; while the user interface of most phone apps will always beat lots of button pushes on an over-complex remote control.

It's now my office hifi; and I'm delighted with it.

(Comments below are for the first incarnation of this connected hifi - using a TV Chromecast.)

Judging awards is hard work, and takes a lot of concentration. But sometimes, award entries just don't help themselves. Frustrating, often amateur mistakes put great broadcasters at a disadvantage.

So, based on my experience, here's eight ways you can make your entries better:

1. Don't leave it to the last minute. The categories rarely change each year, so archive audio every week and keep it for the Arqivas, the Gillards, and the New York Internationals; as well as your compilation shows at the end of the year, the Radio Academy Awards or whatever replaces them, and your CV.
2. Please don't use the horrible scratchy output from your logger system. Tinny and bitrate-starved audio puts you at an automatic disadvantage to everyone else. Judges are supposed to overlook that, but its hard not to. (And anyway, you can't use that for on-air use later, can you?)
3. Don't fill your time if you don't need to. Yes, you have up to half an hour in many categories; but if you can convince the judges in twenty minutes, you get no extra points for padding.
4. Make the audio really count. The judges' aim is to judge the audio in front of them. We can't base our award on stuff we heard once but isn't in your entry, because that wouldn't be fair to stations we don't listen to.
5. Make your audio back up the award you are entering. It should be really clear what this compilation is a compilation of, and how it answers the rubric of the category you're entering. If it isn't, you're doing it wrong. (And trust me, many stations, big and small, have done it wrong).
6. Take care of your additional information. Poor photocopies or handwritten notes don't help your entry.
7. But remember it's a radio award, not a typesetting award, nor a "best use of the departmental laminator" award. The audio is what matters, over and above anything else. So take the time to mix it well, edit it nicely, and watch those levels. Lessen repetition in a compilation, if you can, particularly if there's a signature tune or a voiced jingle for the feature you're entering.
8. But the most important rule is left to last. Enter. Because if you don't enter, you're guaranteed not to win.

Any other hints and tips? Tell us all, in the comments below.

media.info has learnt that it's one of at least two DAB+ radio stations that are planned to launch on the new commercial radio multiplex in the UK.

Fun Kids will be broadcasting in 32kbits/s parametric stereo: which has been hailed as 'great audio quality' by many who've found the SDL tests. It's the same as "Sound Waves+" on the testing multiplex. It's using HE-AAC v2, which a516digital has noted is not fully supported by all DAB+ radio sets.

A well-written FAQ on the Folder Media website says that test transmissions will start on 15th February.

Fun Kids, operated by the same team behind multiplex operators Muxco, was the first radio station to trial DAB+ transmissions in the UK. Folder Media, which runs Muxco, was also part of the opposing bid for the second commercial digital radio multiplex.

Fun Kids already operates in London on DAB Digital Radio, and these transmissions are not planned to cease.

This comes a week after DAB+ channels appeared on the Portsmouth smallscale DAB multiplex trial.

Press Release

Radio's biggest unserved audience - children - finally get a radio station they can call their own, with the nationwide launch of Fun Kids.

Fun Kids broadcasts a mix of music, games and silliness for 6 to 12 year olds, hosted by a group of exciting, young radio presenters. In addition the station brings sing-a-longs, stories and learning for pre-schoolers with Fun Kids Junior, on-air when older brothers and sisters are at school.

Fun Kids, which up to now, has only broadcast on digital radio in London has enjoyed considerable success over the past five years, winning industry awards and reaching over a quarter of million young listeners each week.

Matt Deegan, Station Manager of Fun Kids: "Up until now children have been abandoned by the radio industry - both by commercial radio and the BBC. Fun Kids has built a large audience by catering for their tastes and interests, but we've been limited by just broadcasting digitally in London. The launch of Fun Kids across the UK will allow more children to have a radio station that they can call their own. Many radio stations talk about the need to bring young listeners to radio, but we're the only ones actually doing it."

As well as a broadcast radio station, Fun Kids has a popular website, operates over 150 podcasts channels and runs 6 YouTube channels covering everything from gaming to education.

Matt continues: "Kids are natively multi-platform. Whether it's TV, the radio, tablets or hand-me-down iPhones, kids love content made for them. Growing our digital radio reach means that we'll be reaching more radios and unlocking the 1.9m cars that came with DAB as standard last year, allowing kids, all over the UK, to spend even more time with Fun Kids"

Fun Kids' national launch is part of a new national digital multiplex that will bring a selection of new radio stations to the UK. The station will go live to the UK on the 29th February. Listeners should ‘autotune’ their radio to pick up Fun Kids and the other new stations.

The radio is plastic, but is well-built with a satin finish. It's dominated by a large mono speaker and the 2.8" TFT screen, with one rotary control below and a set of four preset buttons. All the buttons are nicely contoured, and feel solid.

The back of the unit has a battery compartment (4xAA batteries); 3.5mm connections for auxiliary-in and headphones; a micro-USB connection for software updates and a power connector. A large, solid-feeling metal antenna extends from the back.

Also in the box is a mains adaptor, and a fold-out instruction leaflet in many different languages.

Simple and great user interface

This unit is an entirely new interface for Pure (for me, at least). Pure has retained a two-line display on almost all its receivers since the Pure Evoke-1 was launched nearly fifteen years ago. It's a welcome change.

It's surprisingly difficult to find a simple digital radio with easy presets and a rotary volume control: but this is it. A big power button on the bottom-right of the unit turns it on; the rotary control is for the volume, and there are four preset buttons prominently visible just below the screen. Most listeners tune in to less than four channels every week, so this is all that's required (though you can actually program forty presets). The buttons are large, easy to use, and instead of being on the top of the device, they face the user.

Changing the station (beyond the simple presets) is also relatively simple. You hit the "Stations" button, and the unit displays a list of stations - unabbreviated - which you can use the rotary control to scroll through. The only slightly unintuitive bit is a need to depress that rotary control in to select the station you want. Personally, I'd have made the unit tune to stations as you scroll down the list - and that's the behaviour in FM mode anyway.

So, as a radio for an older listener - particularly coupled with the clear screen - this is an ideal purchase.

The unit sounds okay. The speaker sounds a little 'boxy', and while it does have EQ controls in one of the menus, there's probably little you can do to improve that. But this isn't a hifi device, and the sound quality's good enough for a little radio for the kitchen, the bedroom or the office.

The receiver also has two alarm functions and a kitchen timer. In standby mode, the screen displays the time and date. The broadcast time is used, which should be accurate. You can set the display to be "dim" in standby mode, which is properly dim enough for a bedroom overnight. (Ask me how I know.)

The colour screen

DAB radio (both DAB and DAB+) has the capability for something called SLS, or "slideshow" - broadcast images while you listen.

However, a UK purchaser will be disappointed: no national radio stations carry any artwork. Slideshow is limited to Capital and Heart in London, and some channels in Portsmouth. If you're a BBC listener, or to any other station, you'll probably never see anything other than a DAB logo. This isn't Pure's fault; but it means most listeners won't get the true potential of this device.

Listeners in Germany or Australia (and many other countries) will, however, find graphics accompanying most broadcasts. They appear fairly quickly - within ten seconds or so of tuning in - carried in the audio signal.

By default, the slide image gets resized by this unit to be very small. Brisbane's 973 carries short news stories that are reduced, on this device, to indistinct grey lines; and now-playing information on Nova is unreadable.

It isn't mentioned in the manual, nor online: but you can make the display larger. Hold down the volume button for three seconds, and you can flip between a "slideshow plus DLS" view, or even a "slideshow in full screen" view. This isn't intuitive; but it's a permanent setting that's worth knowing about (if stations have SLS where you are). I'd recommend that Pure makes this feature a little more obvious.

A little frustratingly on the default view, status indicators on both the top and bottom of the screen don't leave enough space for the DLS, the text accompanying radio broadcasts, which can be forced to scroll. With a screen this large, that's unnecessary.

For FM it displays FM RDS RadioText; though my receiver consistently added a random character at the end - it's unlikely you'd use FM on this device, mind you, when you've DAB available. And, while I'm being picky, when you turn the radio on, it says "Connecting..." rather than more correct "Tuning..." - the unit has no internet connectivity. But now I'm being a little too niggly for a device that doesn't deserve criticism.

Summary

This is a great, simple, radio with unfussy and easy controls. It looks great and feels well-built.

It's probably the best budget radio that Pure have ever built in terms of simplicity and ease of use. The colour screen offers much potential. For its current Argos price of £49, it's unbeatable value.

For Australian users, it would open up the additional information on display on most stations. Pure are hard to find in Australia, and the SRP is AUD$149 - about £87 - which doesn't make it quite so cheap. You should, though, seek one out somehow, once it ends its exclusive period with Argos.

• Pure receivers - though not this one - are available with a three year warranty through amazon.co.uk

Disclosure: the author once worked on a project for Pure's internet connected radio service, but hasn't worked there for over five years. The receiver was a gift from an industry body, and was not given to review.

The Shure MV51 is an old-fashioned looking large-diaphragm microphone, but it is anything but old-fashioned inside. It’s a mike that comes with a USB cable for your laptop; and a lightning cable for an iPhone or iOS device. No mixing desk, XLR cables, or anything else required. Just the Shure MV51 - and the device you already have.

It’s a chunky, heavy metal device which feels very well built. It’s a strange design - built to sit on a table, with a little expandable leg at the back. The rubber foot for this comes off, and you can replace it with a standard mic stand adaptor - which I did, because I’m not three feet tall. For an interview with a few people, it’s the perfect device to chuck on a table in front of you. It isn’t great for holding. But you wouldn’t want to - because this isn’t a great microphone for up-close anyway - its large diaphragm isn’t built for that.

The buttons on the front of the device give five different modes of audio processing for different types of recording. I’m not normally a fan of these, but the speech setting appears to have some processing on it and works pretty well.

A piece of nice design is the volume control on the front, which works by swiping it. This sorts out the input level for microphone as well as the output level for your headphones, which also plug into this device - being able to change the input level is useful for many different things: it’s surprising how many web apps, for example, don’t let you change the volume level.

In use, I started being a little disappointed in how easy it was to pop from six inches away, before realising that the best way to get the most out of this microphone was to use it a foot or so away.

For an interview on location with some atmosphere - like my garden - this is a very good, well-featured, microphone with virtually zero setup, that will already plug into your laptop or mobile phone. You really don’t need more than this to get some great audio on the road.

The Shure MV51 undeniably looks quirky, but sounds pretty good. In US money it’s $199. In Australia, Shure products are distributed by Jands - jands.com.au - where you can find a local stockist.

And if you're wondering what it sounds like when read by a man who wasn't really planning to film himself, then watch this (unprocessed audio other than normalisation):

It turns out that an innovative radio station is operating in my home country of Australia, which is using content in a very clever way. So, let me introduce you to NTS - News, Talk, Sport. NTS is a 24-hour talk radio station which makes great radio happen all over again, and I'm quite a fan of it.

I happened across NTS on my DAB+ digital radio in Australia, though it's also carried online and through its own mobile apps. It's also available for other radio stations to take, to add an additional stream for their websites as well as open up additional advertising opportunities. At first, I'll be honest, it was a slightly bewildering experience.

NTS sounds like a typical newstalk radio station: a presenter interviews someone about a topical subject. They finish the interview, break for commercials, and then... you hear a different presenter, a different subject, and a different interviewee. And then another, and another; plus some national news bulletins. It's like a continually-resetting talk station: because that's essentially what it is.

NTS is run by Macquarie Media, one of the large radio groups in Australia; and NTS is a national "best-of" network, with highlight interviews and features from Macquarie's local news and talk stations. It's a clever way of reinventing talk radio, and a surprisingly good listen.

I spoke to 2AY's Mark Taylor, who's also a fan. 2AY is an AM station in Albury, NSW, covering 150,000 people. He offers NTS with local advertising on the 2AY website, as an additional service for his audience. He says it's a great addition: allowing them to offer some of Macquarie's big names like Alan Jones or Ray Hadley. It's an on-ramp for advertisers, he said: a good low-cost trial for smaller advertisers to understand how radio works before committing to the higher costs of their popular AMer. It runs ten minutes of advertising an hour, helping keep ad yield higher on the main service, and makes money.

Bill Barrington, the General Manager of Maquarie Media Syndication, talked me through some of the secrets of how it works. Producers across Australia clip segments of their programmes after transmission. These clips are then edited to remove original station idents or "call now" invitations, and are then sent to NTS's playout service.

On a typical day, there are around 100 programming clips in the system, which are played alongside national news already being produced by Macquarie for partner stations. The clips themselves are scheduled as you would schedule a song: so if you regularly listen to the service, you shouldn't hear the same clip being used more than once. Oh, and those clips are as long as they need to be, so the station doesn't follow any typical time clocks, either. Another refreshing idea.

NTS also carries bespoke programming, including a politics show that, among other things, uses the full interviews with politicians rather than the soundbites from the news headlines. It also acts as an additional local outlet for sports coverage, where that makes sense - or, one presumes, as a sustaining service where streams would otherwise fall silent due to rights reasons.

It’s not aiming to be your favourite station, instead offering an additional stream to a primary service. And it does a good job in this: a safety-net for the button-puncher to keep them with Macquarie content even if the current subject on 4BC isn’t to their liking.

An entire national radio station, re-using the very best content from local stations, is an innovative idea. Even cleverer when you realise that it only takes half a staff member to keep it running. You can take a listen at http://radionts.com.au/ - where, usefully, you’ll get prime-time content whatever time of the day or night it is.

By the way - there’s also a “best of” station in London: “LBC London News” is a small, mostly-automated station that runs interview clips from the main LBC service, alongside news and sport bulletins, extended travel news, and occasional live event coverage. This small, part-time service posts similar listening figures to BBC Radio London. That, too, is worth a listen - as it, too, makes the most of great content.

It's particularly interesting for me, since I don't make radio. I've not been on the air for ten years (though I'd love to again); neither have I had to sit and produce a programme for many years. So I listen to this stuff as a listener, not as a producer or a programme-maker.

This time, I've been judging a set of podcasts. By its very nature, that means you get to hear a wide range of things - anyone, of course, can record a podcast (I mean, anyone). That means you get to hear from established broadcasters as well as people who are quite new to it.

Some of what I've heard has been a bit of a disappointment. If you've ever judged any radio awards - yes, podcasting is radio - then you'll be familiar with what I mean. You can quickly get dispirited with the quality of the entries you hear. Sometimes, you look forward to judging a particular entry - and maybe even leave it as a 'treat' - only to discover it's nowhere near as good as you thought it was going to be.

The opposite is true, of course. You can sometimes look at the descriptions and overviews, and form an impression that the audio you're going to hear is going to be a bit mediocre - and then be blown away with the quality.

I have noticed a few patterns appearing in the podcasts I've judged. I figured it might be useful to somebody if I were to point a few examples out.

First - length. If there's one, overwhelming, thing I'd like to remind podcast producers of, it's length. Bigger does not mean better. Make your podcast as long as it absolutely has to be. No longer. Then edit it down. Ruthlessly. Making a one-on-one interview podcast be almost two hours long - yes, I heard one - either means a) you don't care about your audience's time which means you're stupid; b) you don't know how to edit audio which means you're stupid; or c) you don't want people to listen to it which means you're stupid. Don't be stupid.

If you're wondering what the right length for a podcast is, I can't tell you. But if you're wondering what the normal maximum length for a podcast should be, I'd probably tell you about 30 minutes. That's the average commute in most countries. There are good reasons to make a podcast longer than that, and I like a well-produced long-form interview too, but you're risking people abandoning your podcast if you go over an average commute length.

Second - resetting and forward-promotion. Because many podcasts aren't produced by radio people, these standard radio tips have been lost along the way. An excellent programme director I once worked for told me to remember that there are new listeners joining every day - and that it's my job to make them feel as welcome as possible, and give them reasons to stick around.

Your first sentence might be to explain about what this podcast is about to help a new listener, and to reinforce your brand with a current one. "This is a podcast about successful business-people sharing their success with you." If you have an interview, sell me the guest first and why I should stick with you. "This was a really fascinating interview with Richard Branson and I think you'll love it" is not a sell. "You'll learn why Richard Branson never wears a tie - and his secret method of spotting a new business opportunity" might get me listening.

And third - self-indulgence. Many podcasts are put together as a bit of a hobby, I understand that, and yes, they should be fun to put together. But just as self-indulgence can mean a two-hour podcast, self-indulgence can also mean too much banter, too many in-jokes, and a loss of focus. One podcast I heard started with a long jokey discussion about what the hosts had for supper the previous evening. It was a TV review podcast. Argh.

There are another four lessons for podcasters - based on data, rather than just my own hunches - from NPR over here. It doesn't just tell you how long a podcast should be, it also tells you what to do in it. Of all the pieces I share on Twitter, it was the most retweeted last week - for good reason.

The drop in audience in Europe was because of the timezone differences, say most commentators. Variety reports that the BBC's audience for the first few days was down from 39.2m to 24.6m.

Seven Network in Australia also saw a drop, with figures for the opening ceremony down by 15%. The company pointed to record streaming figures, and argued that the increasingly multiplatform nature of the Games meant that performance should be measured in a similar fashion.

The figures in the US, which is on roughly the same timezone as Rio, were underwhelming, with NBC's coverage of the opening ceremony slipping 35% from the London games, and the lowest viewership since the Athens Olympics of 2004. NBC, too, pointed to the multiplatform nature of their offering leading to increased viewer choice and therefore less linear viewing.

One US viewer, though, posted a long rant on Medium about the quality and availability of NBC's coverage. Others posted that the initials of the US network stood for "Nothing But Commercials", and criticised its approach.

Figures for multiplatform are less consistently available, and are poorly understood by many broadcasters. PEPPTV, an informal grouping of broadcaster industry groups and sales houses, released a press release claiming the BBC's online coverage had 68m "unique users" in the UK: a curious claim, given the UN estimate of the UK population is only 65m. The BBC's own press release claims a UK reach of 68.3m unique devices.

Rio 2016 opening ceremony - live, linear TV
Finland (YLE): 148,000 viewers (75% audience share)
Australia (7 Network): 2.3m (74%)
Netherlands (NPO): 623,000 (58%)
UK (BBC): 2.5m (52%)
Italy (RAI): 40%
Canada (CBC): 3.9m (38%)
France (France 2/Canal Plus): 1.4m (29%)
Germany (ARD/ZDF): 2.0m (30%)
Spain (RTVE): 914,000 (21.8%)
US (NBC): 26.5m (17%)

• Source: PEPPTV, except highlighted. 'Audience share' in these figures is the share of everyone watching the TV at that moment; so the UK had about 5m people watching the TV of which half were watching the opening ceremony.

Press release

29 August 2016, Brussels – This year’s Olympic Games in Rio were a massive TV and online hit in every corner of the globe. Nine countries have put together TV viewing data for the opening and closing ceremonies and for high performing Olympic moments.

Different countries tuned in to different moments depending on the involvement of their own competitors. For example, Andre de Grasse winning the silver medal for the 200 meter sprint athletics for Canada was watched by 7.2 million Canadians, and Germany playing Brazil in the football final attracted 8.3 million German fans. And, although live TV audiences for the opening and closing ceremonies were lower than for the London Olympics due to time differences, millions still watched at all hours of the day.

Rio was a much bigger online hit than London. Most countries reached new online records. BBC Sport’s coverage reached 102 million unique users globally, with 68 million coming from the UK. This represents the biggest success ever for BBC Sport’s digital service. 150 million videos from France Télévisions were watched on its websites, apps and external platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram – six times more than the London Games. The Netherlands also set online records with a total audience of 6.5 million unique visitors on the online platforms of NPO, a growth of 27% compared to London.

Katty Roberfroid, Director General of egta comments on behalf of PEPPTV: “The Olympic Games in Rio once again proved the power of live TV and its capacity to bring people together. Broadcasters throughout Europe have reasons to be proud of the audience figures achieved during the Games in Brazil. The Games evidently prove that live events – and especially sport events – are the biggest asset for TV broadcasters. This is what makes TV so relevant, so appealing to massive audiences and so social. There is no alternative medium that reaches and impacts such a big crowd as TV does.”

However, the Finnish media company Nelonen Media set their target a little higher when they built their new app, called Supla.

They put all their radio stations in there: live and on-demand. They own a TV channel, too, and realised that they could also put selected TV shows as audio within the app. You could easily do this with things like American Idol, for example, or most game shows. And then they added additional live audio channels, like extra sports commentaries.

Then it gets more interesting still: because they’ve invested in their own “Supla original” content that you can only get within the app. One of them, a list show from two authors, has already had over a million listens - not bad for a country with only 5.4 million people.

Flushed with that success, they’re adding audio books, as well as independent podcasts. And this marks the real difference between Supla and other radio apps - because, as they say, it isn’t a radio app. Instead it contains everything AUDIO that listeners wish to consume.

On a more technical level, there are obvious but regularly missed things. There’s a history of what you’ve heard, so you can go back to stuff you’ve heard before; you can make your own playlists of content you want to listen to, and when you get to the end of one episode it’ll automatically play the next one for you.

Monetisation is through targeted advertising: both geotargeting and registration data. They plan to use the app to test new formats, too, and they’re planning ad-free subscription models.

Supla was launched in November last year, and so far it’s more than doubled the on-demand audio that the company makes available.

So what more could you put in your radio app? Are there local podcasts you can partner with? What other assets can you use? It’s interesting to see what you CAN do, if you can escape the transmitter mindset, and instead, think about the content you have and how you can best use it.

Online audio is increasing - in terms of 'average active sessions', pureplays (like Pandora) are up by 10% year-on-year, while broadcast simulcasts are up by 19.5%.

Mobile is becoming more important - 77.6% of total listening is now done on a mobile device. That's increased from 74.4% in the last six months, and is showing slow increases month-by-month.

iOS leads the way - 40% of all mobile listening was delivered over iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad). Android was responsible for 31% of all listening.

As background, the US smartphone market is 52% Android, 43% iOS; however, iOS appears to have a more affluent user-base (and thus more likely to have access to wifi and decent data packages).

The top ten individual networks in the global Audio Ranker (0600-0000), sorted by total time-spent-listening, are:

1. iHeartRadio: 169,573,607 hours streamed in June 2016
2. Prisa Radio: 36,032,752
3. NPR Member Stations: 22,995,581
4. Cumulus: 20,792,857
5. CBS Radio: 18,403,763
6. ESPN Radio: 10,256,819
7. AccuRadio: 9,627,758
8. Univision: 8,883,160
9. Entercom: 8,638,287
10. EMF: 7,971,619

iHeartRadio's figures, above, aren't the figure for the iHeartRadio app: just the figures for iHeartRadio's own streams, which account for around half the audio consumed within the app.

How big is internet radio? - to put these figures into an international, multiplatform, context, the "NPR Member Stations" global online-only figure above is equivalent to 5,365,635 hours listened a week. In the UK across all platforms, BBC Radio 4 achieves 124,359,000 hours a week. The UK 15+ population is 54m.

NPR Member Stations have an 'average active sessions' online-only figure of 44,454. In Sydney across all platforms, local public radio station 702 ABC Sydney has an average of 55,000 listeners per session. The Sydney 10+ population is 4.2m.

Richter, established in 1986 and a brand well-known in Australia's loudspeaker market, move into the Australian DAB+ market with two budget models, followed by some connected receivers later in the year.

The CORE, a kitchen radio, is a stylish retro-looking DAB/FM with an RRP of $74.98 (about £45). The set has a small display, an extendable antenna, and button controls. It can be operated off battery.

The WAKE is a digital alarm-clock radio with NFC-controlled Bluetooth connection, a large rotary volume control, a wire antenna, and a USB charging port for your phone. It'll retail at $159 (£95), and will be available in both a walnut and a black version.

Internally, both sets use the Frontier Silicon Verona 2 module.

Retailers at launch include Harvey Norman stores, online, and independent outlets.

DAB+ sets in Australia are still regarded as premium products by many manufacturers, and these lower-priced receivers should be welcomed by audiences. Within existing transmission areas, over 25% of Australians listen to DAB+ radio every week.

The Richter website also promises a portable receiver will be available shortly.

Press release

Richter Audio does Digital Radio

Richter, an award-winning Australian loudspeaker brand established in 1986, has added digital radio to its product range.

Australian-owned Richter Audio will launch its Digital Essentials Radio range in July, followed by a Smart Audio Digital Radio range later in the year.

Digital Essential Radios deliver quality, design and performance and provide an affordable entry into the Digital Radio DAB+ market segment. Radio is a big part of people’s lives and, now that so many digital-only radio services are catering for different genres, Richter is set to play an important role in this exciting audio category.

The CORE Digital Radio is finished in cool grey with stylish platinum grey metallic foil. It has a display for easy selection of your favourite digital stations as well as scrolling text, time and date. There is a headphone socket for personal listening and it runs on mains or battery power. The CORE uses the latest digital module for improved performance.

With the WAKE Digital Alarm Clock Radio you can start your day with your favourite digital radio station. Designed to complement its surroundings, the Wake is available in black or with a warm walnut finish. Easy to use, it has a generous 3.2” display and clearly laid out control panel with a large dial for volume and menu selection. Bluetooth with NFC tap and pair allows you to stream your own music from a compatible smart device and you can also fast-charge your smart device from the USB output.

Launching in July, the Richter Digital Essential Radios are priced from $74.98 to $159 and will be available from Harvey Norman stores and selected Richter Specialist retailers.

The app's homescreen includes a scrolling list of radio stations, the latest news bulletin, and trending clips and podcasts from the Australian public service broadcaster. As the BBC iPlayer Radio app, its logo is derived from the TV product (iView) with an added radio broadcast device.

I tried the app, available now from Apple and Google app stores. The app is a colourful experience, with crisp artwork and clear iconography. It uses the new ABC typeface, and appears to load relatively quickly. It correctly identified my local ABC station. The "Discover" tab appears quite well-featured, with listeners able to drill down into ABC content by topic or station.

However, it almost completely lacks listen-again features: the only programs available from ABC Radio Brisbane, the corporation's station for the Queensland capital, are networked programs like Conversations, PM or Nightlife. Craig Zonca, the #1 breakfast show in the city, has no further material available nor any opportunity to listen again to either excerpts or the whole program. Using the 'discover' tab to search for "Brisbane" surprisingly finds zero results. Podcast programs appear to be able to be downloaded using the app, but only if individual episodes are added to a playlist.

The app doesn't appear to follow Android design guidelines, moving the hamburger menu to the top-right instead of the top-left and using dots rather than lines. Unusually, when listening to any output it fails to show audio control notifications. Listening on Android 8.0 generates an error showing that the app is running in the background, and offers an opportunity to force close it. It does not work with Chromecast or Google Home. It does, however, have full support for Android Auto, though I couldn't get the "featured" tab to work.

The app looks different from the Corporation's "ABC" app, which contains news, and uses different iconography, font sizes and UX patterns. This appears to be a missed opportunity.

This is a step forward from previous versions of the app; and I understand that additional features are shortly going to ship. There is much to like in it - yet, it would appear, much to work on - for Android especially.

Press release

The ABC has launched its much-anticipated new audio app ABC listen, giving audiences an improved digital listening experience for both live streaming and on-demand content.

ABC listen replaces the existing ABC Radio app and offers enhanced navigation, personalisation and content search functions.

Director of Radio, Michael Mason, said the new app recognised the changing habits of ABC listeners. “Our previous Radio app has proved extremely popular since its launch in 2012 and this new app marks a major step forward in our ability to provide seamless and easy-to-navigate access to our enormous range of on-demand and live audio content,” Mr Mason said. “By focusing on the user’s own behaviours and preferences it opens up our content and allows for much easier discovery.”

ABC listen provides access to 45 ABC radio stations and audio networks including the ABC’s four national networks, its eight capital city local radio stations, 10 digital stations and 23 regional radio stations. It also provides a platform for more than 130 programs and podcasts.

The main features include a redesigned home page highlighting popular ABC programs, trending podcasts and a personalised playlist. Users will also be able to easily access favourite content in the new ‘My Programs’ tab. These functions allow the new app to highlight and recommend the most relevant content to each user.

Users of the new app will still be able to find all their favourite radio streams and content including hourly ABC News bulletins from wherever they listen, be it on their mobile device, tablet or in the car.

Alongside the launch of ABC listen, ABC has released two compelling new podcasts both with listener experiences available exclusively via the new app. Ladies, We Need To Talk is an eight-part series presented by Yumi Stynes exploring female relationships, health and sexuality. Exclusive bonus episodes are available only on ABC listen. And, the six-part series How Do You Sleep At Night? which looks at people who live their lives in the face of judgement and is presented by triple j Hack’s Sarah McVeigh. The entire series will be available for download ABC listen from Wednesday 13 September (or released weekly via other podcast platforms).

ABC listen is now available for free download from either the Apple Store or Google Play. ABC Radio’s triple j and triple j Unearthed apps will continue as stand-alone apps.

The website - fully responsive, displaying perfectly on any screen, looks impressively different for a radio station website. Very large images, with vibrant, crisp artwork all over the place, and a carefully minimalist design that exudes the brand identity of the station.

The station's taken a leaf out of Google's Material Design and the latest version of OSX - flat design with subtle animations are all over the website, with the purple brand accent colour front and centre. It replaces separate websites for individual Absolute stations with one for the entire brand - the schedule shows all the stations, and the presenters page lists presenters across all the stations, not just the ones on the main service.

It's only after playing with it for a little while that you're struck by what's missing.

There are no banner ads.

The website's still being monetised, with their competition section still there, and a newly-promoted ticket store - but there are no banner ads, no twiddly buttons, no MPUs, nothing. And this is highly deliberate.

Speaking to Bauer's Digital Product Director Anthony Abbott over a coffee a few months ago, he was animated about this strategy.

From his point of view, chasing page impressions is increasingly irrelevant. Much brand engagement now happens away from websites - particularly on social media and within mobile apps. Couple that with the ever-lowering cost-per-thousand of ad banners, he has a better idea how radio stations can earn revenue online: by getting the audience to sign in and listen.

Absolute's inStream strategy of offering personalised advertising when you listen online is offering significantly higher yield to the brand, in a business that has seen raw spot-rates fall almost consistently over the last twenty years. The opportunities that "big data" can offer the radio industry is high. Yet, almost entirely, these opportunities are not taken by radio stations.

This new website's strategy is that, by chasing sign-ins and listening, they focus on the main business of a radio station: increased audience, and engagement with their audience. That's smart. And the right thing to do, I think.

Technically clever

The new Absolute Radio website is inspiring from a tech point of view. It's a fully responsive site, and looks and works well on a mobile, a tablet or a large-screen computer.

A view of the source code shows neat, properly indented code. All the various Facebook, Twitter and even Microsoft tags are in place. URLs are mostly free of opaque ID numbers.

All personal elements - registration, logging-in, personal information - are dealt with by using secure SSL. https pages are really good practice for anything to do with personal information, and the only other broadcaster I can think that does this is the BBC. This is really very good practice, and something I ought to do here on media.info.

Much of the content appears to be carefully manipulated. Hero images on the front page appear to go through a cycle, with different, and striking, images appearing on every return. Logging in appears to change the content given to you on the front page. No longer am I being given generic information about the radio station - now I'm being given direct calls-to-action in terms of content and concert tickets. My cookie contains an "ARVisitCount" figure, which leads me to suspect that the station will also surface different types of information when I return to the site. Again, the clever use of data in this way is impressive and worth investigating further.

There's lots to learn when looking under the hood. The lack of third-party code from ad banners means the site loads snappily and fast.

On a personal level, I'm gratified to see the retention of some of the copy I once wrote for the station (when it was branded Virgin); and I'm particularly pleased to see the "made in the UK" flag retained on the bottom of every page. It's something I put onto the Virgin Radio website in the mid 2000s, and occasionally blog about. We should be proud of the digital innovation coming from this country; and Absolute Radio gives us much to admire.

The sets are Digital Tick approved, which means they are also capable of DAB+ reception, which'll be needed for at least one station on the new SoundDigital multiplex when it starts broadcasting next year.

The sets also come with Bluetooth for music streaming, and an optional internal rechargeable battery pack, which gives up to 20 hours listening.

Pure were the first receiver manufacturer to produce a sub-£100 DAB radio, and is widely credited for kickstarting DAB in the UK.

Both sets are mono.

Press release

Pure presents a new designer digital radio collaboration featuring prints by leading British manufacturer of fabrics and wallpaper, Sanderson.

The Evoke Mio D2 and Evoke Mio D4 digital radios, which also include Bluetooth, come in Sanderson’s “Chelsea” and “Dandelion Clocks” prints. The range will be available exclusively through John Lewis, at an SRP of £199.99 and £149.99 respectively.

The Chelsea and Dandelion Clocks designs have been especially tailored for the radios by Sanderson and offer customers both traditional and contemporary options.

Chelsea is a Sanderson classic, which has been in its range since 1957. The traditional rose bouquet wraps the Evoke Mio in a nostalgic floral print, adding a touch of vintage to a sophisticated technology.

Dandelion Clocks was designed by Fiona Howard and first launched in the Options 10 collection in 2008. One of Sanderson’s best ever selling prints, this contemporary design nods to the swinging sixties with its pastel palette.

“Pure’s Evoke Mio is the ideal canvas for our prints; its iconic design is a contemporary twist on a traditional signature for the brand, which has become symbolic of quality radio,” affirms Alison Gore, at Sanderson. “The most successful trends in fashion and interior design always make a reappearance, which is why both Pure and Sanderson champion styles in home design, which marry traditionally popular prints with a contemporary edge.”

Nick Hucker, Pure’s senior director of global marketing says: “Sanderson is a fantastic addition to our designer digital radio range. Both brands pride themselves on their British heritage and quality so this partnership is a perfect fit and we think our customers will really love both design options. Consumers are increasingly looking for beautiful products that will complement their home interior design; teaming up with leading designers like Sanderson, helps us to ensure there is something to suit all tastes.”

Benefitting from Pure’s heritage in British design and engineering, both radios come with Bluetooth for wireless streaming and are packed with high-quality components, hand tuned and built with wooden cabinets to enhance audio. Combined with highly energy-efficient digital audio amplification, the Evoke D2 and D4 Mio deliver the best possible sound quality. They also benefit from excellent battery life and low power consumption.

Other features include an aux input for an iPod/ MP3 player, alarm, sleep and snooze timers, high quality OLED display and a kitchen timer. The radios can also be taken out and about thanks to support for the optional rechargeable battery packs, which give users up 20 hours of portable listening per charge for the Evoke D2 Mio and 12-15 hours for the Evoke D4 Mio. The Evoke D4 Mio also comes with a remote control. As with all of Pure’s current range of digital radios, both models are Digital Tick approved, meaning they are ready for a digital radio switchover, ensuring they will not only look good and sound great in any room, but are future proofed.

The range starts from an SRP of £149.99 up to £199.99, and is available now from John Lewis.

The team was preparing for the annual Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity Field Gun Competition at HMS Collingwood last Saturday, where they successfully qualified for a trophy.

Newcomer Dan - third from left in the photo above - had two months of intense circuit training and mastered running with 20kg Powerbags on each arm, before he pulled the one-ton gun with the team – the same weight as a Ford Sierra.

“I was regularly in the gym and, on the odd occasion, the military PTIs would add in some Field Gun circuits which were specific but much more demanding” said Dan. “I had to survive track training without injury and gain approval of the Crew No.1 Trainer and my team mates too.”

“Individuals normally focus on one position but in my case I was utilised as Speedy Bullet, Heavy End Number, Drags, Slats, and Shackles. Despite the frequent rotation I was called the ‘dark horse’ due to my versatility and aptitude.”

At HMS Collingwood 18-man teams compete on a 78 metre-long track with no obstacles. The gun is fired six times and there are two wheel changes – all completed, on average, in 85 seconds but time penalties can also be awarded.

The Gibraltar Field Gun crew includes members from the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and British Army. Crew No.1 Captain Kenny Alvarez is part of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment while Crew PTI POPT ‘Bungy’ Edwards, who encouraged Dan to train with the team, serves with the Royal Navy.

“It’s an absolute honour and privilege to have trained with British Forces Gibraltar for the Brickwood’s Trophy, which demonstrates some of the fittest and most disciplined personnel in the Forces,” said Dan. “The fact that I have had a clean run without penalties in 1m 48s is an added bonus. BFBS and British Forces Gibraltar have given me a truly unique opportunity, for which I’m extremely grateful.”

As Dan is a civilian, he couldn't be part of the main heats last weekend: but the team from Gibraltar did respectably well, and managed to qualify for The Soapy Watson Cup (we are not making this up) with a run time, after penalties, of one minute 43 seconds. The winner was HMS Heron at one minute 18 seconds.

Photo: Cpl Scott Robertson

Streaming services Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify only account for 3% of listening, according to the GfK-run research. Podcasting isn't split out in the research given, but "other audio" in total only accounts for 5%. "Owned music" - whether CDs or music played on another device - accounts for 12% in the infographic circulated by the Australian industry body.

In the US, Edison Research has also conducted research in in-car listening. They found that 87 minutes a day is spent by commuters listening to audio in cars. When asked "what you listen to most", 69% of respondents claiming they listen most to broadcast radio (AM/FM/satellite). Podcasts and audiobooks both get 2% of the total, and pure-play streaming internet radio accounts for 8%. They also discovered that US AM/FM radio listeners, on average, switch station 22 times in their commute.

Another US survey from Music Biz Consumer Insights and LOOP reports that only 15% are listening to streaming internet radio in cars. A follow-up claims that 29% use streaming music at some point.

In Europe, Radioplayer's research - limited to owners of new cars bought in the last three years - says that 75% of all audio listening is to the radio. In France, Germany and the UK, 84% of drivers 'always' or 'almost always' listen to the radio on a journey, according to research produced for the company, which is working on hybrid radio receivers for the car; and 69% of drivers would retain the radio above all-else.

44% of radio listening in the US is in-car, compared to only 20% in the UK, 23% in Norway, and 33% in Australia. It's 60% in Italy.

In Malaysia, radio in-car is the most popular way to listen to the radio, with 79% of radio listeners in Peninsular Malaysia using it each month.

• If you're aware of other research detailing radio in-car, please drop us a note: we're at news@media.info

Aussie radio still king of the road

Radio remains the most popular entertainment choice on the road, with Australian commuters largely overlooking the music streaming options that have been introduced into car dashboards, according to research released today.

Radio accounts for 80% of in-car listening, followed by owned music such as CDs and downloads making up 12% of listening, and three per cent of listening going to the streaming services Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify, the GfK Australian Share of Audio study found.

Joan Warner, the chief executive officer of industry body Commercial Radio Australia, said the data was a reminder of the strong attachment consumers have with radio.

“In-car technology will continue to evolve but radio still has a central place on the dashboard because it’s a core part of the driving experience and the daily commute,” she said.

Among people who listen to audio in the car, the average daily time spent listening to radio is one hour and 11 minutes versus three minutes for streaming.

The GfK research is the first major comprehensive study of the evolution of the audio landscape in Australia and examines how and where Australians consume all forms of audio in a dynamic and changing market that includes radio, streaming, podcasts and online music videos.

Tony Kendall, chief executive of Australian Radio Network and chair of CRA’s Marketing and Brand Committee, said the research would dispel myths about the reach of global competitors.

“No other audio platform comes close to local radio in terms of reach and time spent listening, and that’s a message the industry is taking to advertisers and agencies,” he said.

The industry has launched an integrated on-air and trade marketing campaign to promote radio on the back of the research. As part of this, a four-week Media i campaign has just commenced using 220 screens in more than 60 media agencies across the five metropolitan capital cities.

The campaign promotes the key findings that 65% of all audio listening is to Australian radio and the medium is the number one audio platform for all demographics.

• The Australian Share of Audio report is detailed on the CRA's trade website.

Pokémon Go is big. Really big. It’s only been launched a week - in the US and Australia only - and it already has more users than Twitter. In the first two days, it was installed on 5% of all Android phones in the US. Its success has spawned acres of media coverage. And, since it gets people active, it’s probably a good thing: exercise is one of the best tools to combat depression and improve mental health.

I’ve been playing a game like it for the last few years. The game was called Ingress: indeed, it’s the same company, Niantic Labs, behind both games.

In Ingress, the equivalent of Pokéstops had some interesting sponsors. Zipcar, the car-sharing club, got all their parking places put into the game. Since the game guarantees footfall, that meant that every single Ingress player was quickly educated as to where their local Zipcar location was.

Jamba Juice, a US-based drinks company, also managed to get all its stores into Ingress. Once more, this guaranteed footfall: and to link a physical walking game with a drinks company was a clever plan.

So, what can we learn from this? Here are three ideas:

Reward listening. Pokémon Go players are typically rewarded for spending longer in the game. So, why aren’t radio stations rewarding listeners for listening longer? I’m surprised that we’ve not turned the act of listening into gamification: rewarding listeners for tuning in and for keeping listening. Earn some notional radio station points, or - better - earn cash to spend at local stores.

Drive footfall. Could you encourage footfall to local stores by building some kind of geotagging into your app? “We’ve got twenty-five tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to give away. Just get down to your local Tim Horton’s and fire up the Hit107 app to enter! They’ve got a fresh pot ready!”

Geo-tag what you’re famous for. When I worked at Virgin Radio, one of my team had a bright idea (partially because he just wanted to play with Google Maps): a database of places to do with the music we played. Abbey Road studios, the telephone box in Heddon Street where David Bowie posed for his Ziggy Stardust album cover, the spot in Berwick Street where Oasis posed for their front cover; the studio retreat in Cornwall where Muse recorded their album, and so on. We called it Rock Pilgrimages, and got it sponsored by a national hotel chain: giving directions to your nearest hotel from each spot. They even put details of their nearest Rock Pilgrimage locations in their properties. Were we doing it now, we’d build it into our mobile app. (Or, we’d licence it to Pokémon Go.)

The success of Pokémon Go is, in part, based on the global Pokémon brand, and its clear proposition: “Gotta catch them all!”. And perhaps this is the main learning for the fragmented world of radio. Focus on national or international brands that share the same proposition: not a mismatch of increasingly irrelevant local radio brands that have little in common. In many places in the world, we’ve had the industry consolidation, but not the brand consolidation that should, also, have happened. And one thing’s for certain: for Pandora or Beats 1, the benefit of a clear international brand is something that they’ll continue to use to their advantage.

There are lots of benefits in working together. By its nature, radio is made up of many different companies, and any opportunity that radio has to promote itself should be welcomed. In South Africa, the RAB closed in December 2014, robbing the country of a strong voice for radio advertising. In the UK, Global has stopped helping fund the Radio Academy, and the Wireless Group pulled out of RadioCentre and the RAB a while ago. The Australian radio market, as far as I can see so far, consists of three different radio industries who don’t talk to each other.

However, something appears to be changing, at least for smaller stations in the UK. The industry is kickstarting a special Local Radio Day, to be held on May 27th - celebrating all that is good about local radio.

In part, this is a crafty way for organisers UKRD - a hyper-local radio group who own a number of small radio stations - to promote their differences. Unlike industry leaders Global or Bauer, UKRD does little networking, preferring to act as distinct local radio stations in their areas.

Nation Broadcasting, a similar company based in Wales, has already pledged to join in, as have Anglian Radio, based in East Anglia. Quite a few community and student radio stations have, too; and two BBC Local Radio stations, BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey, have also pledged their support.

John Whittingdale, the government’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has also come out in favour of the Local Radio Day initiative, and has recorded a YouTube clip saying so. It’s a clever campaign to enlist the support of the person you’re trying to impress. (Oh, and they’ve even got Rick Astley’s support.)

The initiative has a website of its own at http://www.localradioday.co.uk/ - with a slightly barbed history section, pointing out that:

The original [commercial radio] legislation specifically stated that local radio stations should not: “consist of identical or similar material to an extent inconsistent with the character of services as local sound broadcasting services.” Local advisory committees were also legislated for, meaning that local voices from the communities these stations were to serve would be heard and, importantly, listened to.

While all the stations involved so far in Local Radio Day have a market share of under 1% nationwide, it’s clear that this event has the capability to make some noise on the day.

I’m not sure that “local” content is automatically good, though both UKRD and Nation Broadcasting’s output is high quality and connects with local audiences. While others espouse the benefits of “live and local”, I prefer to talk about “real and relevant” content instead.

However, an anti-consolidation event in a month that has seen more radio consolidation is interesting; and can’t help but remind audiences of the benefits of radio that comes from their town, rather than from hundreds of miles away.

Radio stations scrabbled to cover the news - and I’m grateful to UK Radioplayer’s Michael Hill for posting this rather marvellous video of what UK radio looked like at just after 8.00am on the morning of the announcement. It’s a testament to both radio’s capability to react, and also the staggering benefit of a central searchable database.

Many radio stations played lots of David Bowie, of course. But in this era of Spotify and Google Play, if you want to listen to any Bowie, it’s just a click away. There’s not much that’s special about magically being able to play a bunch of Bowie songs, not any more.

There is, however, something special about hearing the man speak. Laying your hands on a prized interview. That’s something that Spotify can’t do.

There’s really something special in reminding your listeners that yes, David Bowie has been into this very radio station. And here’s a clip of him, in this studio, only a few years ago. Here’s our connection.

The image at the top of this article is Ben Jones, a radio presenter who was, it appears, the last person to interview Bowie in the UK. He was working at Virgin Radio at the time, in its former incarnation in the UK, which has now changed to Absolute.

Absolute has published the interview in full online; and Ben’s obviously kept the photograph (and has spoken to Forbes about his experience). I’m sure Absolute re-ran some of the audio. Why wouldn’t you?

But if there’s anything that aptly highlights the transmitter mindset, it’s the failure of most radio stations to keep adequate archives. Why bother if all you do is feed a transmitter? Stations, and brands, come and go: and regularly tape reels and CDs are thrown in a skip rather than being properly archived. And by “properly archived”, I mean being made searchable so you can do clever things with your own content.

For example, I bet Absolute also ran some audio from Coldplay, explaining how they’d been rejected by Bowie in an interview for Absolute’s breakfast show. Could you have done that at your station? What are you doing to archive your audio? Who is in charge of it in your station? Where is it going? How quickly could you grab that audio and get it to air if you needed to?

Dare I say it - what happens when Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney decide to move on to a bigger gig in the sky? Are you prepared? Because a Beatles triple-play won’t cut it.

Industry analysts in the US are running around like headless chickens, claiming that this is the end of days for broadcast radio. If Disney - of all people - don't believe in radio, then what next?

Here's the thing. Disney does believe in radio. But it doesn't believe in AM.

What has actually happened

Radio Disney had 23 radio stations in the US. It is yanking all but one of those stations. As I understand it, 22 of those 23 stations were on AM. AM radio. For a kids service. Seriously?

So, Radio Disney isn't closing down radio. They're closing down AM.

Let's not pull any punches here. Disney is saying that AM radio isn't right for young (music) audiences. And they're right. It sounds crappy. AM isn't built into any consumer electronics these days: no phones, no tablets, no power extension leads. It suffers from interference from broadband, from your 'fridge, from lightening, from light switches. It has a limited frequency response (albeit less limited in the US than in Europe). It's a terrible, terrible place to put music.

The announcement comes with data, reported by BroadcastingCable.com:

According to someone who has seen the figures, Disney’s internal research finds that among Radio Disney listeners six years old and up, 37% listen to the radio via satellite, 35% listen to radio via the Internet and 31% listen using mobile devices. By comparison, just 18% listen to radio via AM and FM broadcast.

First - WTF? Really? 18% of listening was coming from their mostly AM network? I'm amazed it was so high.

Second - how much clearer do you want this? Radio Disney is important to the company, has lots of listeners (via SiriusXM and online), and is clearly producing great programming.

It's not the death knell of radio.

It is the death knell of AM for music radio. But we knew that anyway.

And, oh goodness, when I agree with Mark Ramsey about something, I know there's something wrong with the world.

Please, US radio industry, cure your myopic view

Eric Rhoads's piece is heartfelt comment from a good man with a long radio history. I like and respect Eric, and his thoughts are very similar to many other comments I've read. But, US radio thinking like this is platformist. It treats radio as a transmitter, not as great content delivered how the audience want it. It's like considering a newspaper company merely as a printing press operator, not as a producer of powerful reporting.

Here's the thing. Audiences don't care about radio transmitters. They don't care if it's AM, FM, HD, Sirius or cans with string. They don't care how much data it uses or battery life it chomps through. They care that it's the content they want, on a device they have, in a place they want to consume it.

The myopic US radio industry hasn't looked outside its borders, where this consumer change has happened for years.

As one example - youth radio stations in the UK are doing really well... on the TV. Up in the top of the programme guide on all TV platforms here, you'll find lots of boring blue screens with audio from simulcast radio stations. Kids today have TVs in their bedroom, not AM radio sets. So, KISS or 1Xtra on the television offers content they want, on a device they have, in a place where they want to consume it.

Parts of Europe gave up AM radio broadcasting a long time ago. In other countries, like the UK, audiences for music radio on AM are almost all in steep, terminal, decline. Yet, radio listening here is at an all time high. That's not because we've clung onto AM, trying to force our platformist beliefs onto our audience. It's because we've ensured that UK radio is a multiplatform environment. Only 56% of radio listening in the UK is to AM/FM. As the audience has changed, we have too.

This is a definition thing

Once more, this comes down to an inability in the English language to define "radio". The platformists will define it as an AM or FM transmitter. If you're into platformism, you'll care deeply about radio receivers and frequency spectrum - to the exclusion of all else. Platformism is a religion which has no place in the modern radio industry.

Radio isn't defined by technology. It's defined by content. Radio Disney's listeners are listening to radio - a "shared experience with a human connection", as I define radio - on things like SiriusXM or a stream via a mobile. That is still radio.

A radio broadcasters' job is to ensure that their great radio content is the content their audiences want, on a device they have, in a place where they want to consume it. And that might mean, in the case of Radio Disney, closing down those pointless, wasteful AM transmitters.

Please cure your platformism

Platformism was probably relevant thirty years ago, when radio could only be delivered via AM/FM. But today, it's the main thing that is holding the industry back. While some of us in Europe are cured of platformism, it's a belief that still runs the US industry. It's an ugly belief, and it urgently needs a cure.

FM/AM still has a place. News/talk is still very strong on AM. FM still has the majority of radio listening in pretty well every market in the world.

For the platformists - your job is to ensure that broadcast radio gives a similar user experience to other platforms, so that listeners choose the content they want, on a device they have, in a place where they want to consume it. Be in no doubt: people won't choose to use FM/AM/DAB because it's broadcast radio. They'll choose it because it gives the user experience they want.

That's why I think the NextRadio app and RadioDNS is a huge part of broadcast radio's future - because it makes FM/HD/DAB as compelling as the experience of streaming. It offers people the content they want, on a device they have, in a place they want to consume it. But, crucially, things like RadioDNS - when implemented properly - hides the platform from the audience: using FM/DAB/internet interchangeably. Because the audience don't care about your transmitters.

In short

Does Radio Disney's closure of its 23 AM stations mean radio's dead? No.

Does it mean platformism is dead? I sure hope so.

During the presentation - which you can watch on the Next Radio website for free - she said an interesting thing: she discussed NPR One's Chromecast support.

We released a new feature for them [the community of users] which was Chromecast. ... We've got tremendous kudos from the audience, saying "you heard, thank you - thank you for giving that to me".

Chromecast, an HDMI dongle for your TV which I've also reviewed here, allows you to 'cast' audio and video from your phone or laptop to your television.

A Chromecast - while it works really well - is certainly a minority interest. If you'd do any focus groups, I suspect you'd be hard-pressed to discover 2% of your users with one of these things. If the only thing that drives you is return on investment, you'd probably not bother with it.

But the only thing that matters isn't return on investment: it's also talkability. It's making your audience feel special.

If you can really please that portion of your userbase that use a particular device, then it's worthwhile doing so. Chromecast isn't much work; but the amount of "kudos" that is earnt by adding it is really interesting.

Much of the success of some of the projects I've worked on has been playing with new technology and new gadgets to see whether we can super-serve a small section of audience, rather than continually pandering to the masses.

By spending a little time supporting side-projects like Chromecast, Android Wear, Apple TV or Roku streaming boxes, you can delight those users who are using them; and also keep your software engineers new and intellectually stimulating projects.

Kudos is important - even from a small audience. NPR's a good example at showing the benefits of super-serving those users.

A fair bit of my listening is done in the tube, on the 30-minute journey into town or the 90-minute journey through town and down to Heathrow airport. Unlike other subway systems, there is no cellular coverage down here, but London Underground has added WiFi hotspots at every underground station, and if you are a contract customer of selected mobile phone networks, they give you free access to this wifi as a sweetener.

Typically, a journey will therefore be a 20-second burst of WiFi in a station, followed by a two minute journey in a tunnel, followed by another 20-second gasp of WiFi at the next station.

Naturally, there is no opportunity to stream live radio with this kind of connection. But how does Google Play Music's faux-radio jukebox cope?

Perfectly, it turns out.

I'm guessing there's a little bit of clever caching going on in the app, which downloads enough music during those short periods of connection to keep it going. And it does, without any interruption, during the entire length of the Piccadilly line.

Suspicious that it was using music it's already downloaded for me - when charging and connected to WiFi, it does download some songs just in case - I tried dialling up an album I'd never heard before, and it played it flawlessly during a 40-minute spell underground.

Live radio has no opportunities down here. But if you have a good and clever caching system, as Google Play Music All Access does, and NPR One ought to, then you can overcome even the hardest data connections.

Radio broadcasters put their faith in "live" - but I am not convinced that "live" matters. Instead, I think it's more a case of "in the moment" - which, while reflecting what's going on today in the world, doesn't need to be live. More important is that that great content is available to listeners however and wherever they want to consume it.

If all you're putting in your apps is a live stream: perhaps it's time to think again. I suspect there are many who'd like to listen where reliable cellular coverage isn't available.

Please can we stop calling it a chart? Because it isn’t a chart. Let’s call it the iTunes Podcast Number Thing.

Nick Quah from podcast newsletter Hot Pod asked a bunch of his readers how the iTunes Podcast Number Thing was calculated earlier this year. Here are the opinions he got back.

The fundamental thing is: it doesn’t measure downloads. That’s what I mean when I say that it isn’t a chart. The podcast that’s #1 is not the podcast that has the most amount of downloads.

The iTunes Podcast Number Thing is there to help people discover new podcasts. So it doesn’t measure downloads (since it would be really hard to change the chart). Instead, it measures the number of new, unique, subscribers that a podcast has had, averaged out over a few days.

That’s why it’s constantly changing - because it’s designed to. And why, if you find your position in the iTunes Podcast Number Thing going down, as it inevitably will, it’s nothing to do with the amount of downloads your podcast has or your popularity as a podcaster - it’s merely that the amount of new, unique, subscribers for your podcast that week has decreased. So, promote it more.

Radio talent, especially, thrives on numbers: because we want to be liked, and how better to know you’re liked than numbers of followers on Twitter (11,500, since you asked), or an appearance on another kind of chart: like the iTunes Podcast Number Thing. But this one is nothing to do with consumption or audience or anything.

The iTunes Podcast Number Thing is only an indication on how good you are at driving new subscribers to iTunes. If it is a chart, it just lists the best marketers in the business: which is why we in radio have an unfair advantage in that we have a recognised brand, and hundreds of thousands of listeners every day who we can market a new podcast to.

The real numbers you should be pushing for are total podcast downloads. Go hunt those down. And ignore the iTunes Podcast Chart. Because it’s not a chart.

The advertising money is coming to podcasting - somehow. But monetization is harder for podcasting, because of a lack of statistics. Tens of millions of dollars are being thrown at a product that has data which is patchy, to say the least.

Edison Research have some great overall data on podcasting. Edison also report that podcasting accounts for just 2% of typical American audio listening. That old-fashioned thing "the radio" accounts for 54%. However, "podcast listeners" - people who've heard one in the last 24 hours - listen to more podcasting than radio, as you'd expect.

But here's something interesting, in terms of data, from Edison: surprisingly few people (15%) mainly listen to podcasts by subscribing and automatically downloading. You know - the way we all tell people to get the podcast ("subscribe on iTunes", etc). Most people are mainly listening on-demand (59%). This blows my mind a bit, because it's not how I listen, but I can totally understand that many people would do it that way. And, as Tom Webster from Edison says, this has good implications for statistics: because we know how to get stats from on-demand audio really well.

In the UK, the radio research company RAJAR released their latest MIDAS research which agrees with Edison, saying that podcasting accounts for just 2% of typical British audio listening. They don't go into the same detail (at least publicly) as Edison have with regard to the method of listening. Certainly, the BBC and some commercial radio stations have had "play" and "download" buttons as well as "subscribe" for quite some time - as this science show demonstrates.

That said: it would be good to get all the stats for playback of podcasts via downloads, too. That's the real black box. RAJAR report that only 65% of downloads are actually listened-to, for a start - so we're in the dark in terms of how people consume podcasts. We don't know when they stop listening, when they skip. We don't know who they are or where they come from. And given (I would guess) the most prolific podcast listeners will be doing so using an app like Apple's Podcasts, player.fm or PocketCasts, I suspect we're losing a bunch of data here.

Marco Arment, developer of Overcast - a podcast app on iPhones - is sniffy about data:

They can’t know exactly who you are, whether you searched for a new refrigerator yesterday, whether you listened to the ads in their podcasts, or even whether you listened to it at all after downloading it. Big publishers think this is barbaric. I think it’s beautiful. Big publishers think this is holding back the medium. I think it protects the medium.

I'd argue to Arment (and have) that if we want to develop the medium - protect its revenue, and enable great content - producers need the ability to get that data. However: I'd prefer that data to go to the content-maker, not via a third-party data aggregator; and for the content-maker to make the decision about whether they want to collect data in the first place.

So it's why this proposal for podcast publishers is interesting. It uses already existing technology - pingbacks - to request to podcast players to return data. The content-maker would know when they hit play and stop, and possibly more information, if they want it. If they don't, that's cool too. And it could be done with informed consent.

Whatever: podcasting, on-demand radio, needs data to get bigger and better: and produce even better content for audiences. I hope that the data starts flowing: because there's still a lot that we don't know.

What's particularly hard is a weekly car show with long, highly-produced inserts. You need to travel places: Argentina, Japan, Australia, Italy; you need to work long hours, and do take after take. After the end of a long, hard day of filming, tempers can boil over:

“Everyone on Top Gear has been under increasing pressure because they are filming between shows and have an extended run of 12 shows without a break,” said an insider. “The person most under pressure is Jeremy [Clarkson], because he lives and breathes the programme. But he has been under increasing strain this year because of the non-stop workload.” — Daily Mirror

When Chris Evans started to present The Big Breakfast for Channel 4, he felt he couldn't devote the time to his BBC Radio 1 Sunday afternoon show; so he quit radio for the TV.

In 1995, when he joined BBC Radio 1, he specifically included a clause allowing him to work on television programmes. In January 1997, Evans decided he would demand Fridays off from his BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show, so that he could prepare for TFI Friday. Radio 1 refused, and Evans quit radio for the TV.

Virgin Radio followed, from late 1997 to 2000. At first, the focus was with his radio show; then he bought the station, and then he slowly lost interest in that, too, as he continued to work on TFI Friday. Radio and TV ratings began to slump, he sold the station, and was eventually sacked from the breakfast show: quitting radio, and public life for a while.

The story of Evans at Radio 1 is a template for his approach to all his subsequent projects - an abundance of enthusiasm at the beginning which eventually falls prey to boredom and shiftlessness. — The Scotsman, 2003

Evans has been doing the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast show for five years. That's the longest he's ever been working on a project. It is a proper job, as anyone who's done radio presenting will tell you. It doesn't leave much time for other things.

But now, he's adding Top Gear to his list. Not just presenting - but as Executive Producer of the programme. That's even more work. Yet, both he and the radio station itself is keen to stress that he'll continue on BBC Radio 2, presenting the most listened-to radio show in the country. He doesn't need to; he's now one of the BBC's top earners. Some commentators have already noticed a change.

Twice in a week Chris Evans has pulled 'I haven't had a chance to watch the show you've come in to plug' routine on a guest. Slack.

— Matt Hall (@mattzki) February 13, 2015

His recent TFI Friday tribute show - as many recognised - was half a show of brilliance, followed by half a show of tedium about cars and money: perhaps, now, the only two things that interest this happily-married, multi-millionaire. Top Gear is clearly the bright shiny thing captivating him right now; even enough to, oddly, dull the brilliance of TFI Friday's comeback.

Update: Madly, he's also just announced he's doing TFI Friday again, which is back for a new series. As if he didn't have enough to do.

So the question is how long he will keep putting in the effort for his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show. Given the choice of an exhilarating race in fast cars across the Australian outback, or a dreary morning in the desperately-unsexy Western House, it's clear that only the former will keep him creatively interested.

Chris Evans's history is one of a cycle of achievement followed by boredom and self-destruction. If we lose the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, it would be a disaster for the station; and, by extension, for radio as a whole.

Please don't let that happen.

Unfortunately, and despite our very best efforts, AirShr has not achieved product / market fit. It’s for this reason, and with a heavy heart, that today we announce the closure of AirShr.

Australian product AirShr was a product designed to remove friction between radio advertising and the call-to-action: the perceived problem of "what was that phone number?" when hearing advertising on radio. Users would download the AirShr app and press the button whenever they heard something on the radio they were interested in. The app would remember metadata about the ad and then present it to the user (as well as allow it to be shared along with audio).

It was launched with a video - now unavailable on YouTube - of a man listening to a concert promo in the car, and nearly crashing it while he scrabbles for a pen to write down the number to buy the tickets.

AirShr could also be used to capture information throughout a broadcast - from music being played to interviews and news stories.

The product launched on a Grant Broadcasting station in Woollongong NSW, and was then trialled on NOVA 106.9 in Brisbane QLD. Its test in Brisbane was used almost 1,000 times a day earlier this year, while the app was heavily promoted on the air. The app, however, was not used on any other radio station.

Recently, AirShr launched a product on Kickstarter attempt last month for a product called "Remember". This was designed to enable anyone to press a hardware button in the car and then dictate messages to their phone to help them remember things. For many people, however, this capability is already built-in (try saying "take a note" to Siri or Google Now).

The closure announcement includes eight pieces of 'knowledge' that they'd be taking forward, including relatively unsubtle digs at the radio industry: "Telling the truth matters, especially if it is unpalatable", and "If an industry doesn’t feel they have a need to change, they won’t (...until it’s too late)". They also promise a forthcoming podcast, and invite people to sign up for more details.

I've demonstrated AirShr a few times at conferences, and have met Phil and Opher. They're likeable people, enthusiastic and excited about what they do; and that is clearly evident from their communication. Their product was polished, and presented exceptionally well.

Since they're sharing learnings, I'll share the advice I've given them privately on occasion:

Don't call a radio-advertised product a name which has to be spelled-out on-air. UK readers with a long memory may remember GWR Group's online venture called "koko.com", which needed to be spelt every time it was mentioned on the radio. AirShr is the same; as, sadly, is the new Mediaworks app announced last week in New Zealand. There's a reason why "Radioplayer" or "iHeartRadio" have succeeded.

Don't design an app: design an SDK. Sophisticated radio stations will already have an app. This functionality should be in their app, not in another one. All talk-up on-air should be telling people to download the (radiostation) app, not a third-party one. Build an amazing SDK, and use that in your own demo app. It then becomes another reason to install the radio station app: and everyone wins.

Don't rely on radio stations having decent metadata. This is unfortunate, but you end up having to build a lot of kludges into a product like this to enable it to work as you'd expect. I removed AirShr-like functionality around commercials from one station I've worked at, because it was actually really hard to get any valuable metadata about the commercial content. (Sure, it's an ad for McDonald's, but is it for the breakfast muffin or an afternoon special?)

I'm sorry to see AirShr close; particularly since I've been watching RadioTAG - a service based on RadioDNS technology - also seem to fail. Both AirShr and RadioTAG were good opportunities to add a new layer to radio. Perhaps the biggest learning for the industry is that much radio output appears to have little to engage listeners.

• Also in this space: BBC Playlister - an AirShr button for music tracks, if you like - was apparently used 10m times in its first year. Like AirShr, the BBC have played with a hardware button. Watch The BBC Playlister Button from Next Radio 2014 to see how it did.

So far, Tony Blackburn's show, which I gather is also being simulcast on BBC Radio 2, is a strange old experience. A bit over-indulgent on the jingles, but a good listen nonetheless.

It's a good idea doing a pop-up station for old people like me who like remembering Radio 1 as it was, without bothering the young people of today with the whole idea. I'm not sure how much I'll enjoy listening to it all, but it's fun.

Over here, by the way, some great clips from BBC Radio 1 Vintage at this year's Next Radio conference.

Have you been listening? What do you think?

(I've also done the same with Sound Digital).

This is harder than the same exercise with the opposing bid: because, unlike that one, this is a collection of existing services from a wide range of broadcasters, or confidential services. The latter are only confidential for us: Ofcom have all the details.

Sounds familiar

Gem - which actually stands for the Great East Midlands - is Orion's Heart-like service, which they'll take national; indeed, it was born out of an old Heart franchise. Heart's existence won't be taken into account by Ofcom, since it isn't a national DAB station, and Magic is a much older service. Gem doesn't excite me much, but then, I live in an area covered by Heart, and am not a late-thirties female.

Other "sounds like" services include Nation, which sounds a little like Bauer's Absolute (though is already on-air in South Wales); and the confidential "Modern Rock" sounds a little like Xfm.

Sounds brand new

However this bid does stress, with a crafty bubble chart, how much the new stations they're working on will fill holes left by current broadcasters.

As the first example, Fun Kids is a station aimed at kids, which I occasionally listen to as a safe listen with my toddler. It's clearly a service which is be unique; the BBC have entirely given up on childrens' programming, and Fun Kids is a good and well-produced listen, currently available in London on DAB.

Gaydio does similar for the LGBT community - a national radio station from a service only available on two local DAB multiplexes currently. Arguably this is the type of programming that can drive DAB takeup from these communities.

Another example is Wireless, the first proper attempt by commercial radio to focus on older audiences, run by Age UK. This takes cues from Norway's popular P1+ service, which is aimed at listeners otherwise unserved by younger-sounding radio stations. It's a London DAB service currently.

A station about finance, Share Radio, is another radio station that's in London only, but has aspirations for a national footprint. I've listened occasionally and it, once more, fills a hole that other stations are currently not filling. It's also a bit wider appeal than a business service, to me: we all have bank accounts and credit cards, after all.

The UK has no broadcast country radio station at all, and putting Chris Country on is, again, an additional choice for radio. Chris Country is already a programme provider for other stations in the UK.

Speech is covered well in this bid.

It's now been revealed that the confidential Sport Radio is from Kelvin Mackenzie, a man with cash and a man with clear understanding of how good speech radio works. It doesn't contain any mention of commentary, but additional competition in this area sounds like a good idea.

I've already written about RTÉ Radio 1, Ireland's most listened-to radio station, which is part of the lineup on this multiplex. Again, it fills a hole to a ready-made market of Irish expats, but also will contain significantly high quality output.

Then there's an intriguing "food, lifestyle, information and entertainment" channel: given there's nothing like this at the moment, it's difficult to quite grasp what this'll sound like. The fact that USP are involved here means that there are bright people making some good decisions here; there's probably a larger brand hiding inside the brown envelope.

All the above are clear "things that don't exist on the radio at the moment" services. The bid is less detailed about them than the Sound Digital bid, but given many are smaller existing stations making the leap to national coverage, it's easier to understand what the plans are.

Sounds confidential

Then there are the confidential elements.

A confidential "contemporary hits" service is probably the one the bidders want to talk about but can't. "A real alternative to BBC Radio 1" is entirely possible if you look around at other countries and multi-country radio brands. Some of these operators are rich and acquisition-hungry.

A jazz service - one would guess it's Jazz FM again - makes an appearance: again, something unavailable on the radio outside London.

Then there's the usual clutch of religious and ethnic stations; and finally Upload Radio.

Upload Radio is a fascinating punt. It's a wide-ranging access channel which could contain output from podcasters and other independent broadcasters, even people like you and me, as well as larger services. It could be the best, or worst, radio station you've ever heard. I suspect it could be quite a talent spotting contest; and certainly opens up the airwaves to something new.

I think this is the secret of this bid. Some of the ideas - presumably because of confidentiality - are difficult to understand; yet they are clearly new ideas and formats that fill a genuine and demonstrable hole. As such, this is by far the more interesting bid; similar additional speech content to the SoundDigital bid, from a variety of different providers, and music services unavailable elsewhere.

DAB+

While the SoundDigital bid makes great play of stimulating DAB+ sales, then fails to actually attract a single DAB+ station, the Listen2Digital bid has four.

If you're wanting to get DAB+ going, then putting four services on (in stereo, incidentally) is the way of doing it. Some of the most unique services - Gaydio, RTÉ and ChrisCountry - are there, too: arguably kickstarting DAB+ transmissions in a good way. It's also worthwhile knowing that Fun Kids has already broadcast in DAB+ in the UK, and has knowledge and understanding of how this new technique works.

London

This bid also clears quite a bit of space in the crowded London multiplex market which has been full for a while. Six of the services are currently in London; and it's a good assumption that the majority of them would move to just using national DAB. This has a welcome knock-on effect of freeing up local spectrum in London, which can be used by other services to gain access. This is something that is probably unimportant to Ofcom, but could offer significant additional choice to Londoners and the industry.

In conclusion

There are, of course, still questions about this bid. The "how will you cope with risks" section of the bid is confidential, so we don't know. The Arqiva/UTV/Bauer bid has made much of their 'safe pair of hands'. Only Ofcom will know how Listen2Digital stack up.

We also don't know all the programming details - a byproduct of involving lots of programme providers. Some detail is light.

However, it is a much more exciting bid than the other. A wide range of new programmes to listen to from already-existing broadcasters, yet new and fresh ideas for digital radio.

The Listen2Digital bid is not a callous cost-saving exercise, nor a boring rearrangement of existing services. It isn't from a set of companies who already control almost all of digital radio. Listen2Digital is a genuine breath of fresh air and is a clear winner for listener choice. If Ofcom care about listeners, Listen2Digital deserves to win.

These closures are just one indication of the health of AM radio. In other parts of the US, the slightly oddly-named “AM Revitalization” program is allowing AM stations to simulcast on new FM signals: something I’m not sure I’d call revitalization.

In Canada, CKSL AM 1410 in London, Ontario also closed last week. In Israel, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands, many prominent AM broadcasters have gone dark. The countries of Belarus and Serbia have recently ceased all AM transmissions. Some AM services in the UK have also recently closed.

Try and get AM radio in your BMW i3, or your Tesla Model X, and you won’t find it. It’s been removed: because these electric cars make too much interference to the AM band. It’s not just electric cars, either: everything from tram tracks, cheap LED lights or DSL broadband connections cause interference to the AM band.

Unlike FM, AM’s reception requirements mean it’s almost impossible to put in a mobile phone or other consumer electronics. As a consumer experience, it’s poor: no RDS or anything other than “tune in using a random number”; no stereo; not hifi-quality sound. Many never think to hit the ‘AM’ button on their radio.

For broadcasters, AM is hugely expensive to run in terms of electricity bills. At least in Europe, many of the transmission masts date from the 1940s, and will soon reach end of life. Maintenance for AM is more onerous than FM, too: a station I worked at fell off-air once because (and this is true) the grass hadn’t been cut at the transmission site.

So, what’s AM’s future?

There are parts of the world where AM still reigns supreme. In regional areas of countries like Australia, AM remains the only serious way to cover thousands of miles of sparsely-populated terrain. There are still market-leading AM stations in North America that are successful in terms of audience and revenue. AM’s unlikely to die quickly here.

Digital radio technology exists to significantly pep up the waveband. In the US, HD Radio works astonishingly well on AM, offering an FM-like sound quality experience.

Across the rest of the world, DRM30 - Digital Radio Mondiale, another digital product - again makes a tremendous difference to AM radio’s quality and capabilities - adding data as well as significantly better sound. However - with the notable exception of India, DRM hasn’t yet become a consumer success. It’s a tremendous technical achievement, but its commercial take-up appears slow.

I love AM. I did a short stint on late-night AM radio, and loved the feeling you got when on-air (and the ever-present Radio Vatican accompanying my every word). But - especially for metro areas, where interference is growing (and AM transmitters are being forced further away from cities), I can’t see much future for AM. If you’re still earning the majority of your revenue from AM broadcasting, I hope you’re planning for the future.

There are so many ways to reach audiences in radio’s multi-platform future. The future for radio is bright. However, only the fittest platforms will survive: and I’m afraid - much though I’d like it to be - AM isn’t one of them.

As an aside, I wrote this column while listening to Pandora. As I almost completed it, Pandora put this song on. Spooky.

There is little to separate Spotify, Deezer, Google Play Music All Access, Rdio and other similar services in terms of content. By and large they have the same catalogue, and can only differentiate themselves in terms of price and user experience.

What Deezer has done is realised that content is important too; and it is pulling in additional talk content from across the web. As a differentiator, that is pretty smart. Spoken word content like this brings more of a "shared experience and human connection" to their service - which has been my definition of radio's USP for some time now. While Stitcher doesn't have the same smarts as NPR One, because it doesn't create its own content, it does have some great content and some clever algorithms already in place. This could be a serious threat to full-service radio if done well.

I think you could also see, relatively quickly, an opportunity for people making talk content to be able to monetise that through services like Deezer - albeit on similar micropayment levels to music. That could revolutionise the spoken word market, which has hitherto been unable to monetise aside from in-programme advertising. I, as a content maker, get revenues from consumption of that content if on a web page: but not from audio. That could change with this announcement, perhaps.

Omny, an app in Australia that merges music and radio content, appears to be doing something similar. It only really works if you get more granular content than an entire podcast, though.

By putting radio content together with music in a personalised fashion, is this the death for radio? I'm not so sure. But it's good to see Deezer realise that to replace radio, they need to be thinking about more than just music.

Below, listen to a recording of that moment, on 11 June 1995: and a reminder that website addresses have not, quite, always been as snappy as "bbc.co.uk/radio1".

The BBC used the "bbcnc.org.uk" address, heard here, until December 1997. The BBC Networking Club was a not-for-profit social networking site, costing £12 a month to join.

Altavista, widely regarded as the first comprehensive search engine, launched later that year in December. Google launched three years later, in 1998.

Christmas is mostly baffling to me.

Part of that bafflement comes from the weather. The Christmas songs on the radio are full of snow and cold; yet I’m sitting in 32-degree Brisbane heat at the moment in shorts and a t-shirt, wondering whether I ought to bite the bullet and turn the air conditioning on. The solar panels on the roof have generated 24kW of power already, and it’s only half two. I think I’m melting.

The other bafflement comes from listening to the radio here in Australia.

In the UK, there are only two weeks when radio isn’t being measured. This year it’s 18 December to 31st December. Every other week of the year you’re “in survey”.

However, Australia’s different. Ratings finished on December 9th, and they won’t start again until January 21st. So, everyone takes the time off. As a result, during these six long weeks, my radio is full of voices I don’t recognise.

The local public radio station I listen to doesn’t have a single voice on it at the right time. While breakfast is being done by someone who normally does afternoons, the rest of the day is full of names I’ve never heard of before, reading call-in numbers I don’t recognise, calling the station a generic name, being beamed in from studios many thousands of kilometers away. It is a completely different radio station.

The commercial stations are still playing the same music they normally play, but different voices are playing it: and the well-known and high-budget breakfast and afternoon drive shows have all disappeared. There’s a suspicious growth of networked output here, too.

Many of my familiar voices won’t be coming back, either, even when we get to mid January. December is the end of contract time; so great swathes of radio output will change anyway. I might recognise the breakfast voice on my local public station when he returns, accompanied by someone else for the first time; but the rest of the day has been totally shuffled around. The commercials, too - by and large - have changes, too. New sounds on afternoon drive, and breakfast show lineups have also been tweaked: as they were last year, too, and the year before that.

It’s bewildering.

“This must kill the audience figures,” a British radio person said to me. It doesn’t appear to - with “86% of listeners listening just as much or more in the summer”, according to the research. 28% of young people say they listen to more radio in summer.

I remember being told, time and time again, that consistency is the most important thing for a medium which is driven, mainly, by habit. It’s a big risk to upset someone’s day by changing things. Yet here we are with six weeks of random, unfamiliar, non-local voices.

I also remember being told that on holidays you attract many different listeners, trying different stations and dayparts than they would normally. This is the time to shine by showing how good you sound across the rest of the day. It’s (mostly) not the time to do “special” programming, like all-80s weekends, because you want to show what your station is famous for. Yet the very things that make radio famous in Australia seems ro be missing.

No other country appears to invest in radio talent the same way that Australia does. People like Kyle and Jackie O, Hamish and Andy (back next year as podcasters), Alan Jones, Steve Austin, Ray Hadley or Hughesey and Kate - all, each in their own way, captivating and astonishingly good radio.

But no other country appears to deliberately sabotage its radio industry for six whole weeks every year. And, seemingly, get away with it.

Bewildering.

But with that - best wishes of the season to you. I’ll speak again in early January, after my own ratings holiday (although my weekly newsletter and daily podcast news continue as normal, because we’re all still working. Aren’t we?)

Chicago-based Rivet Radio does something similar. It has just raised $3.6m in funding, but has been operating since the end of 2013. It offers Apple and Android apps - I tried Android.

Signing in used Facebook, which was straightforward enough, and the app then asked me what kind of thing I was interested in from a big list, to get the personalisation off to a good start.

Rivet makes much of the audio inside the service itself. The first thing I heard was a newscast, then a few individual stories, all read by the same guy, who I'd like to think was called Bob, but probably wasn't. He wasn't called Charlie, I can guarantee that.

The individual stories were interesting, if not particularly thrilling. They were typically slightly longer news pieces, sometimes with some audio of an interviewee. The measured voice of Bob, clearly a broadcast pro, was a good listen.

And then the algorithm let me down a little. It decided that I was so interested in a recall of trucks after a safety issue - a story that contained a thrillingly long list of models - that it would play it again to me. Which was sad, because things were going quite well.

Then, bizarrely - "thank you, Charlie", said a woman from Bloomberg Radio. Rivet Radio also has bits from other broadcasters, and I'd happened upon one. Never mind that Bob wasn't called Charlie, the lady then went on to conduct quite an interesting interview about something or other, followed by a "coming up on Blomberg Radio..." tease, which was strange because a) I wasn't listening to Bloomberg Radio, and b) none of these things came up next, because next was a clip from a tech show from TWiT.

The TWiT clip I heard contained a few unidentified voices talking in very deep detail about operations per second of a RAID array, with at least one reference to what was happening on screen. It lacked an intro or an ending: it was a clipped piece from a larger podcast.

At the end of that was an advert (untargeted), then a few more Rivet-produced pieces from Bob, which worked well.

As a service, it was pretty good. I didn't hear anything that screamed out as stuff I wouldn't be interested in; I only skipped one piece, and I found the ad fitted in well, if entirely irrelevant to a UK listener. Audio levels were consistent, clips played relatively fluidly (though some pieces were clipped at the start), and it was an impressive service. The app itself was clean-looking, too.

Unlike NPR One, Rivet also gives you a neat little notification every morning with a news headline it thinks you'd like to know, drawing you in to the service. That's cute, and that worked well. (I've done a bunch of research into app notifications for clients).

Editorially, however, the wide range of audio sources it uses was a drawback, not benefit: the TWiT stuff was a bit random, really technical and didn't work well as standalone content; the Bloomberg stuff could have been clipped rather better to avoid "thanks, Charlie".

Overall, though, if you tire of the sing-song NPR voices and prefer something a little more straightforward, Rivet might keep you riveted enough during a morning commute. And that's probably for the best.

These discussions are great to have: they bring advertising agencies and others to the conference, and are clearly part of the future of commercial radio. I absent-mindedly examined the timetable, though, and discovered that in a side room there was a conversation about DAB+ and hybrid radio.

I found my way over there, and discovered a ton of useful statistics.

"Less than 10% of radio listening is via the internet", said the Commercial Radio Australia CEO, Joan Warner, and she shared some more Aussie DAB+ stats. DAB+ is being expanded here in Australia, though in private chats afterwards with people familiar with the project, it seems the slowdown is to do with the regulator and law being achingly slow.

Ford Ennals from Digital Radio UK was there, too. He's keen - along with many others, it seems - that retailers stop selling analogue-only radio receivers. As I’ve said in past columns, it’s strange that retailers are willingly selling something that might stop working in the near future; but given nobody apart from the Norwegians and Swiss have actually said they’re turning off analogue, perhaps they need a bigger reason.

DAB+ is in almost every new car in the UK: but here are the overall figures for all the cars on the road - 30% of all cars in the UK have a digital radio installed. This is where Norway’s initial dip in listening appeared to have come from - and we discovered that Norway (which is not really a very big country) is selling more car DAB adaptors than the rest of the world put together. Digital Radio UK is also trying to get the user experience a bit better. "Two thirds of people didn't understand how to find a station on their digital car radio" said Ford Ennals of their research; they’re working with car manufacturers to get better.

Chris Johnson from RadioApp, the Australian joint radio app, had some nice data from the app's first twelve months, and lots of other data that I've written up for an article in Radio World.

Joe D'Angelo from Xperi shared this example of the complex metadata events in a typical hour of radio. It's more than just a logo if you want to do it right; and something overlooked by many that enhancing the radio experience is probably not just slapping a station logo onto a screen.

Meanwhile, Nick Piggott from RadioDNS showed some nice shots of the new hybrid radio. inside an Audi A8. There’s some real momentum going on in hybrid radio, and it’s nice to see it.

Finally, Clive Dickens (ex of Absolute, still at Jack Oxford, also at 7 Network) said that "catch-up radio is not a thing" when it comes to the future of radio. He's right - for most music radio programming.

It goes to show that for most radio conferences there’s always some gems to be found: but sometimes you need to seek out the smaller sessions. A thoroughly eye-opening morning.

We don't think we want more choice
A typical listener to AM/FM listens to an average of 2.9 stations every week. Unlike the television world, radio listeners don't crave the concept of "more choice". 86% of radios in the kitchen, and 79% of those in the bedroom, never get retuned. A listener finds a station she's happy with, and sticks with it. And, by definition, a radio listener is not unhappy with the station choice that she makes - because, if she were, she'd no longer be a radio listener.

We don't want better sound quality
Unlike the difference between a widescreen digital TV and a hissy analogue picture, the difference in sound quality between a decent FM signal and a decent DAB one is negligible (and divisive). Most listeners enjoy radio on a small portable unit: mostly either in mono or with stereo speakers positioned so close together it makes no difference. For the vast majority of people, sound quality on their radio is 'good enough'. If it weren't, once more, they'd no longer be listening.

We're happy with our set's looks
Our radio set is not, unlike a television, pride of place in our living room. It's a more personal device - hidden next to the taps in the kitchen, or in our private cocoon of the bedroom. There's no social reason to upgrade it: no fashionable new flat-screen set; indeed, most radio designs haven't changed in fifty years. A wooden box with a speaker looks very much like another wooden box with a speaker.

FM/AM isn't flawed
Crucially, for most radio listeners, there is no 'problem with FM' that can be fixed by upgrading to DAB. If a listener already enjoys BBC Radio 2, Capital FM or KISS, then upgrading to DAB will give her no real additional benefit. She'll get less pirate interference, now-playing information on the screen, and a way of tuning in without needing to remember frequencies: but these are not fixing a massive problem that she has with FM - just a nice incremental improvement. There is no reason for a committed listener to an existing radio station to upgrade to digital.

So.

This is the reason why digital radio is difficult to promote - and, by extension, why the take-up is slow. Because, by and large, there isn't a clear problem that needs fixing.

Digital radio promotion doesn't always get this. From an artful and clever 2011 campaign focusing on a nebulous idea of choice, to this week's new D-Love campaign promising sound quality, portability and the same un-demonstrated 'choice', it's clear to me that we're not, yet, on the right track with digital radio's promotion. Which is a shame: because digital radio is, once people get it, really valued.

And digital (whatever platform) is vital for the future of radio - because once someone gets digital radio, they listen to more radio. Digital Radio now accounts for 31.5% of all radio listening. 45% of people listen to digital radio (on whatever platform) every week. That's nearly half. Digital radio isn't failing - but I think we're not very good at promoting it.

So, how should we promote digital radio?

One of the simplest techniques in advertising a product is to identify a problem that a consumer has, and then help her solve it. These are "problem/solution" framed commercials, and research shows that they work.

There's no doubt that, on purchasing a digital radio, people report that they enjoy the 'improved' sound quality, the choice of stations and the additional information on the screen - as well as the ease of tuning. But this is not a "problem" that they have with their current FM radio, which is leading them to be dissatisfied. These are improvements that they've noticed once purchasing a new device. This post-purchase research is oft used by the digital radio industry to promote digital radio with; yet this research is not helpful as a driver for purchase. Indeed - I'd go further. It doesn't work.

With that in mind: here are a few problems with FM/AM that digital radio can help with:

I love 80s music. How can I hear more?

• Absolute 80s is on-air only on digital radio

I'd really like to listen to the BBC World Service in the car.

• With digital radio, you can get BBC World Service 24/7, wherever you are

Chcę posłuchać czegoś w języku polskim, a nie angielskim.

• PRL 24 is on digital radio in London

There's never any comedy on the radio late at night.

• There is on BBC Radio 4 Extra's comedy zone, every weekday evening from 10pm on digital radio.

Je veux écouter les chansons françaises classiques.

• You'll rather like French Radio London, then - only available on digital radio.

I want stuff my kids can listen to.

• Then you want Fun Kids, only available on digital radio.

I want to hear the Arsenal commentary, not the Spurs game.

• There are additional commentaries from BBC London 94.9 and BBC Radio Five Live Sports Extra on digital radio

I wish there was a radio station that played classic rock.

• You'll be wanting Planet Rock, Absolute Classic Rock, or The Arrow - only on digital radio

Let's not promote a nebulous concept of choice, or confuse post-purchase research with reasons to buy. Let's promote positive reasons why the additional choice you get with digital radio is important. The question is whether the industry is brave enough to spend money promoting new entrants (like Fun Kids and PRL 24) rather than their own mainstream stations.

The content on digital radio is great. So, let's promote the content, not the platform.

Planet Rock itself replaced Kerrang on FM just two years ago, which meant the closure of the Birmingham studios for Kerrang, and the 105.2FM transmitter simply relaying Planet Rock from London.

Bauer decided to close Kerrang in May 2013, and Kerrang made its final broadcast in June 2013. Only a month later, Bauer bought Absolute Radio.

With hindsight, Absolute was clearly the better station for an FM - it's much less niche, and should deliver much better value for the transmitter. It's "good news for listeners", as the cliché goes.

So, it's amusing to note that back in 2002, the licence that Kerrang ended up winning was contested by... Virgin Radio West Midlands, run by the station that's now named Absolute. They ran a station in Wolverhampton as a test - the website partially exists in archive.org - though, sadly, no images.

While the station promised "Virgin Radio West Midlands will be a completely separate station, broadcasting 24 hours a day from studios in the West Midlands.", later Ofcom changes in regulation would clearly have allowed the national station to be rebroadcast.

Kerrang won... but now it's Absolute née Virgin which wins the FM prize.

What goes around comes around...

It was a good concert in the Radio Theatre - a pared-back performance and well worth a listen - it really is what the BBC does best, and well worth enjoying again.

Here's Jo Whiley at the end of the concert:

What a wonderful night! Thank you for being an amazing audience, thank you Ed for being just superb! Er - if you're listening to Radio 2 right now you can go and you can press your red button and you can watch the whole concert to your heart's content - it's been going out there straight away. So, Radio 2 listeners, go and check out the red button, er, when you leave here when you go home go and check it out as well. Thank you so much for being here tonight, it's been a tremendous evening, one more time please: Ed Sheeran!

Radio programmers talk a lot about the need to constantly 'reset'. Always explain the competition mechanic as if you're a brand new listener. Always explain a feature really clearly because new people join all the time. Always explain what the phone-in topic is, regularly, in case someone's tuned-in halfway through. Explain, reset, explain, reset. This is drummed into us as presenters and producers.

I would challenge almost any listener to understand what that stuff about "the red button" was.

I think we need to be very careful when we're talking about new technology. We need to constantly explain; constantly reset; constantly hand-hold. We need to ensure that someone aged 65 understands what we mean and gets best value from what we're doing. We need to help someone who's just tuned into Radio 2 for the first time, perhaps just for that concert - no commercial stations do 'red button', so their listeners need help. If I'd just flown in from America, would I understand it?

This is particularly important for radio's digital innovators. In trying to do new, unfamiliar, things on the medium, we need to keep things really crystal clear.

Radio 5 live talks too much about "over on Sports Extra", as if most people understand what that means. They don't. BBC Radio 4 does a good job cross-trailing programmes on Radio 4 Extra, but doesn't explain that it's a separate digital radio station often enough. Stations gabble through app details or website addresses. We have to make this simple, otherwise this is lost.

For 'red button' stuff, particularly, it's important to get value for money from the investment required to film a concert like that. Listeners should be under no doubt what they are being asked to do, and when they should do it.

Still at a loss as to what that 'red button' stuff was about? Here's what perhaps she might have said.

Now, if you're listening to Radio 2 and you'd like to watch that concert - and hear more tracks too - then tune in to any BBC television channel and press the red button on your remote, and you'll see it there. We've put it there all weekend long! Just tune in to any BBC television channel, and press the red button on your remote.

And yes, the power button is also red - so "hitting the red button" might just turn off the telly. Probably for the best, though, eh?

Stepping into the middle-ground is Fetch TV, a hybrid set-top-box with echoes of the UK YouView service: and access to Netflix and Stan too.

Fetch TV is available from a number of internet companies as a differentiator for subscribers. Optus is the largest; they brand it as "Yes TV by Fetch", though it's much the same service. Alternatively, you can buy it in stores.

Fetch TV: what is it?

"It", in this case, is a choice of two set-top boxes: a 'mini' AUD$149 (US$109, £89) box the size of four stacked CD boxes, or a larger, 'mighty' AUD$399 (US$299, £239) box. The main difference is that the mighty includes a hard-drive for recording and the mini doesn't. I bought the mini.

Fetch TV is a hybrid television service. It has a TV antenna input, and picks up all the Freeview services. And it has an internet connection (either ethernet or wifi), which supplies additional live TV, catch-up services from the big broadcasters, and additional apps like Netflix.

For $15 a month, you can get a set of about 35 additional channels over IP. BBC First, BBC Knowledge and BBC UKTV are here - the latter incomprehensibly showing both Eastenders and Coronation Street. Other big names include three NatGeo channels, Viacom channels like MTV and Comedy Central; NBCUniversal channels like, um, Universal and Syfy; and two from Disney and Nickelodeon for the kids.

The service is very strong for news, with BBC World News, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, France 24, Euronews, NDTV, ChannelNewsAsia, AlJazeera English and CCTV all present.

You also get 30 free movies a month (from a choice of 30). You can pay extra for a few specialist channels (beIN sports, CBeebies, Horse and Country) and there are also language packs in a variety of different languages.

What's it like?

The remote control is neatly made, and controls both the television (for volume and power), and the box itself. It's nice and simple-looking; the number pad is hidden until you hit the button marked "123..." which then illuminates the numbers on the keys that otherwise control other things. It's a nice solution, and the remote looks relatively simple as a consequence.

Incidentally, a Samsung TV in Australia will also happily control the Fetch TV box with its own remote. All you need to do is have a degree in computer science in order to navigate the Samsung's maze of menu options.

The IP-delivered channels appear immediately on tuning into the channel - there's no buffering or anything else that makes it obvious that they are being delivered over the internet. The video quality appears to be adaptive, and you'll occasionally watch the quality improve a little once the box is happy you've got enough bandwidth. Channels like ESPN, NatGeo, CNN or BBC World News are in HD; the rest at varying qualities of SD. I've not seen a single buffer or missed frame, in spite of not being on a partner ISP (I use Telstra), and in spite of being on wifi.

Some of the channels aren't massively great quality: both Euronews and Al Jazeera, as two examples, are available elsewhere in HD and I'm surprised that they're not on this box. I'd also guess that the BBC channels are also available in HD too.

Fetch TV comes with a decent EPG: something you might take for granted in the UK, but the Australian version of Freeview doesn't broadcast a full EPG; and instead, televisions will flick between different multiplexes to slowly populate the EPG as you flick through. It's a frustrating experience. The Fetch TV guide is clear and contains logos for the channels: both the ones delivered by antenna and by IP. The text is a little small. Might be our fault for using a relatively-small 32" television, though.

The catch-up services: well, they work. Unlike Youview (say), there's no way of going 'backwards' in the EPG and selecting a program from there; instead, you need to go into individual catch-up sections in the menu. Programs are presented in a consistent manner between providers, which is both good and bad, since the user interface is a bit dull and not very curated. ABC iView on my Samsung TV is a much nicer experience, so I'm just using that instead.

The apps are Netflix and Stan (and Presto, until it closes in a month's time). Then there's a rather confusing app called NASA TV, which, when clicked on, gives you a live feed of, um, NASA TV. I don't quite know why Fetch TV haven't put this in the EPG instead. There's a Wikipedia app, provided so you can check on things you're watching about, it appears; and a weather app, which is relatively pointless but still, it's there.

The 'mini' appears to be well specced, with a decent speed processor that is responsive and speedy. The UX is mostly well-designed and attractively put together. The hybrid nature of the box is particularly well done, and it's interesting comparing this to an internet radio device, as one example.

Suggestions to improve it might be to include Chromecast capability inside; to add an internet radio tuner app or podcast app; and to expand further its list of channels where possible.

Verdict

If you're looking for a decent way to watch some more channels, and Fetch TV has the channels you're looking for, then it's definitely recommended. And if you want catch-up from the main channels, or just a cheap way to get Netflix on the big screen, then this is also a great box for you at the price.

However, a station in Harrogate knows that it's not just the radio station that gets increased figures - but everything they do online.

During some serious floods across the Yorkshire Dales over Christmas, Stray FM saw online listening had tripled; social media reach had quadrupled; and they had over fifteen times more traffic to their website.

Stray FM, part of UKRD, uses its own CMS to run its website. It's run by UKRD Labs, an internal division of the radio company.

Managing radio station websites demands a skill that many find unusual: that of coping with significant traffic bursts. Typically this happens in unusual weather events: unusual snow, high winds, bush fires or (in this case) floods.

A few years ago, radio stations used to flip over to a simple, text-only version of their website: but with advances like Amazon's CloudFront or the independent CloudFlare CDN system, radio stations can continue to serve their websites without interruption. And, of course, increased use of social media means relying less on stations' own websites and more on services like Twitter and Google.

Streaming, too, comes under pressure. Many radio stations run servers with relatively low maximum concurrent listeners, adequate for their normal listening but regularly reaching their maximum under stress. Unlike a transmitter, online radio typically sets a maximum number of listeners (though there are increasingly robust ways to overcome this: not least a new streaming technology called HLS).

It all goes to show that it's important to look beyond the transmitter mindset: and ensure that everything a radio station does is relevant and updated - not just the stuff on-air.

Press Release

Over 1,000% web traffic increase due to flooding over Christmas

The Christmas period saw some devastating floods across the whole of the North, including the Stray FM TSA, with Ilkley, Otley, Skipton, Knaresborough and Boroughbridge among the towns heavily affected.

As the floodwaters started to rise more and more, people turned to Stray FM on air and online at strayfm.com for all the latest information.

On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the website saw an amazing 1,555% increase in page views, as people wanted to find the local news, travel information and weather forecast. Online listening tripled and social media reach quadrupled.

Sarah Barry, Managing Director of Stray FM, said: "When a crisis on this scale happens, the impact can be huge and devastating, and this is when true local radio comes into its own.

"People turn to us first, because we can be there, in every sense, when our local community needs us, whether this be for information or practical help.

"The ability we now have to reach thousands of people via the website and social media enables us to give more accurate information, more quickly - often within minutes. "It also allows our audience to engage with us and others affected, with the use of photos, comments and updates specific to their own experiences. The sharing of information helps to bring the whole community together, which is so important in these circumstances, not just as it's happening, but also in the aftermath as the clean-up gets under way.

"It goes without saying that Stray FM will continue to support those affected in whatever way possible."

Global’s Make Some Noise is a national charity, established in 2014, that helps disadvantaged children and young people across the UK. Global has brought together its brands, Capital FM, Capital XTRA, Heart, Classic FM, Smooth, LBC, XFM and Gold, which reach a combined 23.2 million people every week, to raise money for one cause. Global’s Make Some Noise is awarding grants to projects that help children and young people who have been affected by illness, disability, bereavement or lack of opportunity. Global's Make Some Noise is an appeal operated by Global Charities, a registered charity in England and Wales (1091657) and Scotland (SC041475).

The broadcasting looks fun and engaging, and nobody would begrudge Global's clear ambition to do good things. To bring all their varied brands together for one big charity day is a good thing to do, and the owners of Global should be congratulated.

However, another way to help needy people affected by illness and disability would be to contribute towards the National Health Service. This is funded by general taxation including Corporation Tax.

As we listen to Global's charity broadcasting today, it's probably worth reminding ourselves that, even though Global made a profit of £33m in 2012, it paid nothing in Corporation Tax. Indeed, Corporate Watch reported in April that the UK ended up giving Global a tax credit of £257,000 for the year.

Corporation tax is currently 21%, which, were Global to pay on their 2013 profits alone, would represent £6.9m to the country.

As Radio Today noted in April, there's nothing illegal in this:

A spokesman for Global Radio said: "Global has invested over £500m in commercial radio in the UK over the past 6 years and played a major part in promoting and rejuvenating the sector. Global is a fully tax-compliant company, as agreed with HMRC."

As Richard Murphy, a commentator on tax issues, also comments:

The result is that one company is mopping up large parts of the local radio business, and all with the help of an implicit tax subsidy – precisely because local radio stations pay their tax and those structured like Global can avoid that obligation. It’s legal, no doubt. But it’s not ethical. And worse it is undermining markets.

It's not right to criticise Global's people today for their enthusiasm in being involved in a charity which is clearly of benefit to their audience. The output sounds great, and the audience is already donating in large numbers. But if Global wanted to really make some noise, they'd be a good corporate citizen too.

Initially, you might think it's a lot of new local radio stations, a lot of new choice, and new career opportunities for the radio industry. It isn't, really. But it's great for the company.

National listeners will welcome Magic (London), which becomes a national station on DAB. Magic promises 'feel good music radio', and has a great sound and almost mathematical precision in targeting its audiences. It will be a welcome addition to the dial for many; and it bolsters Bauer's big national brands of KISS and Absolute.

KISS Fresh comes to DAB in London (as I predicted it would), and old-skool dance station KISSTORY also goes to DAB. This shows renewed interest in DAB for these services: Bauer management were saying only a few years ago that young audiences weren't using DAB; and probably coincides with Bauer's bid for the new commercial digital multiplex.

The local stations continue with their local branding as, for example, Hallam FM (seen above in 1997 when I worked there). Local oldies services (which have also been called Magic in many areas) now become brand extensions of the FM station in that market, called, say, Hallam 2 - joining their Scottish stations. And The Hits in most markets becomes another brand extension of the FM station, Hallam 3, aimed at younger audiences. Bauer are king of the split idents, having run TFM as a split ident of Metro Radio for a while now; and they'll be using that knowledge in full effect.

Bauer's press release makes much of local programming, but "xxx 2" is networked as the old services have always been; it's just a name change (and, in Scotland, not even that). It sounds like, as now, there'll be an "xxx 2" for England and a separate "xxx 2" for Scotland, with split idents. And "xxx 3" is simply a rebroadcast of The Hits with some new jingles. No new jobs being made; no additional local programming.

So, why do it?

First, the emergence of Magic as one coherent national brand is welcome: for a long while, Magic has been a confusing mix: a golden-oldies service in the North of England and an easy, relaxed listen in London. With Magic, KISS and Absolute as their three national brands, this means Bauer stands to gain from clear branding across the national market.

Locally, it's a clever move. There are clear cross-promotion opportunities on-air, though time will tell whether they'll be taken. But the craftiness is in ad revenue: because it should mean an end to advertisers only wanting to advertise on Hallam FM and not Magic AM; now, they'll be pushing the benefits of the Hallam brand family. This is a trick learnt from Absolute and their Scottish stations.

And most importantly they're making a new locally-broadcast service, "xxx 3", which can carry local advertising for the first time. Local advertising is where there's a lot of revenue; and the loss of a coherent "Hits" brand (it continues in London) will be more than offset by significantly increased local advertising. The Hits brings 774,000 listeners, and over 2.2m hours, as inventory for local stations to sell.

Local advertising is important for any radio company; it's less price-sensitive, it is more consistent, it is much less affected by global economic conditions, and it isn't tied up in complicated contracts like national ad agency revenue. From this viewpoint, it seems that Global have increasingly placed their bets on national advertising; while Bauer appears to be ensuring that local advertising is emphasised as a major part of their business.

There's plenty I don't understand about Bauer: the continued existence of Absolute Classic Rock which seemingly competes against Planet Rock, the reluctance to use the industry standard Radioplayer in favour of a relatively poor locally-coded effort, and the slightly old-fashioned clinging on to an "FM" moniker in some of their revised station names.

However, these new plans are very clever for Bauer's business - consolidating their digital lead against Global Radio, their competitor, and opening up more local inventory for each of their local sales teams.

This isn't a programming story, then, and not really a story for listeners either; but a commercial story. As such it may initially disappoint those within the industry. But making a stronger radio business in future, and lessening dependence on national advertising revenue, is a clever move - and one that benefits us all.

Press Release

BAUER MEDIA UNVEILS focused COMMERCIAL RADIO OFFERING

• New strategy centres on key national brands: Magic, KISS and Absolute Radio
• Plus new launches with an extended ‘Place’ local portfolio

September 26, 2014: Bauer Media UK has revealed an ambitious new radio offering which will see the influential multi-platform media company focus on audience growth through three key national brands and an expanded local portfolio.

From January 2015 it sets out to significantly strengthen its position as the UK’s digital commercial radio leader, and to accelerate its audience growth both nationally and locally through brands offering complementary and commercially valuable scaled audiences.

• Bauer Radio is leading the commercial radio industry in digital, with over 50% of its listening through digital devices.
• There are 3 key brands at the centre of the national radio growth strategy; Magic, KISS and Absolute Radio.
• The local audience growth plan will be accelerated through the launch of two new local services in each major city to complement the highly demanded ‘Place’ stations.

Focusing on clearly differentiated and complementary audiences will not only drive strong audience growth but will also offer advertisers a coherent, simplified and scaled national and local brand proposition.

Magic, KISS and Absolute Radio offer clearly differentiated and complementary national audiences. They will be complemented by thriving fellow national brands heat radio, Planet Rock, and Kerrang! as part of Bauer’s multimedia strategy with a focus on entertainment-loving and rock-seeking millennials respectively.

Magic will launch as a national service on DAB Digital Radio in January 2015. It is already loved by 1.9m Londoners, and for the first time it will reach new audiences with its unique “good-mood” music proposition.

The iconic youth brand KISS will see its brand extension KISSTORY, the best mix of old skool and anthems, launch onto DAB Digital radio across several cities across the UK including London and Birmingham. The station has already smashed through the 1 million listener barrier as a streaming service in just one year from launch. Fellow KISS brand extension KISS FRESH, which offers non-stop new music and beats, will also be available for the first time on DAB in London.

Absolute Radio is set to be grown under Bauer’s ownership, with a marketing campaign launched this week focused on the brand’s “Stand-up at Breakfast” proposition.

In Bauer’s local radio markets the ‘Place’ portfolio will be enhanced by two new brand extensions in each city. The portfolio will continue to broadcast brilliant local content with “Your Music, Your Life” brand positioning. The new services - derivatives of the main brand - will be launched to serve the needs a wider spectrum of listeners in each area.

For example in Liverpool, “Place 1” - Radio City on FM - will be extended with “Place 2” (eg Radio City 2 on AM) which will expand the appeal to an older, focused 45-64 year old audience, and “Place 3” (eg Radio City 3 on DAB) will offer an entry point offering current hits to a younger 15-25 demographic – further strengthening our digital capabilities. Both extensions are aimed at boosting local audiences and will offer a simplified proposition to consumers and advertisers alike.

Commenting on the new strategy, Dee Ford, Group Managing Director said, “This strategy marks a new era for Bauer Media’s radio brands. Our aim is to accelerate our significant lead in digital listening, growing our audiences both nationally and locally whilst making it easy for customers to access those scaled valuable audiences. Significant investment in content, talent, marketing and platforms is underpinned with the energy and drive of the Bauer Radio team”.

Bauer Media also recently heralded further ambitions in digital radio by announcing its involvement in a consortium with Arqiva and UTV Media. The groups will collectively bid to operate a second national DAB multiplex licence in the United Kingdom, known as D2. This licence would offer an exciting opportunity for the commercial radio industry to further extend its reach and services, and underpin digital listening growth in the UK.

All changes to the Bauer Media Radio Portfolio take effect in January 2015.

The media has seized on the following point from the summary:

Compared to Q2 2013, sales of DAB digital radio sets were down by 9.1%, with 1.7 million being sold in the year to Q2 2014. Total radio sales were down by 11.3% over the same period. DAB sales continue to represent around a third of all radio set sales.

"DAB sales down 9.1%" says Music Week, reflecting the spin that the media's putting on all of this.

The real concern here isn't that DAB set sales are down: it's that all radio set sales are down. DAB is outperforming total radio; but if radio receiver sales are down by 11.3% - in an economy generally felt to be improving - isn't that more a cause for concern?

Of course, you don't need to purchase a new radio receiver to continue listening to the radio. RAJAR doesn't show a material dip in radio listening, and radio listening isn't down by 11.3% year-on-year.

Perhaps the story here is that radio receivers, by and large, have dreadful user-interfaces. They're not products you show off to others, either: they hide in your bedroom or your kitchen, not in your front room.

But perhaps, too, the story is that radio broadcasters don't appear to care about radio receivers. There's a good comparison to be made here with TV.

Your Sky box doesn't ask whether you want to watch Astra or Eutelsat; doesn't ask you whether you want SD or HD; doesn't ask you whether you want FTA, FTV or subscription... it just gives you a list of channels. My YouView box puts antenna-delivered and IP-delivered TV channels together in the same EPG: nobody knows nor cares how the TV is getting to them.

Perhaps the decline of radio receiver sales is a wake-up call to radio broadcasters: to work with radio receiver manufacturers to make radio better. The technology is there: RadioDNS and now the Radioplayer's newly-announced in-car product both highlight that the industry is thinking about it - but when will we see better receivers: and would that buck the trend? I'd be interested in your comments.

Press Release

Ofcom has today published its Digital Radio Report for 2014. This annual report covers availability, take-up, listening patterns and attitudes towards digital radio.

The report, which was requested by Government in 2010 as part of the Digital Radio Action Plan, shows that over a third (36.3%) of all hours of radio listened to were on a digital platform in the year to the end of June 2014. This is an increase of 2.4 percentage points on the previous year, and an increase of 10.4 percentage points since 2011.

The proportion of people who said they owned a digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio set was 48.5% in the second quarter of 2014 (April – June), up from 45.7% in the previous year. Ownership varies across the UK, ranging from 58.1% in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to 26.7% in Northern Ireland.

Around 1.7 million digital radio sets were sold in the year to the end of June 2014, making up over a third (36.2%) of all radio sets sold. While there has been a drop in sales of digital radio sets (down 9.1%), this reflects an overall decrease in radio set sales (down 11.3%).

The number of new cars in the UK fitted with a digital radio as standard has increased over the last year. More than half of new cars (54.8%) were supplied with digital radio installed in the second quarter of 2014, compared to 38.3% during the same period of 2013.

The coverage of digital radio has increased, with the BBC’s national DAB multiplex covering 95% of homes and the national commercial digital multiplex covering 90%. Local DAB multiplexes are estimated to cover 73% of households.

The full report is on the Ofcom website.

You might have heard a figure that "10m people tune into community radio every week". Radio presenter Duncan Barkes quoted it recently, and it's also made its way to the community radio mailing list, where people are using it in relation to tomorrow's expected announcements about the Community Radio Order.

Community radio is going well in the UK, and many stations sound great and add a real benefit to the community that they serve. However, repeat a figure often enough, and it becomes the truth: which would be a shame, because it's not true.

The figure comes from an Ofcom report into community radio from 2011.

This document says, in paragraph 2.26:

Based on our computer modelling of population data and signal reception, we estimate that close to 10.5 million adults (just over 12.5 million people in total) are able to receive a community radio station broadly aimed at them

So, the 10m figure is based on "people who can receive if they wanted to", rather than "people who tune in".

If everyone who could pick up a community radio station tuned in, then you could say "10.5m people tune into community radio every week". Except they don't.

So, what's the real figure?

Community radio isn't in RAJAR; but RAJAR does measure all radio listening in the UK. If you don't pay for RAJAR, you're still in the figures - but lumped into a figure marked "Other radio". So, when audiences are told how to fill their diary in, they are asked to put all radio listening that doesn't go into a specific station's column as "other radio".

"Other Radio" could include pirate radio, internet radio from overseas, small commercial stations who aren't in RAJAR, and things that people think are called radio but aren't really. On a national level, though, this figure is amazingly reliable; it's a national sample size of over 100,000 adults.

"Other Radio" currently has a weekly listenership of 3.8m adults a week.

Only 17% of the total UK population can pick up community radio, according to the same Ofcom report we mentioned earlier. So, if we're charitable, and we assume that "Other Radio" is just all community radio listening if you can pick one up, and nothing else - a vast over-estimation, but worth a punt - then the entire national community radio audience is 646,000 people.

I'd think it not unreasonable to claim than half a million people tune into community radio in the UK. Community radio has grown in coverage and professionalism since 2011. But, whatever the number is, it certainly isn't ten million.

media.info lists all RAJAR public figures, like BBC Radio 2's. Just search for a station and click the total audience figure.

I think there are things we in radio can learn from Serial. It is itself, of course, radio. But it's different. Why?

You can start at the beginning. This couldn't work as effectively on broadcast radio as online: because it needs to be a linear experience; you have to have heard episode one for episode two to make sense. Indeed, at the beginning of episode two, you're told that if you haven't heard episode one, you should stop. Now. Back a few years ago, there was a station called OneWord on digital radio. I think one of the main reasons it failed is that its schedule was full of programmes that were "part 14 of 23". It's impossible to listen to live, linear radio like that. Yet podcasting lets you go back and listen to the programmes in order. And for this, that's crucial.

The episodes aren't broadcast length. They aren't made to fit a schedule. Recent episodes are anything from 28 to 43 minutes long. They are as long as they need to be to tell the story. One of the annoyances in US radio that I observed recently in LA is that the ads are dreadful. On listening more closely, it is evident that they are, simply, too long. The average length of an ad when written without time constraints is normally around 36 seconds (I used to do this and I think I ran the data once). In a US broadcast environment, that would be padded out to a 60. In a UK environment that would make a good 40, or if the copywriter's good, a good 30. Time constraints, for programmes or promos, make for worse material.

Serial isn't a flashy production thing. It is put together relatively informally. Sure its polished and sounds great, and the music they had commissioned works really well inside it, but it is also really, deceptively, simple: a presenter talking, clips of interviews, nothing more. Radiolab type production stuff is lovely, but this doesn't need to be that. There aren't the typical clichés of production using on-location recording ("It was here in this courtroom that..."), nor music clips or sound effects to recreate situations - just simple storytelling.

There are additional elements online, to allow further engagement. There's a mailing list to join. There are ways to get involved if you want to. (I have steered clear of these, since I still haven't caught up with the current episodes).

The language used is informal. There is humour when it calls for it. And the journalist gives her own view. This is something that, for UK radio at least, is very strange... its so against the norm, and so against the perceived rules, it is almost jarring to hear. Each individual episode is very biased too - deliberately, with one setting out to see whether one particular witness is telling the truth, one focusing on another. It seems to me that Serial couldn't exist on British radio, and certainly couldn't be commissioned - because it goes against all the guidelines for news reporting. Yet it isn't doing anything dreadful. Just not following the standard rules you would expect with a UK investigative documentary.

The audience are also being trusted with involvement. There are online conversations going on in various places. Some are jumping into their cars and timing journeys, filming as they go. There are healthy amounts of parodies. MailChimp, the sponsor, is also part of these - getting amazing extra coverage for free. Were this a production by another broadcaster, the legal letters would have been sent out, and parodies and other fan-related stuff would have been eradicated - just look at the BBC's heavy-handed relationship with Doctor Who fans as one example. Incidentally, the folks behind Geoff Lloyd's Hometime Show have just sent me this - Serial: This British Life. I don't have an iPhone, so can't listen here, but I trust that it'll be excellent; their stuff always is.

Great storytelling makes everything great.

There's a lot to learn here about how radio, how audio, how storytelling, works on new platforms. Now, what can you learn from it?

• You need an Amazon Prime account. Follow this link, and you can try it for free for the first thirty days.
• You can watch it on your computer by just visiting the website; or getting the Amazon app for iOS and Android.
• You can watch it on your TV by getting an Amazon Fire Stick - it's a tiny little stick that plugs into a spare HDMI port on your television, and costs around £32.99. It comes with a remote, and it also has access to catch-up TV from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, as well as other services like Netflix.

Grab your Amazon Prime account today, and you'll also benefit from cheaper delivery with Amazon, a range of TV and movies to watch for free, as well as music and other things, all for one annual cost.

Google has quietly launched a podcast player for every recent Android phone.

Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world, with 81% of the market. Apple's iOS operating system only has 17.9%. Yet, Apple is driving podcasting's success.

Until now, podcasts have required you to download an app for Android phones. There are no shortage of good, fully-featured apps; but it's an additional hurdle to ask a potential listener to download a new app just to listen.

Google's quiet launch of a podcast player into Android is significant, therefore, since it has the capability of greatly increasing the amount of listeners to podcasts.

The new podcast player, part of the Google app that is preinstalled on virtually every Android phone, allows a user to listen to the latest podcast from a publisher, as well as to add that podcast to their home screen. This adds a small icon of the podcast to a user's launcher, allowing them to quickly open that podcast and listen to it.

As discovered on the daily Podnews website, here's how it works.

• Open Google Assistant. It's available on most Android phones running Android v6 and above, by holding down the home key. It'll say "Hi, how can I help?"
• Say "Play 'The Daily' Podcast".
• The Google Assistant will confirm it'll play the podcast, and then start playing it. The screen will show the latest episodes, and you can touch any episode to read the show notes.
• On most podcasts, you'll have the option to "Add to home screen". This adds a shortcut on your home screen to that podcast.

The app plays in the background. To stop it playing, use the controls in your notifications.

The app appears to remember where you left off. If you close a podcast in the middle, the next time you ask to play the podcast it'll take you from where you stopped listening. It also marks episodes you've listened to. And if you use more than one device, it syncs your progress on all of them. The player has a skip-forward button, which jumps 30 seconds, and a skip-back button, which goes back 10. The disparity is probably designed to help users skip ads and segments they aren't interested in.

You can click the program to read the show notes. Users of Android Wear devices can also control the playback on their watch. It currently has no Chromecast support, however.

This behaviour is new, and may be only available on the beta version of the Google app. If that's the case, you may need to opt into the beta version by searching for the Google App on the Play Store and then scrolling down to the bottom of the page to opt into the beta program.

Don't have Google Assistant on your phone? Don't panic: here's another way:

• In the Google search bar, type "Play James Cridland's podcast"
• This will bring up a set of search results, some of which have play buttons.
• Hitting "play" will start playing it in the Google app, and it will allow you to add it to your home screen.

Using the search bar is also a good way to find less popular podcasts. I couldn't get the CBC News hourly podcast to play using Google Assistant, yet I could find it, buried in Google's listings, and play it from there.

At the time of writing, it's unclear whether the podcast listing that this app uses is from Google Play Music or another source. It's also unclear whether podcasts that have been saved to your home screen give you an alert when there's a new episode to listen to. [Edit - they don't.]

In testing, I noted that adding to the home screen doesn't appear possible if part of the podcast is being served via HTTPS. The Daily by the New York Times is one such podcast.

Is this the finished podcast integration for Android? Will Google promote this clearly as a way to listen? And why does "Play James Cridland's podcast" work when the title is actually "James Cridland - radio futurologist"? As we learn more about this feature, we'll see if we can get some answers.

This was tested on a Google Pixel XL running Android 7.1; and on an LG Stylus 2 running Android 6.0.

Interested in podcasting? You should subscribe to podnews.net, where this story was published. Daily, short emails with all you need to know about podcasting and on-demand.

In the comments of a story on an old blog of mine, Scott posts:

James, I have learnt that in the UK, they are evolving into DAB+ from DAB while most of European countries are using DAB+. What are the major differences? Thanks!

Since Scott asked, here's a quick primer about DAB+, updated for 2017:

A DAB audio signal is encoded in MP2 (the ancestor to today’s MP3 format). A DAB+ audio signal is encoded in aacPlus (strictly, aacPlus HE v2). Your iPod uses AAC as standard; aacPlus uses a number of clever techniques to make it more efficient, so audio sounds better at lower bitrates. Roughly, 48kbps DAB+ sounds the same as a 128kbps DAB signal.

A DAB+ audio signal also includes slightly better error correction, which might mean a reduction in 'bubbling mud' or other problems in poor reception areas.

Apart from that, there are no differences. DAB+ and DAB use the same transmitters, same multiplexing equipment, and so on, and DAB and DAB+ signals can happily live on the same DAB multiplex. A DAB+ radio will also happily decode DAB signals as well (although a DAB radio won’t decode DAB+). Almost every DAB radio on sale today will cope with DAB+ automatically, or will prompt you with instructions on how to upgrade (which could be as easy as typing a code in, or downloading some new firmware).

Any radio with a Digital Radio tickmark will receive DAB+ without any problem. If buying a DAB radio, you should ensure it has the Digital Radio tickmark somewhere on the packaging: it ensures it'll sound as good as it can, and has other benefits in terms of performance.

DAB+ is now the standard way to launch new DAB services, and is in use in, among other places, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, and many more. The main benefit is that you can get many more channels onto a typical DAB multiplex.

In the UK, the new national multiplex contains a few DAB+ services, including Fun Kids, Magic Chilled, Union Jack and Jazz FM. Everything else on that multiplex, however, is standard DAB. DAB+ services are also available on some small-scale multiplexes, including London, Portsmouth and Manchester.

So, that done, let’s put a few facts straight:

The UK has no plans to move from DAB to DAB+

While DAB+ services are now appearing in the UK, there are no plans to switch the majority of radio broadcasting over to DAB+: not yet, anyway. There have been a lot of DAB sets sold in the UK. DAB sets are in over half of all households here, and generally we don’t replace radios as fast as any other entertainment equipment (like a TV, a set-top box, or a mobile phone). Given this, it’s unlikely that the UK will be switching to DAB+ any time soon, and there are no plans to make that complete change. That doesn't mean that individual stations won't make the switch, though.

The UK could learn from Denmark, who is completing a switch from DAB to DAB+ later in 2017.

DAB+ doesn’t automatically mean better audio

Some of the main proponents of DAB+ in this country want it because they think it’ll result in better-sounding audio, in comparison with DAB. It might not. Many DAB+ countries use 48kbps aacPlus, and the new services on the SDL multiplex are at 32kbps: they offer a good stereo signal, but they're still not a brilliantly clear sound. The main benefits to radio listeners from DAB+ will be additional choice, not enhanced sound quality. That said, DAB+ normally means stereo is available at bitrates formerly only used for mono.

DAB+ doesn’t always mean cheaper costs for broadcasters

Changing to DAB+ instead of DAB doesn’t make the transmitters any cheaper (and, actually, makes them slightly more expensive since there's a patent to pay to Fraunhofer). Broadcasters are charged for the bitrate they use, but most DAB multiplexes in the UK aren’t full. Multiplex owners will still want to cover their costs.

The UK is currently only using DAB+ when it's the only way to get onto a multiplex. If there's 128kbps spare, it may make more sense to launch an old-fashioned DAB service, since you're likely to be able to be received by many more listeners. However, as DAB+ sets become more popular, this won't always be the case.

DAB+ is the only sensible choice if you’re launching digital radio now

If you’re launching digital radio in a new market, it makes no sense to be looking at standard DAB. DAB+ is robust, reliable, and comparatively cheap, particularly if you consider the opportunities of launching over 20 channels on one multiplex. Receivers are cheap, power-efficient, and available now. The technology is tried and tested. Broadcast radio, free at the point of consumption, has significant benefits over internet radio.

There are lots of reasons to go with DAB+ for a new marketplace. For the UK broadcaster, however, there are few benefits to move over to DAB+, and plenty of reasons not to do so yet.

The programming is good, and high quality. It's great to see Apple invest in radio - and invest they have, with three great-looking studios in LA, New York and London; and some great broadcasters. However, Beats 1 has hardly set the world alight, and has got its fair share of bad reviews too. I monitor radio stories from the world's press, and it's extremely rare that Beats 1 gets a mention. I’d assumed it was a failed project.

That's why I'm interested to see Larry Jackson, Apple Music's Head of Content, claim:

“It’s the biggest radio station in the world. There’s no way you’re going to find another station that has as many concurrent listeners and audience-wise as Beats 1, period.”

Fact, or alternative fact?

“Concurrent listeners” means what you think it does - that at any given second, there are x thousand people listening. So what number does Beats 1 need to, um, beat?

SHOUTcast shows concurrent figures for the radio stations on its platform on its front page. The most popular station has a concurrent listener figure of about 7,000.

When I’d stand in reception in the UK’s Absolute Radio, they had live stats from their streaming infrastructure showing total online concurrent figures. It’s no longer there, but when it was globally available, I remember it saying numbers as high as 15,000, and I’m told there are similar numbers for some Bauer stations these days. A correspondent from a large national European broadcaster tells me he is doing about 15,000 concurrent streams as well (and has space for 25,000 if needed). I've also heard of one station that had 250,000 concurrent streams during their major broadcast event this year. Stations in the US won’t be as large, though - more competition, less coverage.

In the absence of numbers from Beats 1 to compare, we need all the clues we can get. Go hunting for images of the Beats 1 studios, and you’ll find a nice-looking dashboard on the wall. In that picture, it says “12.5k total something” on the wall with squiggly lines and cities lit up, and I got excited since Beats 1 hide this dashboard pretty well in their PR shots. After going through far too many images and videos, I chanced upon this video where at 4’22” exactly you’ll find another shot - saying 19.7k total ‘posts’, and 28 ‘posts’ per minute. I’m not sure what this is really showing - but 19.7k concurrent listeners would be within the realms of reality. That ‘posts’ figure appears nothing to do with Twitter: in the last half-hour as I write this, there have been precisely six tweets about Beats 1, or 0.2 posts per minute. I wonder what it really shows?

But, for clues about how big Beats 1 is, it’s probably worth comparing Beats 1 on social media (media.info lists the latest numbers). Beats 1 has 495,000 followers on Twitter; BBC Radio 1, its closest competitor, has 2.8m. Beats 1 on Facebook has 11,000 likes; BBC Radio 1 has 2.6m. On Instagram, Beats 1 has 126,000 followers, while Radio 1 has 546,000.

It’s the most lazy journalism to rely on Google Trends, so even though it shows that Beats 1 significantly trails other radio brands in searches, I won’t make too much of it.

Apple Music is the only way of listening to Beats 1. On Android, it has between 10m and 50m installs, and 146,000 reviews. TuneIn has ten times as many - 100m-500m installs and 1.3m reviews. Of course, Apple Music is pre-installed on iOS; though Spotify has twice as many paid subscribers. You don’t need to subscribe to Apple Music on either platform to listen to Beats 1, but that fact’s rather hidden; and Apple Music - and hence Beats 1 - is not available on any other platform - not on Radioplayer, or iHeart, or RadioApp. Undoubtedly, it has less distribution than any other station.

However, of course, we’re overlooking one big point here. “It’s the biggest radio station in the world. There’s no way you’re going to find another station that has as many concurrent listeners” - the man from Apple isn’t just talking about the online world, as I’ve been doing so far - but radio as a whole.

Some of the biggest radio stations in the world are in the UK - a happy coincidence of strong national radio listening and a comparatively small amount of choice. The biggest of them all, BBC Radio 2, has 15m weekly listeners - with a total audience of 3.2m in the fifteen minutes between 8.00am and 8.15am on a Monday morning. That isn't, strictly, a concurrent listener figure, but it’s likely to be close. So, at peak, 3.2m people listen to BBC Radio 2 at the same time, via FM, DAB, DTV and online. (Radio 1 and Radio 4 also do over a million concurrents at this time, incidentally).

YouTube claimed 2m concurrent viewers during the US presidential elections, and said it was “one of the biggest livestreams of all time”. But Radio 2 achieves more: 3.2m. Is Beats 1 really beating that, day in, day out? Has Beats 1 ever achieved that kind of level of listening?

It’s great that Apple wants to be part of radio’s success. But, if Apple really wants to show how big Beats 1 is, the Triton Webcast Metrics team have the methodology and the technology to achieve some robust, comparable figures with the rest of the online market. Apple shouldn’t forget about radio’s other platforms, too - it's where the majority of listening happens, after all. It must be possible to appear in Nielsen or RAJAR. (Who knows, perhaps they're privately there already).

Until then, don’t believe Apple’s alternative facts. As the evidence would appear to show, Beats 1 is almost certainly not the biggest radio station in the world. Which begs the question: why claim it is?

While there are more issues around this specific story, I must confess that I didn’t see this as being particularly shocking. Radio isn’t always entirely “real”, and audiences probably shouldn’t expect it to be. The Friends cast were scripted to always be that funny. They were played by actors. Radio probably needn’t be too different.

One of my favourite call-in shows, Iain Lee on UK radio station talkRADIO, has a bunch of characters that are obviously acts. Barry from Watford is an old man who’s never short of an opinion. The audience is left to work out for themselves that “Barry” doesn’t really exist - he’s a 48-year-old actor called Alex Lowe, who’s taken the character onto television and a stage show.

The English comedian Peter Cook used to call into London’s LBC radio station, playing a character called Sven from Norway. Once more, the audience was never told “this is Peter Cook playing a character!” - they were credited with the intelligence to make that discovery for themselves.

Absolute Radio’s Geoff Lloyd spoke at the Next Radio conference a few years ago, in a talk entitled “People Are Idiots”. In it, he argued strongly that people aren’t. “Treat your audience like idiots, and they’ll behave like idiots.” He mentions - and it’s a great watch if you haven’t done so - that Frasier’s writers used to put in jokes that only 5% of the audience would ‘get’.

The TV Tropes website has recognised that many television executives think viewers are morons. Indeed, the BBC has been accused by many of “dumbing down”, deliberately putting programs on-air that don’t require much intelligence. “The fear and hatred of intelligence [is] so all-pervading,” complained one BBC employee, adding “One is constantly putting sheer rubbish on the air because of having talks which sounded too intelligent cancelled at the last moment.” The employee in question - author George Orwell, writing in 1942. Times may change, but the complaints don’t.

It’s not just broadcasting which treats our audience as if they’re dumb. Journalism, particularly newspapers, is also full of it. In a Medium post, Jennifer Brandel quotes some of the attitudes she’s had from newsrooms and their bosses: “If we gave the audience what they wanted, they’d ask for crap!”, or worse, “Our audience is a bunch of idiots and assholes. Why exactly would we want to hear more from them than we already do?”

And don’t even start on the way we treat people on websites, with pop-ups and punch-the-monkey ad-banners.

So it’s interesting to consider, as a Facebook commenter of mine did a few months ago, that the “public service” tradition of broadcasters in Europe and Australia mainly tend to treat audiences as intelligent human beings with things to say and views to respect. The commercial broadcasters of the same countries are significantly less engaged with their audiences, treating them more as numbers on a demographic sheet than individual people. The audience figures appear to point to a success for the former approach, rather than the latter.

So when it comes to the intelligence of our audience, all I’m asking is for a little respect. Just a little bit. Sock it to me?

At the coffee break, I spied an HBB television, and went to learn a little more. HBBtv is a connected TV system enabling enhanced functionality: a bit like "connected red button" in the UK, a layer delivered partially by broadcast and partially by broadband. We're getting this system under the guise of "Freeview Connect" in the next few years.

All the SRG SSR radio stations are available through this system. Nicely, when tuning into a Swiss TV channel, a very short overlay appears, promoting radio through the 'red button' with a bunch of radio station logos: some prime-time advertising that radio benefits from.

Once in the radio service, it's a little disappointing. Above, in the worst photograph ever taken of a TV screen, I'm tuned into Radio Swiss Pop, a non-stop music service; it has a tiny logo and a small suspiciously-128-character-looking piece of dynamic text, showing me that I'm listening to Queen. The audio comes over the broadband connection.

The lower half of the screen says "Select a news channel from..." and then shows speech station Radio 1 and youth station Radio 3. And it's this that is interesting and clever.

I can listen to Radio Swiss Pop non-stop; no news, no presenters, just music... or, I can ask the television to switch channel for the news (and switch back when it's finished).

This is relatively simple personalisation that offers listeners a choice of staying connected with the outside world, or not doing so. And in a world where personalisation is increasingly key, something I suspect listeners would like (assuming the user experience is clear).

A clever idea from the Swiss: worth noting (and even copying).

It is unlawful to plug in your device in our stores if you are watching live TV or downloading or watching programmes on demand on BBC iPlayer

Why might this be?

The law basically says "a television receiver must not be installed or used unless [it] is authorised by a licence", and "a person who installs or uses a television receiver [without a licence] is guilty of an offence". (The definition of television was amended recently to include things that can display BBC on-demand programmes as well as any live TV.)

The law then says that the BBC issues licences "subject to such restrictions and conditions as the BBC think fit". So the BBC can interpret the legislation, and set the terms and conditions for television licences.

These terms and conditions say:

The licence allows use and installation of TV equipment:

• At the licensed place by anyone.
• In a vehicle, boat or caravan by:
  • You and anyone who normally lives with you at the licensed place (except in non-touring caravans when someone is watching or recording TV at the licensed place).
  • Anyone who normally works at the licensed place (so long as the vehicle, boat or caravan is being used for a business purpose).
• Use of TV equipment powered by internal batteries anywhere by you and anyone who normally lives with you at the licensed place.

So, it's fine to watch live television, or on-demand programmes from the BBC, if you are using a laptop's internal batteries. But as soon as you plug it in... you need to be in a "licensed place" - i.e. somewhere that has a TV licence.

And Starbucks haven't bought a TV licence.

The number of Starbucks-owned stores is actually shrinking in the UK - down from a devilishly high 666 stores in 2009 to only 366 in 2016. Include stores that aren't owned by Starbucks but still say Starbucks outside, though, that figure rises to 898 stores.

Starbucks could pay £130,659 on TV licences for all its stores, which represents 0.003% of total TV licence revenue to the BBC (or a few journalists or producers). Or, Starbucks could continue not paying the TV licence fee, and reminding its customers that its stores don't have TV licences. It's the customer who'd be committing an offence, not Starbucks themselves.

So: Starbucks is being quite right. While not specifically written in the law - rather, the BBC's interpretation of it - you won't be covered if you watch live TV, or BBC iPlayer, while being plugged-in. So get a bigger battery - or, like the rest of us, watch TV at home.

Interesting things to know

• Starbucks paid £8.1m corporation tax in the 12 months to September 2015
• If you work in journalism or entertainment, a TV licence may be treated as a tax-deductible business expense
• You probably shouldn't go to Starbucks: there are plenty of independent coffee shops around
• You probably should watch television at home, not in a Starbucks

Radiocentre, originally known as the AIRC then the CRCA, will still function in the same way, and all staff continue with their existing job titles and job roles, but the change is "designed to create clarity about the services and role of Radiocentre and make it easier for customers and members to access services, skills and knowledge," said a spokesperson for the organisation.

The announcement will be made later today by Radiocentre's Chief Executive Siobhan Kenny at their Tuning In radio conference, where she'll also unveil a refreshed brand and new tagline for Radiocentre: Sound, Commercial, Sense.

“There is no doubt that radio is having a moment; both listeners and revenues are up and its traditional strengths of intimacy, localness and music discovery are timeless,” she is to say, “ but the industry doesn’t sit still, nor does Radiocentre. Bringing together our functions into one holistic team makes our mission clearer in an increasingly crowded media landscape. Radiocentre will always give you sound commercial sense.”

Radiocentre will also published a new policy document today which urges the Government to review the legislative framework for radio, ensuring it does not inhibit growth in a multiplatform world. The document also calls for an urgent rewriting of excessive consumer protection regulation such as the warnings on financial product advertising which does little to protect consumers but deters advertisers from using radio.

The new brand identity was created by Thinkfarm. Thinkfarm are no stranger to radio, having created the SAM FM identity for Celador Radio, as well as the original Virgin Radio logo and "The Music We All Love" brand pack. They've also worked on Channel 4, CNN, the Cartoon Network, and BAFTA. In a nice coincidence, Thinkfarm also created the Roundhouse logo, which is the venue for tonight's Commercial Radio Awards, run by Radiocentre.

TWBA/London has been appointed by Radiocentre to create an advertising campaign to announce the changes.

RAJAR is owned by the radio companies, and interviews around 100,000 people every year to get a full picture of radio listening. Here's how it all works.

The details, quickly

Want a quick overview of how a radio station's done? Search for a radio station like BBC Radio 2, and instantly see how many weekly listeners it has. Also, discover what kind of music the station plays, and more information including their website, Twitter and Facebook accounts: and who the key personnel are at the station. (Know of more? Edit them yourself.)

Historical figures in detail

Click through to see full detail of how a station has done. Every survey since 1999, in easy-to-read graph form with expert explanations of what the figures mean. Discover how long audiences listen, and whether the population in that station's surveyed area has increased. And, understand the station's market share. All our graphs are interactive, too: mouse-over (or click on mobile) to pinpoint exact figures.

Data for owners

Where owning companies are also in RAJAR - like the BBC or Global - we also have aggregate figures for them, too. Search for them in the usual way, and discover more about how they're doing.

The latest news and views

Our constantly updated UK radio news service has the latest press releases from broadcasters, as well as analysis from the press.

More than just RAJAR

You can also see the top charts for UK radio stations on Twitter and UK stations on TuneIn - and more data, too.

Want more information? Contact us: we'd love to help.

This thread is also here for our directory editors, an excellent bunch of volunteers who keep the data updated.

Since August 2010, Pure have offered a subscription streaming music service on their connected radio sets, which allowed listeners to enjoy millions of tracks of music. The service, branded FlowSongs, initially allowed purchase of tracks (at 79p), and a service letting you use inbuilt Shazam track identification, whether you were listening to FM, DAB or internet radio. It used 7digital's infrastructure.

In December 2011, a rebranded Pure Music added unlimited music streaming for £4.99 - on their radio hardware, mobile apps and on the web. Theoretically, you could listen to songs on the radio, discover through Shazam what the artist and album was, and then go and listen to the full album.

The service, now part of a brand called Pure Connect, will close on October 16th. Pure have announced that existing customers will get the service for free until closure, and are recommending that tracks purchased through Pure are downloaded before the service shuts. (Tracks aren't protected by DRM).

Pure Connect will still be the front end to Pure's internet radio listings, "in addition to 'listen again' programmes and around 270,000 podcast episodes". The Pure Connect app continues to act as a controller for the company's Jongo multiroom speakers. Pure say this change "reflects changing times within the music and radio streaming industry".

Pure's newer devices include a Bluetooth connection, allowing users to stream their own music collection, and competing services like Spotify, Google Play Music and Apple Music to their Pure devices.

The good news is that the Shazam-powered track identification service will, according to my enquiries, continue after the music service's closure on October 16th. This identifies almost any track playing on the radio, and puts them in a part of the Pure Connect service called 'My tracks'.

"Pure will also be announcing a number of partnerships with leading music streaming services in the coming months to reflect a new universal approach to music streaming," the company says.

I think this service failed because of a number of factors: first, that the user experience on a radio was fiddly and difficult to use with a tuning knob and a few buttons; second, that a radio is typically something you turn on, listen to, and turn off (and don't therefore expect to interact with); and third, that publicity of the service was minimal with confusing branding, and thus failed to compete with Spotify, Google and Apple.

However, as architects of a brave experiment, Pure deserve applause. It was a great idea to see whether they could use radio's role in music discovery to sell (and stream) music. It's a shame, but not wholly unexpected, that it didn't work.

<small>As a disclosure: I was working at Pure while FlowSongs was initially launched, and was part of the team that successfully relaunched The Lounge.</small>

Feedback is, of course, welcome.

Above is an example of what it looks like in Melbourne, Australia; though the logos from this system should fill the buttons entirely.

Leon recorded his programmes and sent them back to the UK to ensure his regular listeners were kept in touch on his trip down under.

Leon played some Australian music, and took his microphone on the road - speaking to locals and recording his trip. Listeners were treated to some live digeridoo playing, as well as the dramatic moment when a shark was spotted on a Sydney beach.

On Sunday 20th December, Andrew English, the Chairman at Radio North Kent, went live to Australia (at 23:55 Melbourne time) in his show to learn more about Leon's trip, including the Victoria heatwave and severe weather that nearly meant he missed a vital flight to the outback.

Regular programmes presented in this way, plus a live link, were a first for Radio North Kent: and, perhaps, hospital radio in the UK. Unless, of course, you know different: in which case, we'd love to hear more in the comments.

Bush's Heritage II Connect was unveiled in June 2015 for A$499 (£250, US$360). It's available in two finishes: cream and walnut, and while it's a large, retro-looking radio, it has managed to treat the fine line between looking acceptably retro while not looking out-dated.

Among its extensive featureset is an FM, DAB+ and internet radio with Spotify Connect, personal network streaming, and Bluetooth. It also has an NFC chip, an AUX input, and boasts multiroom streaming. In lieu of a remote control, it comes with an app for Android and iOS phones.

Installation was relatively simple. It comes with a setup manual, but obviously I didn't read it, because I'm a man. But, the only two things you need to do are to connect wifi and tell it how you want to keep the clock updated. Sensibly, it leaves DAB scans and all that until you first try using that feature.

The first thing that you notice is the rich, sonorous bass from the large wooden cabinet. For speech, it's a very rounded sound; and for music it sounds warm and full. I used it on Australia's DAB+ signals and it certainly gets the best out of the audio. The set goes loud, too; and it has EQ in the settings if you want to fiddle further. The build quality is high, and it's clearly reflected in the audio quality.

The DAB+ receiver uses a retractable antenna at the back of the unit, and works well. The screen displays the full name of the radio station in big letters, and the livetext in smaller characters underneath, in full. There's no scrolling on this display at all, which is good news; so many implementations of DLS include frustratingly slow scrolling.

The Bluetooth works well. Put an NFC-equipped phone on top of the unit, and the phone handles all the linking - one button-push is all you need. As you'd guess, the audio quality's good for that, too.

I don't have a premium Spotify account, so didn't test that bit. Spotify Connect works much like Google Cast, in that - unlike Bluetooth - your phone just tells the speaker what to play, rather than your phone actually playing it and sending the audio over wifi. This means you can wander outside wifi or Bluetooth range and it won't stop working, and also means the quality should be better since there's no re-encoding. I chucked a Chromecast Audio in the AUX input instead; and that works well. I'd have preferred to have Google Cast built-in, though.

The internet radio bit is nice, with a simple interface letting you search or select stations from a big list. I listened to French station FIP for a while, and it was almost impossible to know that this was coming via the wifi connection. The device uses Frontier Silicon's station listing service.

The radio also has its own app, called UNDOK. Actually, it isn't its own app: the app is Fronter Silicon's, too (the chipset inside is Frontier Silicon's Venice 6.5 module), so if you have a number of UNDOK-compatible devices from other manufacturers, it'll play with all of them. I tested the Android version, which is surprisingly modern-feeling and well-designed. Virtually every part of the device is controllable through the app; switching between sources is easy, and you can control the volume, or even turn it off, from the swish of a finger.

Impressively, full-colour station logos appear on the app's screen when listening to internet radio, and I've seen track artwork appear when using it via a home server or Spotify. However, when listening on DAB, you get the livetext, but just a DAB logo, and not the full-colour slideshow available on most Australian (and German) DAB+ radio stations; nor a RadioDNS-supplied logo either. This is a real missed opportunity; the information's being broadcast, it'll easily be transportable over your home wifi, and your mobile phone is a great colour screen, so why isn't slideshow visible in the app? I can only hope this is coming from Frontier in a forthcoming software release: why wouldn't they?

If I was also going to be slightly picky, this device doesn't have unified presets. Flicking between, say, a local DAB+ station and a station over the internet requires rather more button-presses than you'd expect. Just one preset list would be brilliant.

All-in-all, though, this is an impressive audio device: all the radio you need, plus a lot of other things besides: and a great, powerful sound. If you're considering a radio for the kitchen, office or front-room, this should be high on your list.

• In the UK? You can buy the Goodmans-badged version on amazon.co.uk. The Bush-branded version is available in Australia from JB-Hifi and other retailers.

But how does “online-only” save the BBC any money? I’m curious.

The BBC owns its own transponders for satellite (Sky and Freesat). The loss of two channels (BBC THREE and BBC THREE HD) isn’t enough to remove, as far as I can see, any of the BBC’s transponders. (In any case, the BBC needs them during the day for the childrens’ channels). Unless I’m wrong, the BBC will still have to pay just as much money for satellite transmission as it did in the past.

In terms of carriage fees for satellite, BSkyB dropped the platform contribution charge earlier this year, which has saved the BBC £3m a year. The BBC still gets charged by Sky and Freesat for the EPG listing – and the removal of BBC THREE will save the BBC £150,000 of Freesat charges, and perhaps the same figure again for Sky (who charge the BBC £1.4m in total for EPG listings); though this will have been part of a contract, so savings are unlikely to be realised immediately.

The BBC also owns its own multiplexes for terrestrial broadcasting (Freeview and Youview). Removal of BBC THREE’s two services (SD and HD) won’t mean the BBC can switch one of those off, either. So, once more, there are no savings for the BBC from removing these channels from DTT. Freeview may charge an EPG listings fee as well (I’m unclear quite how the system works); but it’s unlikely to be anything more than what Sky might be charging.

So, putting BBC THREE as an online-only channel would only really see savings of £450,000 from transmission. There may be additional savings from removal of these services from Virgin Media, I guess.

It would appear that, if the programming budget remains the same, the savings for the BBC of making a channel a purely online-only thing is around half a million pounds a year.

However… the internet is not free. Bandwidth costs money. Akamai is one of the two companies that the BBC uses to stream, and this 2012 article from Dan Rayburn, a well-respected streaming media specialist, says that the typical cost that Akamai have charged recently to large customers is 3p (5c) per gigabyte. Let’s assume that the BBC have a deal that’s 50% lower than even that. And let’s also assume that BBC iPlayer uses half a gigabyte per hour to stream – which was the case in early 2011 though they’ve since introduced HD on the service.

BARB reports that the “average weekly viewing per person” for BBC THREE was 24 minutes in January. Roughly, that’s two hours a month, or one gigabyte per person. BARB’s monthly reach for all TV was 57m people (Oct-Dec 2013). So, that’s 57 million GB per month in bandwidth costs.

So, if BBC THREE moves completely online, but retains its viewing figures, that’ll cost the BBC £1,140,000 in bandwidth per month. Or, if you like, £13.7m a year.

Now: I’m the first to announce that I know nothing about television – a product I used to call the “moron-box” in BBC meetings. I know little about the BBC’s peering arrangements these days. But if the savings are supposed to be made simply by “moving a television channel online”, as the current story would lead you to believe, then – even if these figures are out by a factor of over 75% – it’s not the saving you think it might be.

The launch of the BBC

The BBC was formed in 1922 as a number of radio manufacturers came together to promote the new medium. The government of the day worried that broadcasting was too important to be left to the market and set up an enquiry. In giving evidence to the 1926 Crawford Committee, John Reith – then Managing Director of the British Broadcasting Company – stated:

Broadcasting must be conducted in the future as it has been in the past, as a Public Service with definite standards. The Service must not be used for entertainment purposes alone. The Broadcasting Service should bring into the greatest possible number of homes in the fullest degree all that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement.

The government accepted the findings of the committee and, in 1927 the BBC became a public corporation under a new Royal Charter, which set out its remit and governance structure.

BBC Radio started as local radio, partly for technical reasons, as it was not at first possible to retransmit the same programme to different areas. The local programmes were appreciated but, by the early 1930s, as the airwaves became more crowded and interference increased, the BBC abandoned local radio and the first national and regional services were born.

This situation continued until 1967, when the three BBC networks – Home (with regional programmes), Light and Third – were renamed Radio 4, Radio 2 and Radio 3 respectively and were joined by the new national Radio 1, designed to counter the loss of listening to the pirate stations, which were taking many listeners away from the BBC. At the same time, the BBC re-started local radio, beginning with BBC Radio Leicester. A further nineteen stations followed over the next six years.

Commercial radio begins

In 1973, some 18 years after the BBC faced its first commercial competition in television, commercial radio launched (then known as Independent Local Radio or ILR). Stations were licensed by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and were local, generally covering cities or counties. There was only one station per area, except in London, where there were two with different remits: Capital, broadcasting entertainment, and LBC, broadcasting news and information. The rest of the commercial local stations around the country offered a broad range of programming – from news and chat, through pop music to classical music and religion - and were all locally owned and run. Localness has, therefore, been an important feature of commercial radio since its inception.

By 1988, there were 69 local commercial stations, each broadcasting on both MW (AM) and VHF (FM) (a situation known as simulcasting). In that year, the Government permitted local commercial stations to offer different services on their MW and VHF frequencies. Following this liberalisation, a number of different formats were experimented with on MW by the commercial radio companies, but by far the most commonly adopted was the ‘Gold’ format, majoring on chart hits from the 1960s and 70s. The overall number of stations increased dramatically as a result.

The 1990 Broadcasting Act decreed that all local VHF and MW services should be individually licensed, replacing the single VHF / MW ‘contract’ that had previously existed under the auspices of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Furthermore, the ‘broadening choice’ criterion contained in Section 105 of the Act meant that any company providing the same programming on both wavebands in the same licence area would be vulnerable to challenges to their licences when they came up for readvertisement. This meant that, by 1995, there was virtually no simulcasting still occurring in UK commercial radio.

In 1990, the IBA began to award licences for stations in areas already served by an existing commercial station. The aim was to increase the range of programming available to listeners. Early examples included Jazz FM and Kiss in London, designed to appeal to a different audience from Capital or LBC.

In 1991, the Radio Authority replaced the IBA as the commercial radio regulator and followed a policy of licensing stations to fill in the gaps in existing coverage, to offer smaller stations in areas already covered by large commercial stations and to offer regional stations, which could extend the range of programming available to audiences.

National commercial radio

National commercial radio began in 1992. Three stations were licensed, and their formats were, to some extent, decreed by Parliament – one had to offer music other than pop music, one had to have at least 50% speech content. These stations were Classic FM, Talk Radio (now talkSPORT) and Virgin Radio (the original company is now operating as Absolute Radio).

The general trend in regulation of commercial radio has been gradually to lessen the regulatory burden on radio stations as the competition for revenues and the choice for listeners increases.

BBC expansion

Meanwhile BBC Radio has continued to expand since 1967: A fifth national network, BBC Radio 5 (now BBC Radio Five Live) was launched and BBC Local Radio continued to expand, together with new stations for each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

DAB Digital Radio

The BBC technically launched DAB digital radio in 1995, and now offers eleven UK-wide digital radio stations (including five only available nationally on digital, and the World Service).

Since then, commercial operators have also made significant investments in digital radio. A national commercial multiplex licence was awarded to Digital One in 1998. Digital One launched its first national commercial services in 1999. Local DAB commercial services are now available from around fifty local DAB digital radio multiplexes around the UK. Digital versions of the relevant BBC Local Radio or nations’ services are also carried on the appropriate local commercial multiplex.

Digital has also allowed some commercial radio stations to become national rather than local - Kiss, LBC and Xfm - relaunching as Radio X - are just some of the formerly local brands now available nationally on digital radio.

Here's one example for the station in Exmouth, Bay FM. Search for your station, and click the 'listening figures' link in your page for details.

You'll appreciate, I'm sure, how many times I put the phrase "estimate" all over these pages. I'm still not sure I believe them. But take a look and see how your station has done!

Feedback is very welcome.

Over half of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live's listeners are using digital radio, according to recent RAJAR research.

These figures show people who tune into the station using digital radio at least once a week: "digital radio" being defined as DAB, DTV and online. They don't show the total amount of listening on each platform; and a listener only needs listen once a week via digital to appear on these figures.

31% of Heart's listeners tune in via digital, in comparison to 43% of BBC Radio 2's listeners. You'd have thought Heart should be higher: their FM signal doesn't reach many parts of the UK, yet they are available on DAB in many places.

Capital's 36% figure is the same as BBC Radio 1, interestingly; yet, once more, Capital is a digital-only station in many parts of the UK. Kiss UK has a 61% digital figure: but is only available on FM in three parts of the UK.

Bauer's brands appear to perform better. The Absolute Network (not entirely fair to treat this as one station) shows 85% use digital; Planet Rock's 89%. Magic's 40% is for "Magic UK", a number that I believe includes the Magic stations in the North of England.

Perhaps the most obviously comparable: talkSPORT has 45% of their audience using digital, in comparison to BBC Radio 5 Live's 54%.

Top 20 digital stations, by total weekly reach

1. BBC Radio 2: 43% (6,507m digital; vs 15,014m overall)
2. BBC Radio 4: 52% (5,498 vs 10,621)
3. BBC Radio 1: 36% (3,778 vs 10,550)
4. Absolute Radio Network: 85% (3,393 vs 4,005)
5. BBC Radio 5 Live: 54% (3,138 vs 5,809)
6. Kiss UK: 61% (2,960 vs 4,858)
7. Heart: 31% (2,852 vs 9,075)
8. Capital: 36% (2,638 vs 7,343)
9. Classic FM: 39% (2,008 vs 5,199)
10. BBC Radio 6 Music: 100% (1,994)
11. Smooth: 39% (1,916 vs 4,692)
12. BBC Radio 4 Extra: 100% (1,629)
13. Magic: 40% (1,427m vs 3,547)
14. talkSPORT: 45% (1,413 vs 3,148)
15. BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra: 100% (1,216)
16. BBC 1Xtra: 100% (1,057)
17. Planet Rock: 89% (976 vs 1,098)
18. Kisstory: 100% (973)
19. Heat: 100% (965)
20. The Hits: 100% (949)

RAJAR Q3/2014; top 20 digital figures published by Digital Radio UK, total audience published at RAJAR's website.

For a more technical view of DAB+, discover more about DAB+ in the UK.

What is DAB+?

DAB+ is a new form of DAB Digital Radio broadcasting. DAB+ uses a different way of transmitting the audio.

A DAB+ radio will receive old-fashioned DAB signals, as well as new DAB+ stations.

How can I tell if a radio works with DAB+?

• Look for a DAB+ logo, or a Digital Radio 'tick', on the box or on the device itself.
• If it is clearly for sale in other European countries (the box has German, Danish or Norwegian on it) it'll almost certainly get DAB+
• If it is built-in to a car and the car was manufactured since 2014, it'll almost certainly support DAB+

To check for certain, turn the radio on and look for "Fun Kids UK" or "Magic Chilled". If you can hear these stations, your radio supports DAB+

Why is a DAB+ radio a good thing?

DAB+ lets radio broadcasters fit more stations on transmitters. That means more choice of radio stations, and can also mean better sound quality.

Are they using DAB+ anywhere else?

DAB+ is the standard form of digital radio broadcasting in many countries in Europe and Australia. The UK is relatively unusual in still broadcasting most services in the older DAB standard.

What happens to my old DAB radio?

With millions of older DAB radios still in use across the UK, and a relatively low replacement cycle, DAB will still be broadcast for years to come. But perhaps now's the time to upgrade: you'll find more stations available now and in the future.

The Telegraph can disclose that from next month, the BBC vans will fan out across the country capturing information from private Wi-Fi networks in homes to “sniff out” those who have not paid the licence fee.

The Register looked into the story, analysed it, and weren't so sure.

It is possible to observe in real-time the packets in the air on someone's private wireless network and compare that to the packets streaming from a live iPlayer source: if they match then perhaps someone in the snooped-on household is streaming iPlayer live right there and then. But the new rules crack down on catch-up iPlayer that's viewed on demand where the user ultimately controls the packets. There is no way of predicting what is being streaming.

If the Wi-Fi snooping vans even exist, the licensing enforcers can at best identify live streaming. The rules that kick in from September affect people who stream on-demand video, a completely different beast. If you stream catch-up TV, there's a good chance the detector vans, if they aren't the Telegraph's fantasy, can't work out what you're doing anyway.

...and then the BBC made a statement about the stories saying:

There has been considerable inaccurate reporting this weekend about how TV Licensing will detect people breaking the law by watching BBC iPlayer without a licence. While we don't discuss the details of how detection works for obvious reasons, it is wrong to suggest that our technology involves capturing data from private wi-fi networks.

So, The Register concludes:

the Telegraph's article about the BBC sniffing Wi-Fi is complete bollocks

While the BBC may not be "sniffing Wi-Fi", what is the BBC doing about tracking down users of BBC iPlayer without a licence? Because, as far as I can tell, this story isn't entirely baseless.

How do TV Detection Vans work?

The National Audit Office looks into the BBC's financial affairs regularly. This year's statement includes an interesting paragraph, written by Sir Amyas CE Morse, the Comptroller & Auditor General (my bold):

1.37 The BBC’s final detection and enforcement option is its fleet of detection vans.  Where the BBC
still suspects that an occupier is watching live television but not paying for a licence, it can send
a detection van to check whether this is the case. TVL detection vans can identify viewing on a
non‐TV device in the same way that they can detect viewing on a television set.  BBC staff were
able to demonstrate this to my staff in controlled conditions sufficient for us to be confident
that they could detect viewing on a range of non‐TV devices.  

A few things from this:

It's widely believed that TV Detection Vans don't exist. However, here they are, detailed in a National Audit Office report. In Office of Surveillance Commissioners reports obtained under an FoI request, they're described as "a detector van or manual detection device which can detect the presence of an operating television set at the premises at which the device is directed".

There are at least two potential ways of a TV detector working. First, just like any radio receiver, a TV receiver has a local oscillator which helps with reception. It's possible to detect these signals: they're radiated back out of the TV antenna. Assuming, of course, that you're using a TV antenna.

Second, there's an optical method:

A television display generates light at specific frequencies. Some of that light escapes through windows usually after being reflected from one or more walls in the room in which the television is situated. The optical detector in the detector van uses a large lens to collect that light and focus it on to an especially sensitive device, which converts fluctuating light signals into electrical signals, which can be electronically analysed. If a receiver is being used to watch broadcast programmes then a positive reading is returned. The device gives a confidence factor in percentage terms, which is determined by the strength of the signal received by the detection equipment and confirms whether or not the source of the signal is a “possible broadcast”.

If it's possible to detect streaming "in the same way that they can detect viewing on a television set", then it's nothing to do with your wifi network: and it must be this optical method. Which appears to assume that a) it's dark; b) TV is being watched in a room visible from the street; c) TV is being watched on a relatively large screen for a decent amount of light; d) your curtains aren't very good.

What can the BBC actually legally do?

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is:

An Act to make provision for and about the interception of communications, the acquisition and disclosure of data relating to communications, the carrying out of surveillance, the use of covert human intelligence sources and the acquisition of the means by which electronic data protected by encryption or passwords may be decrypted or accessed; [...] to entries on and interferences with property or with wireless telegraphy and to the carrying out of their functions by the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Headquarters; and for connected purposes.

...and, the BBC gets its own bit of law, the The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (British Broadcasting Corporation) Order 2001, which allows surveillance by the BBC which:

(a) is carried out by means of apparatus designed or adapted for the purpose of detecting the installation or use in any residential or other premises of a television receiver (within the meaning of section 1 of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949(1)), and

(b) is carried out from outside those premises exclusively for that purpose.

So, is the BBC allowed to wiretap your internet connection? Assuming that the definition of "television receiver" now includes a laptop or mobile phone, would they be able to, for example, legally request from your ISP any connections you made to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer ? That surveillance is "outside" premises, after all...

Is there more to this story than a flat denial "that our technology involves capturing data from private wi-fi networks" - could the BBC's technology involve, in future, capturing data from private internet connections? After all: the law might allow them to do that.

Theories welcome.

PS: It's probably worthwhile remembering that, at only £145.50 per year, the TV licence fee is rather good value. It also covers the BBC's radio stations and web activity. Additionally, the BBC estimates that only 0.79% of people only watch TV on something other than a television set (though that's still potentially £25m of potentially missing revenue).

The software includes access to up to four audio sources, including sound effects, Skype callers or USB microphones; as well as encoding and connection to Spreaker's live servers (which can also be used to author a podcast).

Spreaker Studio also exists for iOS and Android devices; the addition of laptop computers will enable more home-based setups to use the system.

Spreaker Studio for Windows and Mac also includes a live chatbox system (so your listeners can leave comments as you broadcast), and integration with Skype for telephone calls. The latter requires a bit of jiggery-pokery with additional software like Soundflower or VB-cable, but otherwise works well.

A highlight of my recent talks has been talking about how the way we make radio has changed dramatically. When I was on-air in the early 1990s, studios and editing equipment were hundreds of thousands of pounds. With systems like Spreaker Studio, making live radio is now democratised to almost anyone who owns a laptop or tablet.

Spreaker starts with a free plan, and has options going up to $120; though most people will probably be fine using the 'broadcaster' model for $20.

USB microphones start from around £15 at Amazon, though you'll probably want to spend a little more.

Press release

Spreaker releases podcasting app Spreaker Studio for Windows and Mac OS X

Users can stream audio live, record and add guests or co-hosts using Skype

Spreaker, the leading podcasting and live audio streaming platform, announces the availability of its audio recording and live streaming app “Spreaker Podcasting made easyStudio” for Windows and Mac OS X. The new application allows users to mix high-quality inputs from up to four audio sources like USB microphones, touch-activated sound effects, intro and exit music and Skype callers into a live or a pre-recorded audio show podcast. This four audio source input support eliminates the need for an expensive audio mixer to record more than one microphone at a time for easy mobile recordings.

Since 2010 Spreaker continues its commitment to building a complete podcasting platform that allows users to create, host, distribute, measure and monetize their audio content. In Spreaker Studio, new podcasters will find a simple console where audio files, sound effects, voice, music and more can be mixed in one place during a live or recorded episode then be encoded and pushed to the podcasters feed automatically. Podcasting pros will find improved integration with external equipment and software, including Skype.

“Podcasting is exploding in popularity, but the tools for creating great spoken word audio content are still too complicated for the general public”, said Francesco Baschieri, Spreaker founder and CEO. “At Spreaker we are streamlining the entire production process to make podcasting as easy as blogging. This app, which features up to four configurable input audio sources and easy Skype integration, gives powerful options to new and professional podcasters”.

A pre-installed set of sound effects and allows users to create a live show or a podcast and have it published on Spreaker’s platform in a matter of minutes. Spreaker also connects with the major audio distribution platform to help podcasters maximize reach.

Compatibility: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 / Mac OS X 10.8 and above
Download Link: https://www.spreaker.com/desktop-studio/download

We get a fair few press releases here at media.info - news@media.info for your press release, by the way - and here are a few things that might help anyone who you send press releases to.

If you're a journalist, you're welcome to add other tips in the comments, which we may incorporate in a future revision of this article.

Your story

Copy/paste the press release into your email in plain text - sure, include a copy as a PDF with fancy formatting if you want, but the most useful thing is to have a copy in plain text in your email. That'll make it searchable in Gmail or Outlook, and will save time for a journalist who hates their slow laptop.

If you must enclose a file, enclose a PDF and not a Word document - not everyone uses Word, and not everyone uses the exact version of Word that you do. PDFs are readable on any device. Please don't add any photos in here - we can't use photos embedded in a PDF, and it just makes our bandwidth bill bigger.

Photographs

Always send a photograph. Most web publications have a page template that includes a mandatory image, and many require that to be a photograph rather than a company logo. Without an image, a journalist will need to source one somehow, and it probably won't be the image you wanted. Even a shot of your company doorbell is better than nothing.

Send a logo too - some publications could do with a logo for the company they're covering, and you'll probably find that they'll head for a Google Image Search and use the wrong one.

Send full-size images, or at least a link to them. A postage-sized image with a request to "contact me for a full-size image" is an unneeded hurdle for a journalist. If it's not at least 2,048 pixels across, it's too small - many publications will wish to crop images, and most will want their images to display really nicely on a retina screen.

Post your images on Flickr, with the correct licensing - this is the most ideal thing, since it means that journalists can choose from a set of images, rather than the one you've selected (which might be the wrong dimensions for a website). Flickr's free and offers unlimited storage. Using Flickr, mark them Public Domain Dedication (CC0) if you can - that means anyone can use your photos, and doesn't require a clunky credit. It doesn't affect your company trademarks.

Emails and files

Use a decent email subject. "Press Release" is not a decent email subject. "ACME announces new Road Runner catching device" is much better, and helps a journalist prioritise and search.

Don't send ZIP files. Nobody wants to open a random ZIP file from an email. If you're going to send large files, use a service like Dropbox, wetransfer, wesendit, Box, Google Drive or other similar services. If you're sending photos, use Flickr.

Try to avoid a requirement for a follow-up. Many web journalists are remote-working. That could mean they need to use their personal mobiles for any follow-up calls that are needed; but it could also mean that they're halfway across the world in a different timezone, so emailing or calling you will only get you when you're asleep. Giving a journalist all the information they need will help them publish a story - and many have targets to hit in terms of how many stories they author.

In Australia, Optus offers zero-rated access to rather more - music services like Spotify, Google Play Music and iHeart Radio, and TV like Netflix, ABC iView and Stan.

And in the US, T-Mobile offers even more - unlimited streaming for YouTube and Netflix, Spotify and iHeart Radio, Pandora and many more services.

You might think this is good news for our industry. If the cost of data is one of the things that puts people off using streaming media, then this surely helps take-up: particularly if services like iHeart Radio are included. It’s good news, right?

Here’s why you might want to think twice about this.

Competition is a good thing. It normally leads to better things and lower prices for everyone. Where there’s no competition, products don’t improve and prices go up. Just look at a typical American cable internet connection.

Consumers need competition, in other words. This explains the decision a few weeks ago by the European Union to fine Google an astonishing $2.4bn for fixing its search results in favour of its own shopping comparison engine. As commentator Benedict Evans wrote in his weekly newsletter:

“US competition law has become exclusively focused on price: lower prices for consumer are good regardless of how they're achieved and nothing else matters. But EU law also looks at the broader market: it takes the view that squeezing competitors is bad for consumers even if lower prices result (since innovation and choice also suffers).”

The world-wide-web has operated on a level playing field ever since it was invented - by a Brit, by the way. Amazon launched in a garage, with family members and friends stuffing packages for the mail man; yet access to Amazon’s website worked in exactly the same way as access to anyone else’s.

Zero-rating means that the next Amazon, Pandora or Netflix won’t get the same access. In effect, it’ll cost consumers more to access small, innovative start-ups - since they’ll inevitably be the ones that aren’t zero-rated.

The success or failure of a new web service might be driven by a cellphone company’s decision on whether to zero-rate it.

In radio, of course, we’re used to anti-competitive practices: from our regulators. Ofcom, ACMA, the CRTC or the FCC keep available broadcast licences scarce, and in many countries they regulate content, format, and competition. These rules can sometimes be helpful to radio companies, but most are continually arguing for more relaxed regulation - because it makes running successful businesses easier.

Before we celebrate these zero-rated mobile tariffs, we should probably reflect that this makes online radio subject to controls dictated by commercial terms, not government legislation.

After tests from the BBC in London in 1990, it was first permanently broadcast in 1993, with a network of four London transmitters. The BBC started their national service in September 1995 (though coverage was anything but national). National commercial radio followed in November 1999.

The first commercial DAB receivers were on sale in 1999 in the UK - they were hi-fi tuners, costing up to £2,000. The first sub-£100 set, the Pure Evoke-1, was launched in July 2002.

Typically, DAB is held to have "launched" in 1999, when both BBC and commercial radio was available throughout much of the UK, and receivers were in the shops.

Fun Kids, the children's radio station that goes national tomorrow, has announced that it has banned all songs from the popular Disney movie.

All tunes from Frozen, the 2013 Disney animated film, have been cast into an eternal winter. Station research discovered that over two-thirds of children wanted the entire Frozen soundtrack off the playlist: so the station has made the decision to let it go.

"If you hate Frozen songs, we're making today a perfect day for you," said Station Manager at Fun Kids, Matt Deegan. Well, he didn't. But he did say: "Kids' views often get ignored by grown-ups, but at Fun Kids they're our bosses, so if they want a song off, it's off!"

A quarter of a million children listen to Fun Kids each week, a number sure to rise as the station starts broadcasting nationally from Monday 29 February. If you can't find it on your recently-built DAB Digital Radio, you can fix that fixer-upper with a little bit of retuning or resetting from the menu.

Fun Kids plays to children between 6 and 12, with special shows for preschoolers in the middle of the day; so if you've been searching your whole life to find your own kids radio station, you've found a child-friendly listen with recent guests like Danny Wallace, Little Mix, and Dick and Dom.

Fun Kids and Frozen songs used to be best buddies: and now they're not. But this hasn't been met with total acclaim. media.info exclusively spoke to Charlotte, a slightly under-demographic 3 year-old, who told Fun Kids to "keep their Hans off" her favourite songs.

"But I LIKE Frozen," she said, before losing interest and going off to play with a loud Peppa Pig whistle, blowing it repeatedly. Who in their right mind would give a whistle away with a magazine aimed at toddlers? Who? You don't get that with radio stations.

media.info contains full topline RAJAR data, as well as TuneIn follower figures for many stations.

So, an hour or so in a coffee shop gives this graph of radio listening figures vs TuneIn figures. You can zoom in and out to see smaller stations if you like.

Are they related? Well, I don't really think so, looking at that graph. But the Pearsons coefficient, calculated below, seems to show a strong correlation. So, I've also added a rough readyreckoner to help understand how many listeners you might have, based on your TuneIn followers.

Additionally, I've done the same work for radio listening figures vs Twitter, and radio listening figures vs Facebook. The correlation is rather less pronounced. But then, there's precious little to compare a listener following a brand on a social network to audience figures...

BitTorrent is now testing live streaming, with a broadcast partner called OTT News. OTT - "On The Trail and Over The Top" - broadcasts live video and pre-produced segments covering the extreme dullness that is the US presidential election.

BitTorrent Live offers peer-to-peer video streaming. The company says it removes the need for an expensive CDN or buying loads of bandwidth. For many internet broadcasters, bandwidth costs are a significant barrier to growth - something BitTorrent itself calls The Goldilocks Paradox - buy too much bandwidth and you're wasting money; buy too little and your stream falls over.

Announced at the Mobile World Congress last March, BitTorrent Live is now testing with a few broadcast partners, with an aim to launch a product later in the year. You can download an app and watch yourself. I did, and was treated to decent quality video that only rebuffered once, and contained dull adverts from the US presidential candidates.

Peer-to-peer streaming is nothing new; Virgin Radio was experimenting with it back in the mid-2000s. The reason why it failed then was due to a reluctance by consumers to install new software on their computer just to listen to the one or two radio stations that used it. However, with an app-based consumption pattern, it's now more feasible to try new technology like this.

Correctly-configured HLS HTTP streaming, incidentally, can be cached and proxied, and the individual chunked files served on a relatively simple CDN with no pre-provisioning; so it's unclear quite what the benefits are for broadcasters; but interesting to see new thoughts going into streaming technology once more.

There's more information on the BitTorrent blog.

I had a question regarding digital radios, and DAB+ frequencies, I recently bought a DAB+ digital radio to keep by my bedside table and I'm wondering if having such a device within close proximity potentially harmful? How safe are DAB+ frequencies in close proximity in over long periods of time?

A mobile phone by your bedside broadcasts every few minutes or so to the nearest cell site to tell Vodafone, or whoever, that it's still there. It also has a connection open to your wifi router, which means every so often it's broadcasting to that, too. Your wifi router is a stronger signal, and your bedroom is probably full of that signal, too.

A DAB+ receiver is just that - just a receiver. It's picking up very low-strength broadcasts and turning them into sound. It's no more scary than an FM radio or equivalent.

How safe are DAB+ frequencies in close proximity in over long periods of time?

You're not in close proximity of them - in Adelaide they're broadcast from Mount Lofty, which is a good 15 or 20 km away from the city. And they're passing through you right now, irrespective of how close you are to a DAB+ receiver.

DAB+ broadcasts are at around 200MHz - similar to your FM set at 100MHz. Up at Mount Lofty there are twelve FM broadcasts. DAB is broadcast at lower strength than FM, and there are only two DAB transmitters up there; so you can see that the amount of energy radiated is significantly lower than FM broadcasts (at least a sixth of FM, if not even smaller).

If you're holding the DAB+ transmitting element in your hands, that's probably not too good for you. Otherwise, you should be fine: we've coped happily with high-power FM transmissions for long enough, after all.

Note: DAB+ and DAB both use the same frequencies. Mount Lofty is a typical example of a large transmission site; London's Crystal Palace operates in much the same way.

The most interesting device is the Pure Evoke F3, pictured above. It's a first for the company in a number of ways.

First, this device uses Spotify Connect rather than Pure's proprietary music service which the company is closing. Second, it appears to have a brand new user interface, and a 2.4" colour screen: the first time Pure have released a device with a simple colour screen, and only the second colour screen in Pure's history.

All released product shots appear to show the menu above, which it would appear is a piece of Photoshopped artwork: the 'FM' icon is a pixel taller than the rest of the icons, and the text under each icon is of varying sizes.

It's unclear whether this device supports DAB+ slideshow, or RadioDNS slideshow delivered via IP for FM and DAB+. Pure were unable to confirm. DAB+ slideshow is in use in many parts of France, Germany and Australia; RadioDNS slideshow is in use for all Global and Communicorp stations in the UK along with many others.

The Pure Evoke F3, while 'acoustically tuned' and in a wooden cabinet, is a mono receiver. Unlike the Pure Evoke Flow, which it takes its design cues from, it appears to have physical controls. At an SRP of £129.99 it is a relatively affordable device, and also contains access to Bluetooth. No review units are currently available for us to look further.

Pure have also released what the company call a new 'One' family: the One Mini, Midi and Maxi, which have historically been the cheapest Pure devices sold. Apparently these devices have a fresh new design with controls moving to the top of the unit (so you can press a button and they won't fall over), though images are currently unavailable. All units are mono, apart from the Pure One Maxi.

A set of "all-in-one table top home audio entertainment systems" called the Evoke C is also promised, in three models - the Evoke C-D4, C-D6 and C-F6. No images are available of these devices either; the C-D4 is mono, while the other units are in stereo.

Finally, Pure have also released the Siesta Rise, a brand new and quite attractive bedside alarm clock radio. It includes a 1A USB charging socket for your mobile phone. At an SRP of £79.99, it is a mono radio with a wire antenna. One interesting note - it's powered by a standard 2A mini USB power adaptor, rather than a more proprietary circular power plug. Mini USB, not micro USB, though.

All Pure devices now sold are DAB and DAB+ compatible and are compliant with the UK's Digital Radio tick mark.

Press release

Berlin, 2nd September 2015: Pure announces new line of digital and internet radios with Bluetooth to cater for significant growth in this sector across Europe and beyond. The 2015/16 range incorporates a wide variety of price points all with Pure’s signature audio quality and innovative design.

The new line-up includes: the Evoke F3 digital and internet radio with Bluetooth and Spotify Connect; the third generation of the world’s best-selling digital radio family, One Mini, Midi and Maxi; a new bedside radio, Siesta Rise, and the Evoke C series, a range of all-in-one home audio systems.

Digital radio is making significant advances across Europe and beyond, with Norway the first to commit to a switchover date in 2017. The UK continues to make good progress towards achieving the criteria necessary to set a switchover date* and 2016 will see the biggest commercial radio expansion in the UK with the launch of a second national digital radio multiplex. Denmark, Germany and Switzerland have all made key developments on the road towards digital radio switchover, while the Netherlands are continuing to roll out new regional digital radio multiplexes. Digital radio coverage is increasing in Italy and, in France, the regulator is beginning a consultation on the second wave of cities to adopt digital radio, after Paris, Nice and Marseille.

Broadcast radio continues to have the largest share of ear within the overall audio landscape and is listened to by the majority of adults every week. At the same time, both internet radio and on demand music streaming consumption is growing particularly driven by the younger generation. This change in behaviour is likely to lead to a shift in the audio landscape over the next few years.

Nick Hucker, global marketing director at Pure, comments: “At Pure, we strive for continuous innovation and to develop high quality products that match consumer demand. Our new range reflects the significant advances broadcast digital radio is making across Europe while catering for the growth in streaming.”

Evoke F3 – Internet Radio

First in the line-up is the Evoke F3, a compact digital and internet table top radio with Bluetooth and Spotify Connect. Evoke F3 (SRP £129.99) comes with an easy-to-read 2.4 inch full colour TFT display and remote control so users can easily find the content they want to listen to. Evoke F3 incorporates Pure’s full internet radio service with instant access to over 25,000 stations worldwide, in addition to ‘listen again’ programmes and around 270,000 podcast episodes.

Boasting an acoustically tuned real wood cabinet with a matt black finish, chic style and smooth functionality, the Evoke F3 delivers a superior audio experience.

Introducing the new ‘One Family ’

Pure announces the third generation of the world’s best-selling digital radio range with the One Mini, Midi and Maxi. The new One family has a fresh new design, enhanced audio, a bigger and better display and is easier to use thanks to a new user-friendly button layout with the controls moving to the top making them even more accessible.

Evoke C Range

Evoke C range is a series of all-in-one table top home audio entertainment systems that take design cues from Pure’s iconic Evoke range. The three products in the series, the Evoke C-D4, C-D6 and C-F6 offer a range of audio options from digital, FM and internet radio to Bluetooth or CD so there is something to suit everyone and every home.

Siesta Rise

The latest addition to Pure’s Siesta family of bedside digital radios, Siesta Rise’s new sleek design includes a handy USB Smartphone charging port and high-detail, digital quality sound.

Siesta Rise has been engineered with an easy to read ultra-clear display, easily visible in a dark room but not harsh on sleepy eyes as it automatically dims to match the room lighting. Siesta Rise’s large display can also be manually adjusted for brightness ensuring the perfect setting for each user.

iHeartRadio Australia launched in 2013. Its channel lineup also includes mostly non-competing services from Macquarie Media (like talkback stations 4BC and 2UE), Australia's multicultural broadcaster SBS, and the UK's talkSPORT. The addition of the ABC - which has around a 20% listener share in Australia - adds a new set of stations to the service, but few that actively compete with ARN's services.

Southern Cross Austereo's rival "we list all the radio stations" app Radioapp, launched in June 2015, has listed ABC and SBS services for a while, along with Macquarie Media properties.

Nova Entertainment stations are on neither service; and neither competitors include the other's own radio stations.

In contrast, the UK's Radioplayer has all major-market radio stations from Global, Bauer, Wireless Group and UKRD, and hundreds of smaller ones. The technology behind Radioplayer has been licenced to other countries: the Irish Radioplayer lists all RTÉ and commercial stations, the Norwegian Radioplayer lists channels from all major broadcasters, while Belgium and Germany's Radioplayer service also has a wide list.

The only app that contains all Australian streaming radio stations, TuneIn, is owned and operated by a Californian VC-funded technology company. Internet radio has around a 10% share of all radio listening in Australia.

Press Release

34 LIVE ABC RADIO STATIONS JOIN ARN’S IHEARTRADIO AUSTRALIA

Australian Radio Network (ARN) has added 34 ABC Radio stations to the iHeartRadio Australia platform. Listeners can now tune in to get news, music, talk and current affairs from Australia’s public broadcaster anywhere they are on iHeartRadio.

The addition of the ABC Radio network will give iHeartRadio Australia audiences access to some of the country’s most loved and longest running radio stations including triple j, Double J, ABC RN, ABC Classic FM, ABC Grandstand, ABC Country and ABC Local Radio in major metro and regional cities.

iHeartRadio Australia’s Content Director Brett “Nozz” Nossiter said: “I am very excited to have the ABC Radio network join iHeartRadio Australia. Adding 34 ABC radio stations to our platform further enhances our incredibly broad content offering for listeners with some of Australia’s favourite stations across specialist genres like country, alternative and classical, plus talkback and 24/7 news.”

Head of iHeartRadio Australia Geraint Davies said: “Adding the power of the ABC to iHeartRadio Australia is another major milestone in the continuing growth of the platform in Australia. Today’s announcement demonstrates our commitment to becoming the number one digital and audio entertainment platform in Australia. Being a truly agnostic platform we enable both public broadcasters and other commercial radio companies to live side by side, all to the benefit of the Australian listening public.”

Michael Mason, Director, ABC Radio said: “Joining iHeartRadio is an amazing opportunity for ABC Radio to reach new audiences and make our content available for easy discovery. We are the home of Australian stories, music and content and now audiences have another place to connect with us beyond our existing platforms. Listeners will be able to explore ABC Radio’s music, talk and specialist genre offerings in all their diversity and range.”

Now available on iHeartRadio Australia:

• triple j: Australia’s only national youth network, taking new Australian music, live music, current affairs, comedy and more to an engaged audience of 18-24 year-olds.
• triple j Unearthed: highlighting and discovering unsigned and independent Australian artists, the biggest source of new Australian music in the world.
• Double J: The best music from your past, present and future.
• ABC Local Radio in capital cities - Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and Hobart: localised news, entertainment, information and emergency coverage to communities throughout Australia.
• ABC RN: a unique forum for ideas and culture, through comprehensive news, information and analysis of current issues and a range of specialist genres.
• ABC Classic FM: Australia’s only national classical music network, a powerhouse of musical ideas and discovery for listeners, and a platform for the discovery of new musical talent.
• ABC News Radio: Australia’s only 24 hr radio news service.
• ABC Classic 2: Classical music performed by Australian musicians
• ABC Country: Australia’s home of country music.
• ABC Grandstand: The digital destination for ABC Sport.
• ABC Extra: A special events pop-up station.
• ABC Jazz: Australia’s national, free to air jazz broadcaster.

The app includes podcasts, live streams, and full-program catch-up (which the press release called 'segmented content', jargon-watchers).

As a new feature, the app also includes a one-click button to play the latest hourly news bulletin: reflecting the on-demand wishes of mobile consumers. This, to me, is a relatively simple but valuable feature, and it's surprising that it isn't in more radio apps.

Press release

Connected cars the new frontier for ABC Radio
ABC Radio’s live and on-demand content will reach new audiences with the ABC Radio app now ready for the connected car and available via Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Connected car users can access their favourite podcasts and streamed or segmented content from stations like ideas network RN, youth network triple j, local metro or regional stations, ABC Classic FM and music network Double J by using their Apple or Android smartphones to connect to their car’s infotainment system.

App users will never miss a news update, as the new release also includes hourly news bulletins featured as segmented audio and available at any time.

Using the ABC Radio app allows drivers and their passengers to enjoy the full spectrum of ABC Radio content, both live and on demand, whenever and wherever they want.

Connected car penetration is due to grow by a million cars from 2.0% to 8.4% in 2020, (Statista 2016) and ABC Radio is at the forefront of the Australian connected car experience.

"Today’s audiences expect connectivity in every sphere of their lives, including the car space," said ABC Director of Radio, Michael Mason. "Around one third of Australian radio listening happens in the car, so by entering the connected car space we’re meeting audiences where they want to be found."

ABC Radio will further develop its app in 2017 to bring users an even more tailored and personalised audio experience.

The ABC Radio app v3.6 is available now for download from the Apple app or Google Play stores.

Just like radio, television is assumed to be under significant threat by online video services; and this data shows that direct comparisons still show television as significantly ahead of online video services.

This is released alongside data from the UK and from the USA comparing broadcast television and online video.

The release of this data, and the wealth of information contained within it, shows the significant benefit of an industry working together against global disruptors.

Press release

New figures show that TV is the world’s favourite video

6 June 2016 – TV companies and trade bodies from around the world have today reminded marketers
about TV’s enduring popularity and strength as an advertising medium.
TV trade bodies from around the globe, including Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, have recently
published reports to put video consumption in perspective.

The studies echo recent research by Thinkbox (the UK’s TV marketing body) and the VAB
(the American Video Advertising Bureau) which showed how TV continues to dominate the
video lives of all generations.

How TV dominates the video landscape

• In the United Kingdom, TV accounts for 76% of total average video consumption, whilst YouTube
  accounts for 4.4% of video viewing. For 16-24s TV accounts for 57.5% of all video, compared to 10.3% for
  YouTube.
• In the USA, ad-supported TV maintains a substantial time spent advantage against YouTube among
  millennials (18-34) (86% vs. 14%). According to the VAB, a TV show’s monthly audience is on average
  50% higher than the average YouTube channel’s video views (and its TV audience per episode is 6 times
  higher than an average YouTube video).
• In Austria, for any given 15 minutes spent watching video content, 79% is live TV for the 14+ target
  group and 60% for 14-29 years’ old.
• In Australia, broadcast TV dominates video consumption. Australians spend 85 hours a month watching
  linear TV, accounting for 84.5% of all screen-viewing time. In addition to this, viewers also spend 112
  minutes a week watching internet delivered Broadcast TV across a range of different screens. For 18-49s
  seven in every ten hours of screen viewing is spent watching Broadcast TV on a TV. 90% of all TV viewing
  is watched live.
• In Belgium, 71% of the total video volume seen on any screen is spent with linear TV (live and time
  shifted), whilst VOD – via TV operators or pay-TV services – represents 15% of this total video
  consumption. If one focuses on young target groups (15-24), online video represents 18% of this volume
  (an addition of online TV platforms, social networks and other websites), with 8% which can be
  attributed to YouTube and 10% to other websites.
• In Canada, millennials (18-34) spend 19 hours watching TV each week, 6 times more than the time spent
  watching YouTube.
• In Germany, 90% of video usage can be attributed to TV (live +3 days, on the TV set), whilst 3% can be
  attributed to alternative means of TV distribution (i.e. non-TV set screens) and 5% is spent watching free
  online videos. These numbers vary slightly when looking at the younger target group (14-49) but the
  trend remains the same: respectively 79%, 5% and 10%.
• In France, 70% of 15-24s’ video viewing is to live TV rising to 80% for 15+ population. 20% of 15-24s
  video consumption is to “other forms of video” (incl. YouTube and IPTV) and only 6% for the 15+
  population.
• In Ireland, live TV continues to dominate the world of video content: 71.6% for all adults (15+) and
  53.3% for the 15-34s.
• In Italy, YouTube represents 5.4% of time spent watching video for 15-34s, whilst TV represents 88.8%.
• In the Netherlands, YouTube and other online video viewing only account for a few minutes of total
  video viewing per day (approx. 8 minutes vs. 70 minutes spent on TV) for teenagers. For the total
  population, the numbers are even clearer: on average, less than 3 minutes a day are spent watching
  YouTube compared to almost 160 minutes a day with TV.
• In Russia, the story is no different, with an average of 15 minutes per day spent on YouTube compared
  to 289 minutes for TV (population 6+).
• In Spain, TV almost concentrates the entire daily video consumption of 15-34s, (80% linear TV + 17%
  Timeshifted/VOD). Online video only accounts for 3% of 15-34s’ total daily viewing time (of which
  YouTube accounts for 1.1%)
• In Switzerland, live TV accounts for 76 minutes (81%) out of the total 94 minutes of daily video that 15-
  29s watch.

Said PEPPTV, the informal grouping of broadcasters’ trade bodies and sales houses: “Video is a confusing
world with lots of numbers flying around. But despite the popularity and occasional hype around video
services, this new international data underlines TV’s unmatched and continued popularity around the world.
It is the world’s favourite video. We hope international marketers will base their decisions about advertising
investment on these facts and TV’s proven effectiveness.”