Month: May 2022

The Caribbean Broadcasting Union has become an institutional associate member of the Digital Radio Mondiale Consortium.Over the years, the two organisations have shared a collegial relationship, as conveyed by Sonia Gill, CBU Secretary General: “A mutually beneficial partnership has been demonstrated during DRM’s participation in CBU Annual General Assemblies where Consortium members lent their expertise in updating Caribbean media houses about developments in digital radio.”Ruxandra Obreja, DRM Chairman, is encouraged to see a stronger relationship with Caribbean broadcasters: “interested in the general benefits of digital radio DRM and its potential for emergency warning and distance education, as already shared with some CBU members”.As underlined by the CBU Secretary General: “The CBU looks now forward to welcoming DRM once again and inviting it to engage with its members when the Union meets for the first time in person since 2019 at the 53rd AGA taking place in Trinidad and Tobago from August 15 to 17.” […]

GMA Network’s flagship AM and FM radio stations, Super Radyo DZBB 594 and Barangay LS 97.1 Forever!, continued to dominate the airwaves in their respective categories in Mega Manila, according to the latest Nielsen Radio Audience Measurement data.
Super Radyo DZBB 594 has again clinched the number one spot as the listeners’ preferred station in Mega Manila for April 2022. DZBB recorded a 43.9 percent total audience share, while its closest rival, DZRH, only got 29.9 percent.
The station’s total reach for April was at 1.7 million individuals, with 87.6 percent of which are loyal DZBB listeners.The morning block remained as the station’s highest-rating daypart, driven by listenership from the 6:00 to 9:00 am segment. This includes “Super Balita sa Umaga”, “Saksi sa Dobol B”, “Melo del Prado sa Super Radyo”  and “Dobol Weng sa Dobol B”.On FM, Barangay LS 97.1 Forever! maintained its leadership in Mega Manila for the said period with a 41.4 percent total audience share, way ahead of its closest competitor, 90.7 Love Radio, which posted only 12.2 percent audience share. The station recorded a total reach of 7.1 million listeners in the reported month. […]

radioinfo’s Wayne Stamm covered a number of sessions at Radiodays Europe in Malmö and thought this was one of the best, high energy parts of the conference. The speakers were, Nik Goodman Bounce, Stephanie Hirst Hits Radio, Ben Jones Virgin Radio.This is a little of what they passed on to the capacity crowd in their workshop.Show PrepFor Ben Jones it’s all about having a paper log. This is a part of the ritual he has and something he has been doing during his 22 years on radio.He told the workshop “…I sort of literally scribble where they want me to speak and then I sort of, depending on how much time i’ve got, will annotate it.  Sometimes my paper log can look a little bit like the book that John Doe wrote on in Se7en, just full of sort of mad insane scrawlings, but this is my show bible.   Ben usually gets his logs early on a Friday for his Friday evening show, and that allows him to jot down ideas, thoughts and notes for his program.

Stephanie Hurst works in much the same way, with pen and  paper,  writing out notes including shoutouts,  a throwback, notes about the breakfast show and more.She says that a great part about working at Hit radio is that she is able to get the tracks up to four days in advance which then allows her to do some research, look for a clip or at the artist, take a look at the socials to see if there is anything there. The only drawback for all of this is sometimes it is easy to over-prep and lose the spontaneity of Live radio.Sense of the dayNic Goodman brought up what he calls “Sense of the day” and made the point that “I’m really big on making sure that a radio show sounds like it should only be broadcast on the day that it is broadcast and if you can repeat a show at any other time of day and nobody will notice the difference then you haven’t captured the sense of the day.” He then asked the other two what they have done recently in this regard.Stephanie took a piece of the song Spaceman from the UK entrant to Eurovision, Sam Ryder, extracted the vocal, found a song in the same key in her log, dropped the acapella vocal intoZetta and blended it into the program.She also has a studio in her home and enough audio software to allow her to undertake something like this.Ben says it is all about putting that little bit of extra effort in, researching something that’s topical and timely and then shaping it because it can only make the show sound better on air and a bit more premiumNic’s point was “The difference between a good show and a great show is caring. If you care about it, it just sounds better.”Ben confessed to pre-recording his first link, saying that this has also become part of his ritual to make sure he gets off to a great start each shift.AuthenticityBe authentic in relation to the music. When talking about the music or selling it, share a bit of yourself or your relationship to the song being played.Nic played this clip from one of Bens showsAnd this was Nic’s takeaway: Ben added a personal reveal i.e his age when it was released, his relationship with the music, and right at the end a great little fact about the song being written in 8. minutes.Stephanie says the real trick is to learn to be authentic in just 30 seconds, which can be difficult to do, but not impossible.Selling the musicAn easy principle to understand but can be difficult to deliver.For Ben it is all about knowing the music, loving it and being naturally enthusiastic about it because this is the music of his life.The difficulty can be the balance between natural enthusiasm without forcing it and going over the top.CreatvityNic played a clip from Stephanie who has searched the net for the stems, or individual tracks for Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, and then put together this teaser for the song.Nic’s takeaway here is that there are loads of ways to be creative, it’s just about looking for something a bit different, and working at it.Feel the musicThe best music presenters will feel the music, get into its groove. Ben’s analogy is “You can buy two types of sausages, and they take the same amount of time to cook and eat…one just tastes better and you don’t quite know why.” For the rest of the workshop, watch the following YouTube recording.[embedded content] […]

Tom Webster has been at Edison Research for over 18 years, and once again was one of the major presenters at Radiodays Europe.
Wayne Stamm from radioinfo got to spend a bit of time with Tom after his final presentation and asked him about the some of his latest research, and his new job at SoundsProfitable.com. 
radioinfo: Tom Webster from Edison Research We saw some really interesting research you unveiled for us the other day.
Tom Webster: Yeah, a little bit. Mostly that, you know, the top 20 podcasts in the top 20 podcast genres, four of which are much bigger than the others. Basically comedy, news, society and culture and true crime, which is the catnip of podcasting now.

radioinfo: So and they’re so far in front of that. What is it? The top ten or top 20 podcasts are currently all bar two come from those genres.
Tom Webster: Yeah, that’s right. All but two come from that genre. And one of the two that doesn’t Call Her Daddy is no longer even a podcast… you know, obviously people still listen to it, but it’s defunct. So yeah, there’s a huge demand for, I think, daily topical and regular podcasts.

radioinfo: So do these have a long history? Do they stay in the catalogs for very long or are they culled on a regular basis?
Tom Webster: They do have a long history. And, you know, the methodology of of how Edison does it, where it’s really a rolling average of four quarters, the podcast with a longer heritage will tend to be the hits. Right. But that said, there are things like “Smartless” that pop into the top 20 that were just so huge in the last year that they make it there. But, you know, certainly so many of the podcasts in the top 20 have just they’ve just been around for a while, you know, hits or hits.

radioinfo: So, one does the Joe Rogan one seem to be just so far in front of everything else?
Tom Webster: I cannot explain Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan just is. It’s by far the number one podcast in America, way by far the number one podcast with men and it’s the number three podcast with women. And you know, often when I’ll talk to especially when I talk to women about that, they’re like, “I don’t get it”, and, you know, I don’t get it either, but that just means that we don’t understand a whole ton of women out there that just love that show.

radioinfo: So have we seen an evolution in the way that podcasts are done? And I say this because you did touch on murder in the building, which I thought was a really interesting thing to bring up.
Tom Webster: Yeah, I didn’t love that. (It) was not very complimentary to podcasters, I think and podcasting has also been the butt of the joke on many skits on Saturday Night Live, the big American comedy show, and, you know, it kind of paints podcasters as, you know, strange, strange beings, right, unusual humans, but, you know, with about 40% of Americans listening to podcasts every month, it’s not an unusual behavior. It’s a mainstream behavior. So I don’t think the medium has really been able to tell its story in a positive way in any kind of unified fashion. And I hope that changes.

radioinfo: And we’re not seeing quite the number of new podcasts that we did for for a while, it seems that seems to be dropping away as well.
Tom Webster: I think there was a huge surge of that, I think driven especially by some of the free hosting services like, you know, Anchor is part of Spotify, but you know, doing a podcast is really, really hard. You know, I’ve done some good ones, I’ve done some bad ones, mostly bad ones, it’s not easy to do to do great audio content, this interview excluded, but it’s I do think we’re going to start to see a little bit of a slowdown because it’s really hard to to grow an audience. And it can be really, you know, there’s despair when you don’t grow one.

radioinfo: Do you think that that’s part of it, though? One of the things you touched on was this thing you’ve got to build a habit with your listener.
Tom Webster: Yeah, I think it’s it’s hard to know when to quit. You know, people talk a lot about this concept called podfading , where people start a podcast and then give up in it and it kind of disappears. But I’ve never liked that term because, you know, you think about the the greatest TV shows in history and they’ve all pod -faded, haven’t they? Right. They’re not they’re not being made anymore. So that that’s not a thing, you know, but it does take a while to build an audience. And if you believe in what you’re doing and you continue to get better, then it’s worth pursuing. But no one’s guaranteed an audience, and that’s the hard part.

radioinfo: And then consistency is also an important thing. So weekly or daily or something.
Tom Webster: Something. And whether that’s a period of time or whether that’s associated contextually with a habit or a part of your life, right? So yeah, maybe daily, maybe weekly, maybe when you drive, maybe when you garden, maybe when you cook. But if you can find a way to associate your podcast contextually with something else, that is a habit that is a part of someone’s life, then then you have a chance of making your podcast a part of their life.

radioinfo: Somebody signing up a podcast for the very first time and they go to you for advice and say, I’ve got this great idea for a podcast. Is your first question them “So what are you going to do for the second one?”
Tom Webster: No, my the first thing I try to do is talk them out of it. Yeah, absolutely talk them out of it because it’s really difficult. And you have to know that you’re doing it for the right reason. Right. And it’s easy to say, I want to do a podcast because I am passionate about this or that, but no one else might be right. So it really is about listening and listening to an audience. And, you know, what’s going to, you know, either meet their needs or help them get from point A to point B or bring a smile to their face. But it’s always about the audience.

radioinfo: So let’s talk about this new gig of yours. You’re leaving this wonderful job you’ve had for 18 years behind and moving on to something totally different. Oh, ish.
Tom Webster: Ish. Yeah. So I’ve been a market researcher in, in radio, in audio, in podcasting for 25 years, really, 18 of them at Edison. And I’m going to get the chance now joining Bryan Barletta at SoundsProfitable.com to go into consulting to go into advisory services, to do research that is commissioned by us. Right. At Edison I’ve worked for clients and in client research, but we are kind of our own clients now and we have the freedom to be able to commission studies that will hopefully help the space grow and put that out there so that everybody can benefit. And I’m really passionate about audio, about spoken word audio, and I’m hoping that we have our own small role to play in growing the entire space.

radioinfo: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’ll kind of put you on the on the other side of it to a certain extent. But you’ve got all of these tools behind you, which have got to be an enormous benefit.
Tom Webster: Absolutely. And we are and we’re still going to be working with Edison. We’ve signed an agreement with Edison Research to be our research partner for the next year. So we’re going to be putting out a number of studies that are going to be co-branded, and we’ll have other sponsors. Our first study comes out in in June. It’s called The Creators, and it’s the first really credible scientific look at the people creating podcasts in the space. Demographics of podcasters and some of their behaviors. And that’s difficult research to to get we’ve been working at it for a year and that’s going to come out next month in partnership with Edison.

radioinfo: Well I’m looking forward to seeing and talking about looking forward to seeing things, how good is it to see people out and about?
Tom Webster: It’s fantastic. And, you know, I continue to be very wary and cautious on planes and things like that. But, you know, we’re at radio days here in Malmo and I’ve so missed radio days. It’s one of my favorite conferences. I miss not being able to go to Lisbon. You know, I’ve done a number of them in years past, and it’s it’s a fantastic place to see people in it. You know, I’m an introverted person, so conferences are often like the only people I ever see, right? So it’s been really special to get to see people again and, you know, have some hugs and shake some hands.

radioinfo: Tom Webster, thanks for your time.
Tom Webster: Cheers. Thank you. […]

James Cridland is a radio futurologist, editor of Podnews and a sometime contributor to radioinfo.He is also a much in demand speaker at audio conferences around the world, so it wasn’t surprising that he was at Radiodays Europe either presenting or moderating sessions.Wayne Stamm from radioinfo caught up with James who had just presented his final session of the conference, Cool New Tech for Radio that you should be using.James is a radio geek, and I say this with a great deal of admiration and affection. It is easy to forget his career in radio as these days he most often talks about Podcasting, but I had just sat through a presentation in which he showed off some great little toys.James loves new toys and has found some great software for both podcasting and radio.I am sure you will find a link to these on his website, and I would urge you to take a look, especially if you have a home studio.What I did want to talk to him was about more recent trends in podcasting, so I asked him about the decline we are seeing in new shows.

radioinfo: So we’ve seen a lot on podcasting here at Radio Days, but there seems to be a situation now where we’re not seeing quite as many new podcasts that we’d seen before.James: Yeah, we’re seeing less new launches of podcasts. But having said that, there was a tremendous growth in the middle of 2020, as lots of people thought, “we’re stuck at home, what can we do? We can’t do anything except launch a podcast, so we’ll go launch podcasts.”And so I wonder whether actually what we’re seeing is not a decline, but just a return to the normal rate of new shows which are being which are being launched. But we’re still seeing a ton of new shows and lots of money being put into them. Now, we’re not seeing just sort of, you know, random man sitting in his bathroom at home talking into a microphone. We’re seeing much more carefully produced shows and I think that that’s an important thing.radioinfo: I do remember when we talked about podcasts a number of years ago, there was this real like about them in that they were very raw. So the sound was under produced in a lot of ways.James: Yeah…to give an Australian example, the Teacher’s Pet and the Teacher’s Pet was very much, just Hedley Thomas recording it on his iPhone in the back of a car.And I think those are fun, but at the end of the day, if they’re not easily listenable too. If they don’t sound as good as the types of shows that you would hear whether it’s on the ABC, whether it’s on Triple M or whatever, then actually they don’t necessarily compare as well to the to the professional stuff that you’re that you’re used to.So I think actually focusing on the quality of the of the audio and just making sure that your that you’re editing.A lot of people ask what’s the longest what’s the right length for a podcast? And my answer to that is as long as it needs to be, but not a second longer, get rid of all of the fluff, respect your audience’s time. And I think that’s what people are now doing in terms of the podcasting side.radioinfo: The podcast is taking on different forms now, with the inclusion of short stories and abridged novels.James: There are things going on around abridged books, but also there’s a company in the US and the UK which is called Blinkist, which is producing abridged versions of podcasts.I mean, if you’ve ever tried listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, they’re, you know, two and a half hours long. What this company would do, not with Joe Rogan, but certainly with others, is to take the very best bits of those podcasts and shrink them down so (they can be) aimed at executives and people like that who are time poor and and rich, to help them go through those sorrts of things. So, yeah, I mean, I think we’re seeing a lot more short form content and short form content certainly works well in many other formats as well.radioinfo: And radio drama.James: Yeah, lots of this real growth in fiction, audio fiction is it’s as it’s called. I mean, obviously, radio drama in most parts of the world has fallen off the air, but there are still bits of radio drama on community radio in Australia, but not that much.And actually seeing the growth of that in the podcast world is really interesting. There is one country and I think it’s the US, but I may be wrong, it may be Canada actually thinking about it, where young females 15 to to 24 year olds, the most popular genre for them in terms of podcasting is audio fiction.So there’s some real interest, I think, in that form of radio that’s clearly incredibly expensive to produce, but actually you can do some interesting things in terms of the podcasting world. […]

As usual, at the end of RadioDays Europe, six conference presenters were recruited to give 30 ideas in 45 minutes.Here are their key takeawayys:Thomas Korponay-Pfeifer, PD of Radio 88.6Five commandments for PDs
Remember the station’s core values and keep them holy. Make sure everyone is on the same page about brand positioning.
Thou shalt have faith in your people, trust your talent, give them creative space and let them do their job.
Thou shalt not be afraid of failure. Make it ok to fail so they can learn.
Honour thy owners and CEOs… but keep them away from your team.
Thou shalt dare to dream big, look for Whys, not Why Nots
Carolina Jamet, CBC Radio Canada
Create your own audio platform and control your distribution – it will help you build and leverage your brand
Break up your radio shows into segments and provide them in different formats on different platforms
Enhance discoverability – update your home page regularly, 4 times per day, 7 days per week. With a dynamic platform people spend more time with you
Audio books – create an enriched audio book platform
Drive audience engagement – for example co-listening to kids audio books with parents

Kenny Southaby, ReelWorld
Be comfortable with change, it’s always there, station sounds cannot stay the same
Upcycle audio creatively. Use the emotional connection people have with sound to convey a brand message
Seek inspiration where your audience is.
Outdo streaming services – add value to our content and station sound that streamers do not do
Be concise
Julia Schutz, Antenne NRW (a new station just 202 days on air)
Take calculated risks – some people are so afraid of losing that they never try to win
Look after your rising stars, not only the cash cows
Find a purpose, so you know what you are fighting for
Be proud but never satisfied
You need the right people in your corner – a mentor, a financial controller, a lawyer
Andrew Davis, ABC Australia Digital and Engagement EditorPodcast tips to engage and keep an audience
Episode headlines and descriptions motivate listeners to try a new podcast. More than recommendations, hosts, brands or artwork
Lead with something interesting, the first line and a half will be displayed on the main page. Great headlines work, especially those that provoke emotion or curiosity
Style and tone of episode description and headline should match the style of the audio
Use the one shot rule – one call to action, not a shopping list
Ask listeners to rate or review your podcast
Alan Haydn Jones, Head of BBC Radio 1
Keep renewing your presenters if your station is a youth station
Cast the net wide when looking for new talent
Recruit a diverse range of presenters
You are not your audience, make radio that they want
Presenter development never ends
Next year’s Radio Days Europe will be held in Prague., 26-28 March 2023.And later this year, RadioDays Asia will team up with the ABU and will be held in Kuala Lumpur on 6 & 7 September. The ABU’s RadioAsia conference this year will also partner with RadioDays and will be held in the same venue in KL on 5 September, with an additional half day training conference on Sunday 4 September.[embedded content] […]