James Cridland's itemroll

Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman to star in computer drama

2009-07-04T20:33:23Z

Shared by James Cridland
Bloody hell. This looks utter, unadulterated, shit.

BBC4 comedy will follow 1980s rivalry between the creators of the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro

Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman are to star in a new BBC4 factual-based comedy drama about the rise and fall of the home computer market in the 1980s.

The show, which is currently in production with an expected broadcast date later this year, will focus on the rivalry between the maverick Sir Clive Sinclair, played by Armstrong, and his former colleague Chris Curry, portrayed by Freeman. It has the working title Syntax Era

Made by Darlow Smithson, the independent producer behind Touching the Void and The Diary of Anne Frank, it is described as an "affectionately comic account" of the race for home computer supremacy, with Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and C5 battling Curry's BBC Micro.

Richard Klein, controller of BBC4, said: "Those of us who lived through the 1980s will remember the sense of excitement when gadgets and technology started to appear in our homes, but not many of us will know the fascinating stories behind their arrival.

"Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman are excellent choices to portray Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry at a time when battling to have the UK's most loved home computer was their number one priority."

Written by Tony Saint, the 90-minute drama will use archive footage to illustrate the buzz around Sinclair and Curry's inventions, with classic clips from programmes such as John Craven's Newsround.

Syntax Era will be directed by Saul Metzstein and produced by Andrea Cornwell, with Jamie Laurenson executive producing.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Lakeland Radio fined by Ofcom for picking wrong answers to contest

2009-05-29T13:18:37Z

Shared by James Cridland
Never went on in my day. Cough.

Most entrants had no chance of winning Lakeland Radio's Suss the Celeb phone-in game, media regulator Ofcom rules A Cumbrian commercial radio station has been fined £15,000 by...

BBC: Official blogs

2009-05-23T14:57:22Z

BBC: Official blogs

Official blogs from departments, not programmes, within the BBC.

BBC Backstage
BBC Common Platform
BBC Innovation Labs 2008
BBC Internet Blog
Journalism Labs
BBC RAD blog
BBC Radio 4 | The Radio 4 Blog
Radio Labs
BBC NEWS | The Editors
BBC - Opensource - Projects

Preview this bundle

BBC: staff blogs

2009-05-23T14:56:33Z

BBC: staff blogs

A full feed of all BBC staff blogs

Ian Forrester/FMT: cubicgarden.com...
Dave Cross: davblog
Jem Stone/FMT: Common User
Tristan Ferne/AMi: cookin'/relaxin'
Earshot
Dan Taylor/Vi: fabric of folly
Tom Scott/AMi: Derivadow
James Cridland/AMi
Journal of a Radio Freelancer
Roo Reynolds
Stuart Pinfold's blog
Duncan Robertson/AMi: whomwah.com
Thoroughly Good Blog
Wanderlust
Chris Bowley/AMi: fridayforward
Hugh Garry
Jason DaPonte's blog
Jem Stone / FMT
Lucy Hooberman
Kim Plowright: Mildly Diverting
Nick Reynolds At Work
Mark Simpkins / FMT
Curtis Poe
Sarah Mines
Ant Miller
rowan.depomerai
Richard Sambrook/J: SacredFacts
Thomas Davies, Research
Kevin Marsh
Gareth ?: thegareth's vox
SpareParts
cubicgarden.com...
Robin Hamman: cybersoc.com
Graham Beale/Ji: holdandmodify.com
Jason Cartwright/ex
paulhammond journal
Planet Bods Blog
sober and industrious
Rob's Blog
thesmith

Preview this bundle

BBC: staff blogs

2009-05-23T14:55:26Z

BBC: staff blogs

A full feed of all BBC staff blogs

Ian Forrester/FMT: cubicgarden.com...
Dave Cross: davblog
Jem Stone/FMT: Common User
Tristan Ferne/AMi: cookin'/relaxin'
Earshot
Dan Taylor/Vi: fabric of folly
Fatcontroller
Tom Scott/AMi: Derivadow
James Cridland/AMi
Journal of a Radio Freelancer
Matt Bidduplh: hackdiary
Roo Reynolds
Stuart Pinfold's blog
Duncan Robertson/AMi: whomwah.com
Thoroughly Good Blog
Wanderlust
Chris Bowley/AMi: fridayforward
Gideon Bullock/Ex
Hugh Garry
Jason DaPonte's blog
Jem Stone / FMT
Lucy Hooberman
Kim Plowright: Mildly Diverting
Nick Reynolds At Work
Mark Simpkins / FMT
Curtis Poe
Sarah Mines
Ant Miller
rowan.depomerai
Richard Sambrook/J: SacredFacts
Thomas Davies, Research
Kevin Marsh
Gareth ?: thegareth's vox
SpareParts
cubicgarden.com...
Robin Hamman: cybersoc.com
Graham Beale/Ji: holdandmodify.com
Jason Cartwright/ex
paulhammond journal
Planet Bods Blog
sober and industrious
Rob's Blog
Matt Locke: test.org.uk
thesmith

Preview this bundle

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to 200 Mbps …

2009-05-12T15:30:00Z

Virgin Media is looking to bring cable Internet connections running at 200 Mbps. But according to this article from ArsTechnica, when looking at actual download speeds, there are many variables and disputes over measurements.

Ars failed to mention a few further factors that keep your Virgin Media connection from being as fast as advertised, and in some cases, make the whole purpose of having a 200 Mbps connection redundant:

1. Virgin has introduced traffic shaping. Virgin Media’s CEO, Neil Berkett , has been known for attacking the principle of net neutrality, calling it a “a load of bollocks”. What’s the point of having a 200Mbps connection that an ISP places restrictions on? Virgin is one of the ‘Big 6′ ISPs that are already more than happy to send customer details for music file sharing, and they are in talks with content providers to pay for and deliver prime content.

2. Cables already have the problem with bandwidth sharing. In most major cities, the lines are already “oversubscribed. So when it leaked last week that Virgin Media is drawing up secret plans to rent out part of their fibre-optic infrastructure to rival companies, it’s worth considering how this could impact current users sharing a “local loop”, or line, with a competitive carrier (CLEC).

3. Existing wireless technology limit a 200 Mbps delivery. Even if you have a 100Mbps ethernet throughput on your LAN and optic fibre’s impressive speed, there can be problems with upstream congestion, especially during peak hours. Add on latency and site bandwidth, reaching max throughput becomes incredibly unlikely, especially if the site is hosted overseas.

Google has a bandwidth tester that can detect throttling that some ISPs use on file sharing protocols like bittorrents. You can check it out at http://www.measurementlab.net.

[ArsTechnica]

Priming the pips in studio 40B

2009-05-08T19:48:58Z

I'm sitting in the Radio 4 Continuity studio - or 40B as it's officially known - counting the minutes till the final pips of my shift when an e-mail arrives from Anna, our message board moderator. Someone's posted a comment about me: they've picked up on a couple of things I've said on air that they found amusing, which makes a nice change. In fact they've slightly mis-quoted what I said and I think their versions are funnier... although not the kind of thing I could have said on air.

And that's the essence of this job. Knowing what to say, when to say it, how far to go and when to stop and simply be silent; less is sometimes more.

I see my role as being the listener's friend - yours I hope. You and I are both fans of Radio 4 and - since I don't have time to hear our programmes in advance - are sharing the experience of listening together. I have a slight advantage in that I know exactly what's coming up in our schedule and I want to convince you to stay and share these wonderful programmes with me.

You'll notice I referred to listener in the singular. Yes, the research gurus tell us we're reaching an audience of nearly 10 million a week but in my studio it's only ever two people: you and me... and occasional honoured guests who come armed with cameras.

I guess the studio has the look of a flight deck about it but the views aren't quite as exciting; one of the downsides of being in a BBC secure area is the absence of daylight. But I do sit facing studio 40A, my second professional home: this is known as Long Wave Con and carries those bits of our output which are broadcast on split wavelengths - Yesterday in Parliament, the Daily Service, Test Match Special and the Shipping Forecast.

Probably just as well that the views are relatively uninspiring as I should be concentrating on the six computer screens facing me and the sound desk at my fingertips.

Beyond my desk lies some sophisticated sound processing, designed to ensure that the Radio 4 sound maintains the right dynamic range and subtleties demanded by our wide array of programmes, the transmitter network and... you. I am the last human being in the broadcasting chain and but a fader slide away from taking Radio 4 off air. And yes, it does keep me awake some nights.

Those six screens help me decide what goes out through the desk and on the air, most importantly the one with the schedule. This is the masterwork evolving from Tony Pilgrim's planning, our Operations Team who check and process all the programmes, and our Promotions Team who make all the pre-recorded trails you hear through the day, often using Announcers - currently I'm locally known as R4's voice of Fertility having promoted documentaries on the children of sperm donors and Life as an Old New Mum.

But back to that schedule screen. Once again the power vested in me is awesome; with one careless use of the keyboard I could wipe out the next episode of The Archers, move Woman's Hour to the middle of the night and replace You and Yours with some stand-up comedy. But in the interests of my BBC pension I restrict my actions to inserting late arriving programmes (e.g. the recent Case Notes special on Flu), adding extra trails and doing my sums.

Maths is a vital skill demanded of an announcer. In any one hour I must add up the time occupied by programmes, trails, scripted announcements and news then subtract that figure from 59 minutes and 55 seconds; what remains is up to me to fill in the most succinct, entertaining and promotional way possible.

This is a near-perfect job if you're a Radio 4 addict like me so long as you remember the golden rule: don't listen to the programmes - at least not too closely. You may be enjoying the thrilling denouement of the Afternoon Play but if I'm sitting in Con I must be 'reading the road ahead': is my newsreader ready to go and levels checked; is the Moneybox Live studio ready and tested to follow the news, have I a suitable pre-recorded trail cued and ready, are the pips primed and - oh yes - what on earth am I going to say?

Chris Aldridge is Senior Announcer at BBC Radio 4

Chris joined the Radio 4 announcer team in 1995. Here's a short biography from the Radio 4 site and his Wikipedia entry.
Some photographs of Chris on duty in studio 40B in April 2009.

Stretching the Virgin logo

2009-04-28T11:13:13Z

Shared by James Cridland
Lots of different versions of the Virgin logo here... nastiness.

“You can’t expect a man, who’s successful business-philosophy is, “Screw it, let’s do it” to really care much about this inconsistency in the visual identity of the Virgin brands. And after all, isn’t he himself the consistent identity of the Virgin brand?”

VIBE shows us just how many Virgin sub-brands there are, and how different the identities look.

I gotta admit, some of these look plain tacky, but it’s a good reminder that your logo is not your brand. It might be one small part of it, and an important visual part nonetheless, but there’s so much more to a company than brand identity.

The handwritten Virgin mark, white on red or vice versa, is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable logos in the world, but it’s Richard Branson who I see as the real force behind the empire.

Even more Virgin logos on VIBE.

Via Quipsologies.

Along similar lines: 10 handwritten logo designs.

Digital Radio Down Under

2009-04-23T09:00:52Z

Patrick Avenell writes for The Current out of Sydney, Australia. The Current is an online magazine devoted to the electrical appliance industry (including our beloved radio). Avenell scored an interview with Joan Warner, Chief Executive of Commercial Radio Australia, a trade association that represents 98% of the commercial broadcasters in the island nation.

Avenell asked whether Australians could trust the conversion dates being put forth by the media. It seems that Down Under, as here in the States, the digital conversion has not happened smoothly, and deadlines have been extended. According to Warner,

“By the end of May, all current commercial services will be broadcasting in digital, with our friends at ABC and SBS to gradually join us on air in June and July.”

Recent polls show that 40% of Australians know about digital radio and the conversion. Here in the U.S., awareness of digital radio is much smaller. Averell laments the relative lack of media coverage radio conversion has gotten compared to the television conversion:

Whereas digital television has been receiving widespread coverage in the media, and the retail benefits are heavily espoused, the opportunity for retailers to generate new sales by leveraging off digital radio has been largely ignored.

Electronics retailers could use a boost. By talking up the digital future of radio, broadcasters are not only securing their own survival, but also the survival of retailers and manufacturers who make it possible for our signal to be heard.

Photo courtesy of Subhash Chandra, used under its Creative Commons license

Googling the future of Digital Radio

2009-04-19T14:43:44Z

Shared by James Cridland
Very interesting piece of analysis. And also concerning that all radio queries are on their way down...

A number of articles and blogs have drawn attention to the ability of Google searches to provide early indications of change. Google announced that they were providing information on people searching for infomation about ‘flu to map outbreaks, and this week there was an article in The Economist about how eerily accurately the decline in people searching about Ford cars was reflected in actual sales decline.

So what does Google’s clairvoyance tell us about DAB Digital Radio?

Let’s kick off with the basic trend of “dab radio” anywhere the world.

Google Trends for DAB Radio Worldwide (Click to enlarge)

As a piece of calibration, this seems about right. Not surprisingly, the two countries that have really “got” DAB, the UK and Denmark, are pulling all the hits. And there’s a surge interest around Christmas which absolutely matches what happens to sales. (And Bristol is high source of traffic - can’t imagine why (OK - probably because Virgin Media have a connection to the Internet here…)).

The trend is pretty static, globally - but you can see the growing noise in the press about DAB, which continues fairly unabaited. (No, I can’t explain why Danish is inexplicably the top ranked language. Maybe the pro-rata’ed access to Danish language articles is much higher than to English language articles?).

So, let’s narrow it down to the UK.

Google Trends for DAB Radio in the UK (click to enlarge)

Restricting the analysis to just the UK really don’t change thing very much at all, which probably gives us an insight into how much the volume of queries worldwide is driven by and influence by the UK. I think this means we probably drive virtually all the Google queries for DAB Radio. (More on that in second). If I remember correctly, 2004 was the first Christmas that the BBC really pushed DAB, probably because they actually had some new radio stations to talk about. My intepretation of the declining peaks at each Christmas is that people need to know less about DAB and need to less searching to find out who sells it. And there is a drift downward in the number volume of queries. Does that mean that people want to know less about it, because they already know enough? Is that too optimistic?

But we know the UK is DAB-happy. What about the other big European country which was apparently so enthusiastic about implementing DAB. How does it look in Germany?

Google Trends for DAB Radio in Germany (click to enlarge)

This looks rather weird. It suggests, from the shape of the graph, that overall query volumes are tiny. I compared the width of the “Country” bar graph (in the Worldwide chart) for the UK (98 pixels) with that for Germany (6 pixels). I know that’s horribly inaccurate, but it indicates that there’s probably about 15-20 times more queries for DAB coming from the UK than Germany. That Bayern comes top of the list doesn’t surprise - but it’s hard to tell if it’s because it’s the Land that is most active in DAB, or just the largest of the Länder.

As the media seems to be keen to promote Internet versus DAB as the battle of all time, let’s have a look at the relative performance of those terms in Google Trends. Firstly, across the world.

Google Trends of DAB Radio and Internet Radio, Worldwide

Not entirely surprisingly, globally Internet Radio is searched for a fair bit more than DAB Radio. The average ratio is 10.8 : 1, but that seems to suggest that DAB is actually out performing Internet Radio in terms of interest and search terms. Let’s assume that most of the DAB searches are coming from UK, Denmark and Germany with a combined pop’n of 147m, against a global population of 6.77bn. That’s a much higher proportion of searching for DAB Radio than Internet Radio. (Although people might also be searching for other terms).

The decline in the search volumes for Internet Radio is confusing, given that it’s apparently in its ascendancy. It’s much more apparent than the slight decline in DAB searching we saw in the UK. The only explanation I can suggest is that as Google gets used more by “normal” people, they are slightly less inclined to search out Internet Radio than the more geeky early adopters? Or has everyone got an Internet Radio now?

You can see from the bottom of this graph the country-by-country breakdown, indexed against DAB. (If you index it against Internet Radio, the country lineup becomes Mexico (!), Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, Peru, United States, Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Austria). Germany is interesting - more of that in a second. And you can see that in the UK, Internet Radio and DAB radio are about the same.

So let’s look at the UK in detail - DAB Radio versus Internet Radio.

Google Trends for DAB Radio & Internet Radio in the UK (click to enlarge)

In the UK, the two search times are neck and neck, with DAB just edging out Internet Radio on the basis of the seasonal interest around Christmas. It’s very interesting that the media perception is that DAB is in a ditch and Internet Radio is it - but that’s not what Google’s users are telling us. Notably, the amount of coverage of Internet Radio (the lower graph) is much much higher than DAB Radio, but it just doesn’t seem to be reflecting or driving interest. That does kind of figure - lots of Media noise about Internet Radio, but real people are looking at both.

Finally, a quick trip back to Germany to see how Internet Radio is doing there…

Google Trends for DAB Radio and Internet Radio in Germany (click to enlarge)

No DAB huh? I guess people will look for their radio choice va the Internet then. But still that dramatic decline in relative search volumes for Internet Radio recently. I’ll be intruiged to see what this graph looks like once the Germans have started promoting DAB+ to their population.

So, what can we conclude fro this graph-fest?

In the countries that have promoted DAB, it seems to be in rude health, and with no significant decline in interest, despite generally negative media coverage in the last year or so.
Internet Radio doesn’t seem to be growing interest relative to the growing amount of (largely positive) media coverage of it.
Relative interest in both DAB and Internet radio is declining as more “normal” people start using Google to look for stuff that interests them. But interest in Internet Radio is declining faster than interest in DAB Radio.
In Germany, people are interested in Internet Radio (presumably to seek out choice) and would probably just as interested in DAB Radio if it were promoted with confidence.

I’m going to keep an eye on “The Trends” and will maybe update in 6-12 months time. (I’ll also hopefully have some first data for Australia, in which DAB search terms rate 0 across the board).

P.S. Just to reassure you that the terms DAB Radio and Internet Radio are what German speakers would search for (well, as much as any British person) I speak enough German and know enough German speakers to be reasonably confident that the results aren’t skewed by the language difference.

Street Cred

2009-04-06T21:11:09Z

What should a personality do when he/she moves to a new town and needs to learn the lay of the land? Most would advise him to get out, see the city, show up in as many places as possible, and get to know the people and the market. For some reason, however, it's often difficult to convince jocks that there's a benefit - educational and promotional - in getting out of the studio, meeting the market, and learning some of the cool places to go and hang out.

They should take a lesson from the resident of the White House. While most Presidents tend to be stay-at-homers because of the difficulty of getting out and meeting the constituents, the Obamas are hitting the streets like a DJ trying to nail that first ratings book. As Woody Allen once said, "80% of success is showing up."

In just a few short weeks, the President has done just that. He attended a Wizards/Bulls basketball game where a nearby fan noted, "I couldn't believe that he was so accessible that I could literally shake his hand and heckle him about needing to suit up because his team was losing."

The President and the family have turned up at expensive D.C. restaurants, as well as local dives and hangouts. Michelle Obama has served up lunch at local soup kitchens (it wasn't even Thanksgiving). As she mentioned during a visit to a local health clinic, "We were taught you have to get to know the community you're in, and you have to be a part of that community."

Accessibility. Connectedness. Engagement. Community.

These are all elements that locals appreciate from famous people - whether they are actors, sports stars, DJs, and yes, even Presidents.

The Obamas are in the process of redefining the White House mystique during a time when a lot of the old rules and conventions are being challenged. We certainly understand that from a media standpoint as radio's role in the media universe is undergoing a tough redefinition of its own.

The Obama approach is simply to immerse themselves in their new hometown, and establish some eye contact with people. It's a plan that is already generating conversation and buzz. When voters feel closer to a candidate, it makes it easier to create that all-important fan bridge that can help get you through the tough times. And by behaving differently than past Commanders-In-Chief, President Obama garners attention, a little drama, and a lot of good will.

Sitting in the comfortable confines of the studio - or the Oval Office - is certainly easier and more convenient than showing up, shaking hands, and just hanging out. But if local personalities want to truly have some impact at a time when other media outlets are pulling up their tents or just pulling back, they could take a lesson from the new Personality-In-Chief. It's just smart.

BBC iPlayer now available on a toaster

2009-04-06T21:08:15Z

Shared by James Cridland
Gross deception from the BBC. Heads must roll! Hello, Daily Mail?

BBC iPlayer is now available on so many devices that we thought... what next?

We've ported iPlayer to iPhone, Wii, PS3, Nokia N96, Sony Walkman, Virgin Cable and all the other gadgets and devices at "where to get iplayer" - what's the next big thing?

Our marketing team identified breakfast television as an emerging market segment for on-demand viewing and asked the iPlayer team to see if we could come up with something new in this space.

After months of top-secret development and testing, and many burned developers, we're finally ready to bring iPlayer Toaster Edition out of labs.

The iPlayer Toaster Edition looks at first glance like a regular toaster, but with the front panel sporting a 7" 1280x800 OLED display.

The touch-sensitive display is protected from the heat by special thermal insulation located behind the front panel. Device power consumption is a very eco-friendly 2 watts... until you hit the Toast button, when it rises swiftly to 2000.

The iPlayer Toaster Edition features built-in wi-fi, allowing you to stream your favourite BBC iPlayer TV and radio programmes direct to the toaster front panel. Audio is provided by two heat-proof speakers cunningly concealed within the toaster slots, which has the added advantage of shaking the crumbs off the toast - this feature can also be triggered either by the Shake link in the UI.

In keeping with the small form factor and 7" display, the UI makes use of our so-called "bigscreen" display, which is ironically optimised for small screens:

(The BigScreen version of the iPlayer UI is also available for PC - see it here

The built-in USB port is compatible with most portable media players, allowing you to transfer downloaded BBC programmes to your media player while your bread is toasting. As soon as your toast is ready, butter it, unplug your media player, and you're good to go with food and media on the move.

Our marketing team keep telling us about the importance of branding, so the iPlayer Toaster Edition can optionally burn the iPlayer play button logo into the toast using our new HD (High Darkness) rendering mode:

Another cool feature is the Digital Retraction Mechanism (DRM) which automatically withdraws and shreds any uneaten toast after 7 days. Initially the retraction mechanism was only compatible with some types of bread, but after criticism from organic bread consumers we managed to develop a full cross-comestible DRM.

Developing the iPlayer Toaster Edition has been hot and demanding work and our test team is glad it's done - frankly they've had it eating burnt toast, even though they did manage to catch up on the entire MasterChef series.

Anthony Rose is Controller, Online Media Group and Vision, Future Media & Technology

N.B. Editor's note - readers may be interested in other significant developments in media and technology today.

Talk about an unsustainable model: print

2009-04-04T21:04:34Z

Shared by James Cridland
Wow. An indepth look at today's NYT - and how much ads it has in it. Not looking good.

Wow. A blog friend, Robert Feinman, emailed this morning to point out just how few ads are in the dead-tree version (or is that the dead tree-version?) of today’s New York Times. An audit:

First section: In the entire national/international section, nine one-ninth-page ads roughly adding up to a page. The religion page boasts almost two-thirds of a page for Palm Sunday services (sadly, He rides into Jerusalem but once a year) plus two house ads. In metro, there are two ads adding up to about a quarter of a page plus three more house ads and paid obits.

Business section: Not one display ad. Plus six, four-line classifieds.

Sports: Not one display ad, but about a quarter of a page for the last gasp of classifieds.

Entertainment: G’bless show biz - 23 ads, none huge, adding up two two pages plus a quarter-page theater directory and another three house ads.

Grand total: 4.5 pages out of a total 44 pages, or slightly more than 10 percent. Note here that Tribune company wants a 50/50 ad/edit ratio (at its optimum, I’d bet The Times probably chose to operate at a higher proportion for edit). But for the sake of ease, let’s use the Tribune’s numbers. Also, note, by the way, eight house ads (what, not enough news out of the newsroom today?). Finally, note that I’m adding up my local New York edition; I’m sure there are fewer ads nationally.

Just how much revenue is missing from today’s edition? That’s hard to calculate given the different rates for different ad categories. But take entertainment (and please, please check my numbers, folks): The open rate is $840 per column inch and there are 126 column inches on a page, so a full page, bought once (with no volume discount) would cost $105,840. Business ads go for $1,541 per column inch; that totals to $194,166. Classified ads used to add up to a fortune per page; ah, those were the days. And there are other charges relating to color and position and such.

Just for the sake of round numbers on this envelope, let’s say that the 4.5 pages of ads today is worth about $650,000. Going by Tribune Company’s 50/50 goal, that would say that today’s edition is short $2.6 million. And mind you, it could be much more than that if there were more ads to justify a larger paper today.

But let’s stop there and say that today’s New York Times is a gift to you, dear readers, wherever you are, from the Sulzberger familiy and their fellow share and bondholders of a few million dollars.

Remember, The Times is still, so far as I understand, profitable; it is a still-strong newspaper brand. The Boston Globe is, of course, another matter and it is in today’s paper-thin edition that The New York Times Company reports it is threatening to shut down the Globe because it is losing $85 million a year now.

And it’s only going to get worse.

This is why I say there is no time to waste to make the transition to the next life for news. Print is simply no longer sustainable.

Martin Kelner's take on the future of local commercial radio

2009-03-30T06:06:03Z

Will there be much wailing and gnashing of teeth if local commercial radio dies out, as predicted by industry analyst Claire Enders at the Guardian's recent Changing Media Summit? Will it weaken local democracy in the way that the death of local newspapers might?

The answer, of course, is no and no. There will be one less place where we can hear the latest from Nickleback, and Phil Collins's back catalogue, and we may be deprived of the breakfast guy's insight into the story on page six of that morning's Sun, but beyond that it will be a very small earthquake.

I have no idea how well-founded Enders's forecast will turn out to be, but I do know the only strategy any of the big radio groups has come up with in the last few years of struggle has been to reduce costs by networking - broadcasting the same programme on several different stations - sacking journalists, and cutting news and features content to the legal minimum. This started way before the recession. If commercial radio does die, it will be death by a thousand cuts.

One does not wish to pick on Global, but their latest bout of networking - beaming Toby Anstis's morning show on London's Heart to stations in outlying areas of the capital such as Plymouth and Bristol - has had the ludicrous result of Anstis going round the country pretending his show is local.

He told the Oxford Mail he had "an affinity with Oxford", because his father met his mother there, while readers of the Plymouth Herald will have been impressed to learn he holidayed in the area. "I feel like a semi-local," he said. He felt similarly, according to the local press, about Exeter, Reading and Bristol. "I love Bristol," Anstis gushed to the Evening Post, "I've had a few heavy nights on the town when my brother was at uni here. I can't wait to start broadcasting here."

He told the Post that doing the show from London meant attracting a higher calibre of guest. "We've got some big names coming up over the next few weeks, including guests like Lionel Richie, who listeners simply would have missed out on before the switch over to Heart." I am sure the radio listeners of Bristol would be devastated to think they might have missed out on that.

It would be funny if it were not so sad, but I am not without sympathy. I have worked in pretty well every kind of local radio over the past 30 years, so I know how difficult it is to thrive in the face of five well-funded, commercial-free and highly professional national BBC networks.

So here is my solution. There is general agreement that the BBC, although a widely admired institution, has become too large and unwieldy, and no longer needs to do everything. So why not withdraw from local radio? The less local radio is controlled from London the better. The money saved could help fund small-scale local outfits that make a convincing case for providing a local service; community stations, pirates, even campus radio.

How about a Jewish station for north London, or a station playing pre-Beatles pop in an area with a lot of retired people? I have a friend who runs a community station in Wetherby, where, once a week, he invites the chap from the Oxfam shop in to give a spin to the stock that has arrived in the shop that week. That to me is true local radio, and there should be more.

Meanwhile, freed from local BBC opposition, the big commercial stations might feel liberated to try new formats, maybe even talk radio. Who knows, talk could be the saviour of local commercial radio, because one thing is certain; an interview with Lionel Richie is not.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Interview with Stephen Miron chief executive of Global Radio

2009-03-30T06:03:14Z

Once described as the most feared man in content, the head of Global Radio is not daunted by the recession, telling James Robinson the industry is ripe for change

'You don't turn the radio on and expect to be depressed," says Global Radio's chief executive, Stephen Miron. "We are there to entertain and put a smile on your face." Such sentiments from the man who took over at the Heart FM and Capital owner in December should cheer presenters Jamie Theakston and Johnny Vaughan. However, the radio industry itself may face a tougher time now that the former Mail on Sunday executive has joined them. Over breakfast at an exclusive members' club in London's Mayfair, Miron argues that radio is ripe for change, having become lazy in recent years.

While industry revenues doubled in the 10 years up to 2005, Miron says there has since been a lack of creative and commercial ambition. "I've always had a passion for radio and I could never understand why it didn't take as much money as it should. It's been navel-gazing for far too long. We've got to sell our medium much harder. When radio was going through its boom days there was a lot of work put in. Then we plateaued and we lost our momentum."

His arrival at the commercial radio giant, announced in August, surprised many in the media industry. The hard-nosed Miron had made a name for himself through music in a way - but by masterminding the Mail on Sunday's Prince CD giveaway, a move that established him as one of Lord Rothermere's most trusted lieutenants. His decision to jump ship to Global, assembled from scratch in under two years by its youthful founder Ashley Tabor, surprised his colleagues at Associated Newspapers.

So why did he leave Derry Street, where he had worked for 16 years in total? "Probably naively, I thought I could make a difference," says Miron. His ambition will be made a little easier by the fact that a £500m acquisition spree overseen by Tabor and Global's chairman, the former ITV chief executive Charles Allen, has made it the dominant player in the sector - owning 90 stations, boasting 18 million listeners and controlling a 40% share of the commercial radio market.

Miron's new status as one of the most powerful figures in radio was underlined at the end of last year when he emerged as the industry pointman in the potentially fractious negotiations with the communications minister, Lord Carter, over the future of digital radio.

In his interim Digital Britain report, published in January, Carter made it clear he wants the BBC and its commercial rivals to launch digital stations to encourage take-up of the technology. Sales of digital sets have been steady, with about 15 million owners. But there are still too few reasons for the remaining digital refuseniks to ditch their analogue radios for swanky replacements. Channel 4's ambitious plan to launch a raft of stations foundered on the rocks of commercial reality, and it now falls to incumbent operators to succeed where C4 failed.

"Our challenge as an industry is to make sure we provide absolutely compelling reasons why listeners should go from analogue to digital," Miron says. "That means making sure listeners can get everything they get on today's FM radio as a minimum, and creating compelling new ones that will attract listeners."

The launch of a radio industry equivalent of the BBC's popular catchup TV service the iPlayer, currently being discussed by the corporation and its commercial rivals, could also help to narrow the digital divide. Tim Davie, the BBC's director of audio and music, told the Guardian last week that a radio iPlayer could launch within 12 months, and the project is backed by the Radio Centre, the trade body for commercial radio.

Station owners are also demanding concessions from the government in exchange for a commitment to spend on the medium. Discussions are at a sensitive stage, but Miron is adamant the government must hand operators an incentive to invest. "As an industry we have already invested £180m in DAB with very little return," he says. "That's a lot of money."

One option, favoured by the radio industry, would be for the government to extend the existing analogue licences that are due to end in the next few years, although Carter rejected this in his report. Those licences include Global's Classic FM, which is believed to make a profit of almost £10m a year. Its licence expires at the end of September 2011, and under current regulations its slot will then be sold to the highest bidder. Miron could either lose his most valuable asset or have to pay dearly to keep it - an unpalatable prospect given that Global paid £375m for Classic's former parent GCap less than a year ago.

There is speculation Global will soon unveil two new national DAB offerings, including a talk radio station; and although Miron will not be drawn on that, it is clear a quid pro quo is currently being hammered out at the highest levels of government ahead of the publication of Carter's final Digital Britain report in the summer.

All this is new territory for Miron. Apart from a short stint as a management trainee at Safeway, where bosses asked him to leave for being "a bit cheeky", he has spent his entire career in newspapers and magazines, starting in the sales department at TV Times in the mid-80s before selling advertising for the Mail on Sunday for a decade. He was tempted away by Gavin O'Reilly, Independent News & Media's chief operating officer - who still calls him "Golden Boy" - and then returned to Associated to become managing director of the Mail on Sunday, subsequently adding Mail Digital to his responsibilities.

Many believe he will return to Northcliffe House, perhaps to run the flagship title, once he has turned Global into the dominant force Tabor would like it to be. That may not be an easy task. Miron has an advertising recession to contend with and the next 12 months will be about survival rather than expansion - meaning demands for digital investment could hardly have come at a worse time. He concedes: "Radio is very profitable in the good days but the ratios get harder when the economics get tougher."

He has already pushed through two rounds of job cuts, and further redundancies cannot be ruled out. "I'm going through a strategic review of the whole company, focusing on all the areas that haven't been evaluated," he says, adding, somewhat unconvincingly: "It may be we need more jobs in some areas." Vaughan and Theakston may be safe, but the same cannot be said for every member of Global's 1,300-strong workforce as the company battles to pay back the huge sums borrowed to fund its creation.

The purchase of GCap was the final act in a £550m acquisition spree that turned Tabor's Global into the nation's largest commercial player - but some wondered if he had paid too much at the time and, as recession bites, those voices have become louder. "It's like anything in hindsight," Miron says. "It's like buying a house. It was the right price to pay at the time."

The company has been built, in part, by hiring some well-known names with impressive CVs, including Allen, but the ex-ITV boss now has more than 10 directorships. Has Allen overstretched himself? Miron smiles."He was powerful before and he's even more powerful now."

Miron's ability to bat away difficult questions surfaces again when asked about Associated's recent sale of the Evening Standard: "I'm not going to get into dialogue on the Standard," he says. He does reveal, however, that JP McManus and John Magnier, the Irish horseracing duo who are close friends of Tabor's multimillionaire bookmaker father, Michael, are not investors in Global - scotching industry rumours.

Miron has already pushed through one major change at Global, rebranding 29 of its 32 local stations as Heart FM in the face of doubts over how local audiences would react to losing well-known names such as Oxford's Fox FM and Bristol's GWR. "There are lots of itty-bitty stations all over the place," he says. "For many years we haven't harnessed that opportunity."

Given his CV, it is perhaps unsurprising that Miron reserves particular criticism for the BBC. "Radio 1 behaves like a commercial pop station and it gets £32m of funding. Is that right? We don't think it is." The idea, he says, is to create a commercial rival to Radio 2. "We have advertisers who say, we wish we could advertise on Radio 2. Well now you can - it's called Heart."

It is too soon to assess whether the rebranding has been a success, but Miron will be keen to challenge Magic FM's status as the most popular station in the crucial London market.

The Mail on Sunday's CD promotion boosted sales and prompted one Disney executive to describe Miron as "the most feared man in the world of content". Is there a "Prince moment" that could do for Global - or for digital radio - what the CD giveaway did for the Mail on Sunday? "Maybe we should start making purple DAB radios," Miron laughs.

Curriculum vitae

Age 43
Education Hampton School, Middlesex
Career
1983 Management trainee, Safeway
1985 Sales executive, TV Times
1988 Advertisement manager, Mail on Sunday
1998 Commercial director, the Independent
2002 Managing director, the Mail on Sunday and Mail Digital. Board member of Associated Newspapers
2008 Chief executive of Global Radio

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

One Golden Square » Twitter by Tony Moorey

2009-03-29T21:22:55Z

Shared by James Cridland
Apparently, I'm to blame for getting Absolute Radio hooked on Twitter. Ho hum. We were rather ahead of the times.

A few weeks later James Cridland spread the service around the Golden Square staff as a way of keeping up with which pub to head to at the Virgin Radio weekend away in Dublin. This year’s breakthrough moment in the UK provides a ...

Interview with Tim Davie: Getting radio fit for a digital age

2009-03-29T21:01:26Z

Shared by James Cridland
Interesting piece; shame it concentrates on Sachs more than what he might have wanted to talk about.

The BBC's director of audio and music on his plans for a 'radioplayer', the benefits of commercial links - and what he really thinks about Sachsgate

Tim Davie offers to start this interview early so that we can tour his domain. The BBC's director of audio and music says a friendly "how you doing?" to almost everyone we meet, from a band loitering outside 6Music to the Radio 2 presenter Sally Traffic, who responds with "give us a kiss then". Davie is still grinning and saying "this is the fun bit" as I ask where it was that Jonathan Ross phoned Andrew Sachs. After a brief silence and a muttered reply we troop back to his still spartan corner office.

It isn't that Davie refuses to talk about the broadcast just weeks after he took over - it led to the departure of popular Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas and a three-month suspension for Ross, the station's highest-paid star. It's just that Sachsgate was no fun at all for someone new to an editorial role, let alone the most senior one in BBC radio. In the five months since, Davie has kept a low profile as questions have mounted. Why did the BBC appoint someone with no editorial or radio experience? Is he preparing the organisation for a more commercial future? Why wait so long for his first interview? "It's much better to talk when there is something to say."

Commercial partners

He does have something to say about the Sachsgate saga, but what Davie really wants to talk about are plans to create the radio equivalents of the iPlayer and PVR. And, in doing so, he aims to answer those early questions. A member of the team that made the iPlayer service one of the BBC's most successful launches, he is keen to do the same for the radio industry. And crucially, this time the former PepsiCo marketing director wants the commercial partners to be in at the beginning.

"I'm talking about getting radio fit for the on-demand digital age. Why shouldn't we be able to live pause, put it on hard drive, grab stuff from the past seven days and pre-book on radio as well as TV," he says. After conversations with radio companies and RadioCentre, the trade body, the BBC is planning to announce a series of initiatives in the next few weeks designed to work towards a common platform for an online "radioplayer". The aim is to develop a common open standard followed by more ambitious plans for radio PVRs for cars and elsewhere.

Such plans, like the recent tie-up with ITV over local news, are part of a BBC push to work with its increasingly beleaguered commercial rivals in what cynics see as a ploy to head off political pressure on its licence fee. Davie is so full of BBC buzz words, such as openness, opportunity and partnership, that he would easily fail the repetition element of Radio 4's Just a Minute. "There's a real opportunity to get together in partnership and not generate bespoke solutions and that's where the BBC can play a major part," he says.

But he does appear closer to bringing the industry together in just six months than many greybeards who have tried for years. "The opportunities of the radio industry to work together and have one player as opposed to a BBC player is absolutely something we should be doing as it grows the medium as a whole."

This line - that the BBC can help UK plc - is bang on message. The director general, Mark Thompson, who surprised the industry when he replaced Abramsky with Davie, says: "Having a livewire looking at the future can really help, not just the BBC but the whole of the industry." Thompson snorts when I suggest he appointed Davie to plan for a commercial BBC future.

So what does the commercial radio industry think? Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of RadioCentre, points out that a genuinely open platform should assuage any competition concerns. "Tim has brought a fresh perspective to the wider concerns of the industry." Both men think some sort of "radioplayer" could happen within the next 12 months.

Davie's enthusiasm is endearing but his pace is exhausting (he has run seven marathons - the next one is across the North Pole in three weeks' time). He constantly interrupts his own speech with questions. "We've just done a visualisation trial ... sorry - these words! What does that mean?" he says. Radio insiders say he is friendly and approachable, one even describing him as "a real laugh with none of the Time Lord-ish, other-worldly quality that other BBC top brass have". But he is almost excruciatingly nervous in the interview. A marketing man's unease with the press may explain his much-criticised decision to do just one interview, with his own staff, during Sachsgate.

Questions about the broadcast, which must have caused him sleepless nights, make him most twitchy. Essentially, Davie believes the BBC did the right thing but spent too long doing it. "Overall I look back at the decisions made and say they were the right ones ... in terms of actions taken," he begins. "Clearly with the beauty of hindsight I think there are opportunities where we could have acted faster. In the modern media market everyone's expectation of speed of response is just accelerating."

It is left to Thompson to add: "The fact that the leadership of Radio 2 appeared to believe that the programme was absolutely fine cost us some time - 24 hours."

Would Davie welcome Russell Brand's return to BBC radio? With a silent, scribbling public relations minder alongside him, he refuses to be drawn: "I don't know ... if it was the right show at the right time." Ross, he says, is an "incredibly talented broadcaster". And overpaid? BBC executive salaries are to be frozen with no bonuses this year and Davie admits that themarket has changed dramatically. "There's no doubt that ... we are entering a tougher climate for everyone and that includes talent."

After Sachsgate, the BBC changed its procedures and appointed new compliance staff but Davie says changing the "culture of discussion" was the most important shift. "It's not just about form filling and security blankets."

Dance club

He rejects the suggestion that these new procedures and processes have dented the BBC's creative freedom. "If you look at the quality of our broadcasting at the moment I don't think there's any evidence of a loss of nerve at the BBC. I could ramble on for hours about the drama we're developing, the comedy." He does, indeed, spend much time talking about the output he loves and is very proud of his own history of running a student dance club - "think Underworld and Orbital", he says.

Davie is still touchy about the charge that he was brought in to spearhead commercial and strategic success while leaving editorial alone. Isn't that why he got the job? "If you are doing an editorial job in the BBC you have to be an editorial leader, but it's for others to judge."

Thompson compares him, perhaps cheekily, with the executive chairman of ITV. "Michael Grade has never made a programme but he knows what works." Besides, he is satisfied with the reaction of radio staff. "If they thought it was the imposition of a strange marketing guru they would have made it known."

Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4, says quick-witted Davie has helped on two tricky editorial problems as well as tackling issues that more "hidebound" members of staff would find too difficult.

After 14 years working for big consumer groups Davie is sensitive to claims that he was brought in by an organisation effectively looking towards a post-licence fee world. "Part of what makes the BBC special is that it's not commercial ... but what it's really about is what's coming out of the speakers. Everything else is secondary."

Curriculum vitae

Age 41
Education Whitgift school, Croydon; English at Cambridge University
Career
1991 trainee, Procter & Gamble
1993 vice-president, marketing and franchise, PepsiCo Europe
2005 director of marketing, communications and audiences, BBC
2008 director of audio and music, BBC

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Coyopa's guts

2009-03-29T20:02:52Z

Shared by James Cridland
Secret: I wrote about two paragraphs of this long blog post; the rest is from my excellent Siemens colleague David, who originally wrote this for a journalist.

Coyopa, as any regular Radio Labs reader will know, is the new system for encoding BBC national radio stations for the iPlayer and internet media devices - both simulcast and on-demand. It's been running well in production since November, and is now producing all listen-again and most simulcast streams across our services.

If you're deeply interested in the technology we use, here's a quick delve into rather more detail about Coyopa. This isn't for the faint-hearted, particularly if your tolerance for TLAs is low. (What's a TLA? A Three Letter Acronym. LOL. FTW!)

We have used broadcast-engineering principles to implement the new encoding system - such as resilient system design with backups, multiple power supplies, keeping digital audio linear all the way to the encoder.

For simulcast - live streaming - we take the AES3 audio directly from the broadcast chain which feeds DSat/DTT. This is passed through an audio router (for resilience) and then directly into an AES3 sound card. The sound card implements protection limiting in a DSP and carries out other functions such as detecting audio silence (failure alarms). Up to four radio station versions (eg "Radio 2 UK") are encoded on each machine.

For Listen Again, the process is divided into two functions. Linear audio is recorded from the broadcast chain for each radio station, non-stop, and kept for up to seven days. Producers can schedule their radio programmes to be available for Listen Again, by selecting the times/days and repeat patterns (rather like a professional version of a consumer PVR). The system will let you schedule "in the past" too, using its internal store of audio. Users can also select which regions will hear the audio (UK/International) and allow programmes to be automatically published after the show (some programmes have to be edited before being allowed through for compliance or rights reasons). There are different rights restrictions for download (podcast) files, which Coyopa will begin producing later this year, and for streaming files. Producers can also re-edit the programme, particularly the start and end times, at any time to tidy up the audio that listeners hear.

When a programme is ready for encoding, it is sent to a set of sixteen encoding machines, allocated according to the current workload: Radio 3's Through the Night (nearly 6 hours) takes longer to encode than a fifteen-minute news bulletin, after all. Up to four files can be sent for encoding for each radio programme (UK/International, Streamed/Download), and the encoding system knows which formats/bitrates to use for encoding each file. After encoding, the many different encoded files are passed, using FTP, into a large store, which then clones the files to our content delivery partners.

The schedule of radio programmes compounds the encoding workload by having many programmes across the radio stations ending at about the same time; nevertheless, the whole process is designed to be automatic and fast.

The server hardware uses HP "Blade systems" - where each PC server is a plug-in module, with up to 16 in a, very heavy, chassis. Six power supplies share the load of the whole rack, fed from two different sources of mains power. These servers are used because as well as offering the performance, they are reliable, easy to maintain and allow a very high packing density. Each server has two 4-core processor chips which are needed to achieve the throughput for listen again encoding.

As you can see, Coyopa is rather more than a little machine with a sound-card!

I hope all that was interesting to some; and I'm indebted to my colleague David for working on this blog post with me.

WBEB-FM Drops Its Internet Stream

2009-03-29T19:53:51Z

Shared by James Cridland
...and some information about streaming figures in the US. Worth a read.

The battle between radio and SoundExchange has been going on for many months now, and the new rate tiers are in. While the agreement provides a 16 percent discount on previously-set rates for 2009 and 2010, they then jump by nearly 67 percent over the five years following. In response, WBEB-FM, a top tier Adult Contemporary station, took down its Internet stream in the middle of last month. According to the station owner Jerry Lee, up to half the revenue generated by the station’s streaming broadcast would go straight to SoundExchange, a situation he deemed unacceptable.

Question is, will the short-term savings be worth opting out of what most in the industry deem to be the future of radio? This is especially true when you look at the recent rise of Internet-enabled mobile phones. Recent efforts by Clear Channel Communication, for instance, have shown streaming to already make up over 10 percent of its audience, and the numbers continue to grow.

Via MediaWeek:

“Our streaming audience has grown 17 percent last year compared to 2007,” said Evan Harrison, President of online radio and Executive VP for CCR.

Just last week, CCR’s iheartradio iPhone application hit one million downloads. CBS Radio/AOL Radio has seen comparable station audience growth; the number of downloads for iPhone application has surpassed three million.

“You can’t tell listeners where to go. We need to be everywhere our listeners are,” Harrison said. “Within a couple of years, I think half our listening will take place on a combination of mobile and Internet. The pie is being reshaped.”

Of course, as we continue to develop metrics for measuring audience and new ideas for monetizing the content, it must be admitted that both of these lag behind the simple widening of audience. Still, CCR’s online advertising efforts are quoted by some sources as accounting for up to 5 percent of its total $3.3 billion in generated revenue.

Each company will have to make its own decision about streaming. Personally, I believe that it is the future. Increasingly people demand to consume media when, where, and how they want to. In the age of time-shifting radio must be prepared to meet the audience on its terms.

What are your thoughts?

Photo courtesy of KaCey97007, used under its Creative Commons license

A One-stop Audio Shop - Cons (and Pros)

2009-03-27T18:17:04Z

In this week's Broadcast magazine, Emily Bell suggests that it'd be a good idea for there to be a one-stop shop for audio. She's referring, of course, to Tim Davie's interview with Media Guardian on Monday suggesting that the BBC works with commercial radio to build a single "radioplayer."

That's all pretty exciting, and there are some interesting ideas there. A core technology backbone for all radio offerings would be a good idea.

But a single radio player?

The problem is that he's coming at it from the point of view of a public broadcaster who's job is simply to get the Corporation's audio out to as many people as possible. But while that might be a major aim for commercial operators who also want their radio to be heard by as many people as possible, their prime aim is to make money via the medium. If one can't be done with the other, then it's not a solution.

And websites make money for radio stations - groups have digital sales teams. Once upon a time, a radio station's website might effectively have been classed as a line on the marketing budget. But no longer.

Commercial radio stations quite like it when stations listen to their service online via their own website. That's why you'll hear presenters drive listeners to stations' websites to interact, watch videos, enter competitions, find out more and so on.

Websites' radio players can also do smart things like be "skinned" by advertisers, have video or audio pre-rolls, and provide links to other popular fare like videos or social networking tools.

The idea that a listener instead goes to a generic 'www.radioplayer.co.uk' and goes direct to the stream is not something that's obviously commercially workable.

In her piece, Bell notes that we all go to YouTube for video. Most providers, even if they initially held firm, end up putting something on YouTube and hope that viewers come back to their sites for more. Thus the BBC put clips up and so on. But that's also the reason that Comedy Central in the US, for example, gets you to go to its own site for clips of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. It's all there and embeddable (indeed embedding clips is about the only way of watching outside the US), but those page impressions drive advertising direct to the producers.

I know that a viewer might prefer it if if they went to one place - a bit like their digital TV service's EPG to get programming. And maybe one day, individual station websites will seem as quaint as stations sending out magazines at regular intervals to members. Hastening their demise doesn't really help in the medium term. Not when it's the one certain revenue growth area in any media.

For some providers, of course, the idea might be good. The Guardian produces a lot of excellent programming, and would probably quite like to have The Guardian Daily show up in the same player that houses The Today Programme, have Media Talk sit alongside The Media Show, or Football Weekly somewhere in the vicinity of Five Live.

But even The Guardian might be concerned if it started to have an overall impact on page impressions of their otherwise very popular main site. Audio and video, to The Guardian, are not core components - they're nice extras that they're trying to grow.

Newspapers have had a difficult time with Google News, but most at least are clear that the page views are returned to the individual papers with their stories. That said, is The Guardian or The Times really comfortable with the fact that some (potential) readers head to www.google.co.uk/news rather than www.guardian.co.uk or www.timesonline.co.uk for their news needs?

At the moment, if someone wants to listen to Absolute Radio, they visit our website, and they aren't tempted by Xfm or 6 Music sitting just alongside.

I don't want to sound overly negative, but some very careful thought has to be put into how such ideas might work. Sharing some of the knowledge that the BBC has built up, and the developments it has made seems very sensible. The idea that I could set something to record a radio programme for me ahead of time is very interesting. And if I listen via a WiFi radio, then of course I'm not going to be visiting anybody's website and it's all moot anyway.

But in the current tough climate, radio groups are going to be ever more reliant on additional revenues generated away from simple spot airtime, and that means digital revenues. Anything that damages them is not going to be welcomed with open arms.

More on this from Matt, earlier in the week.

[As ever, these views are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer]