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Category: Audio

  • More On Cars (And Mobile Data)

    CES has been taking place recently and one of the themes seems to have been the increased amount of sophistication in the in-car audio market. In particular Pandora is getting a lot of support from major manufacturers like Toyota and Ford. But there are plenty more besides. Last month I wrote a piece about in-car…

  • Musicality

    I must admit that I enjoyed taking the new BBC Radio 3 Musicality Test. In a series of questions both written and based around audio, your musical knowledge is tested. Not in the sense of who composed what, or who was in which band, but whether you can determine melodies or tempo, as well as…

  • Data Reductions Hurt Mobile Media

    The news that T-Mobile is dropping its mobile data usage limit to 500MB from 1GB is not great news. This is not just about one operator, but a trend across the industry. While T-Mobile says that “over 90%” of its customers use less than this a month (does this include customers without smartphones?), it’s not…

  • The Ashes on the Radio

    There are probably few who’d argue that Test Match Special is an incredible institution. For many, despite Sky’s exemplary coverage, it’s far preferable (for many more, it’s the only way to get live broadcast coverage of cricket). It’s just quite hard trying to sync up Sky pictures with TMS audio. The only way I can…

  • Ed Reardon Returns

    Photo from BBC Radio 4’s Flickr stream. The good news is that, as previously mentioned, Ed Reardon’s Week returns on January 10 with the seventh series (with a repeat of his Edinburgh special on January 3). To promote this, Ed is writing a series of posts over on the Radio 4 blog. At the time…

  • Radio Times 25 December 2010

    Let’s face it, you’re going to watch TV today: Best viewed large. [Note: In fact, the programme I’m most looking forward to is later on Radio 3 – Jonny Trunk’s BBC sound effects focused Between the Ears at 2225.] Merry Christmas!

  • A New Broadcast Code

    The big news today is that Product Placement on television is finally allowed, as long as some kind of logo is also displayed on-screen to alert viewers to the commercial arrangement. But far more exciting to a radio audience is the new Section Ten of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code dealing with radio advertising. After a long…

  • In Car Radio Listening, And Other Locations

    One of the things that RAJAR measures is the location that radio is being listened, and oddly enough, it’s a figure that’s rarely reported. This blog is prompted by something James Cridland asked me when he was chasing down some figures recently about in-car listening. Because the numbers aren’t talked about a great deal, they…

  • Ofcom’s Broadcast Code Review

    Sometime towards the end of the year, Ofcom should be reporting back on some changes it’s making to its Broadcast Code – the document that legislates what television and radio broadcasters are allowed to do on air. The big news on the day it comes out will undoubtedly surround Product Placement on television. Will Simon…

  • Classical Music Downloads

    Let’s revisit an issue from a few years ago. In 2005, BBC Radio 3 presented the first in their now regular “Experiences” when they broadcast the Beethoven Experience. They broadcast, non-stop Beethoven for six days including pretty much everything he composed. As part of the Experience, they made available as downloads, a new recording from…

  • Digital Radio – Is It All Doom and Gloom?

    I’ve already been through the latest RAJAR results, and in my summary I said: The digital listening figure for all radio went up a fraction as noted above. I think it’s fair to say that it’s a bit disappointing even if the year on year growth is quite reasonable – up from 21.1% to 24.8%…

  • RAJAR – Q3 2010

    Like clockwork, another RAJAR comes around, and the radio industry all pauses to look at the new figures for the quarter. Here are some of the overall highlights: Overall reach remains at the high point it was last quarter (down just 9,000 people) Digital listening has increased to 24.8% (up from 24.6% last quarter) Commercial…

  • The BBC Licence Fee Settlement

    It’s still really hard to quite get my head around how the BBC licence fee settlement plays out. The quickest way to get a handle on what the BBC is being asked to do, is to read the letter to the BBC Trust from the DCMS website. The key elements of the statement are: The…