I spent the last two weeks in a kind of offline limbo. Moved house on Friday/Saturday around April Fools Day, and then internet became a problem. BT messed us around for a couple of weeks, but nice engineers came to our home, had a cuppa and re-attached our Googles.
A lot has happened in that time though. I organised a conference for the Radio Studies Network and presented a paper called Radio, Digitalisation and the Laws of Media, which seemed to go down reasonably well.
They had the General Meeting after the conference, and I was elected onto the Steering Group – which sounds far flasher than it probably really is. I think there are probably more members of the Radio Studies Network who are on the steering group than who are not.
I started a new podcast, which should make it to the interweb sometime over the weekend. It’s a talky one, rather than a music-y one. Dubber and Spoons take the bus. Fairly self-explanatory, really… Link as it becomes available.
Finally received a copy of the book ‘The Great New Zealand Radio Experiment’ (Karen Neill and Morris W. Shanahan (eds). Southbank, Vic , Australia . Thomson Learning/Dunmore Press, 2005. ISBN 0170124800). My chapter is chapter 3: The Digitalisation of Radio in New Zealand. I wrote that so long ago now, the words look unfamiliar – but it’s great to see it in real print.
Work progresses on the research project. That’s taking up large amounts of my time – though researching online music without any ‘on’ in my ‘online’ has been frustrating…
Oh, and the latest Auckland radio ratings are out. Coast FM has leapt up, ZB’s sagging, Kiwi FM are scarcely a blip on the radar – but the big story – the REAL story has been George FM.
George went up by a small amount, but they lost audience in the 18-24 demographic, which strikes me as odd for a dance format station. However, they went up significantly in the 25-39 age group. Since I do the jazz show, I think I’d like to take all of the credit for that. That seems only fair…
So – now I have my Googles back, I’m going to be spending the next week playing catch-up. It’s A Jazz Thing needs a new bunch of audio. I’m way behind on Clayborne. I’m overdue for a Podcast Network Jazz Show… and there are so many things I want to follow up on or write about here on The Wireless.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
UPDATE: Dubber and Spoons Take The Bus is almost ready to go. We just need a little help. Any torrent experts reading this?
grats googles back!
welcome back andrew – I think the George rating is concistant with the view that overall there is a huge drop off in general from kids listening to the radio . And who can blame them . They never hear anything that is valid anyway
There is a change gradually happening especially in Auckland which is getting getting older AND browner…..
I would suspect attributable to several things – iPOds would be one big one, but also music TV, and increasing use of the internet in general (broadband). I suspect kids are sitting in front of their TV and computer screens these days, listening to CDs and/or downloaded music and texting their mates…. radio is out of the loop.
I don’t know that radio can change that now. Revenue wise I don’t think it’ll affect radio much in the short term – because young stations tend not to be as profitable as older ones anyway -the real worry for radio is the long term effect…, the kids growing up now who don’t listen to a radio are going to be adults before you know it, and won’t have a ‘radio habit’ at all.
If only somebody had thought of getting them interested while they were young. Some sort of kids radio network…
Yes and it all makes it an exciting time for independent artists around the globe..
Act local think Global
and think outside the square on getting music to the masses :)
Aly Cook
Hey Dubber, yr gmail doesn’t seem to be working – drop me an email. Jubt