Podcast Challenged

You bring up some good questions. I like to think of myself of technologically savvy, but in the world of podcasting, I fail to see any true significance. I think that the future of this will be interesting to watch play out. Unlike blogs, you canâ??t skim through a podcast. In the fast paced world of today, isnâ??t speed and convenience the name of the game? My guess is that podcasting will have to become something of leisure because people simply wonâ??t have the patience for it.

Bill, Thank you for your post. I agree with you that podcasting is new and different. I never heard of the term until this semester. I would like to comment on some of your questions. For the class that I am in, we have listened to podcasts. Honestly, while listening to them at home, I found myself listening to it as I would music. It was in the background. For this reason, I think podcasting still could use some work. For people who are not into talk radio I think PR professionals will have a hard time using podcasts to their benefit.
Since podcasting is still a fairly new concept, I think it does have potential. It is amazing that people across the world can talk to one another via the computer. I am interested in seeing how far podcasting will go.

Test to fix comment moderation … I hope.

Sorry to have to post these tests, but it seems that the database gets corrupted about once every three weeks and some random blank lines drop into the lists of banned words, sites, IPs, etc…

Nonetheless, the problem is fixed - once again - and we should see the “good” comments fly right through.

Thanks.

I come from a radio background. I love ’some’ podcasts. Downloading many of them through iPodder, I just looked and their are 32 different RSS feeds in the download que. So, I won’t bore you with all. But I will mention two sources that get listened to regularly.

The first is Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz :: For Immeidiate Release. Honestly cannont remember a single one that I didn’t enjoy and learn from - truly. Not just blowin’ smoke because Neville works with us here. I really enjoy the conversations and interviews.

The second is sort of a hodgepodge/grab bag of IT Conversations podcasts. Kudos to Doug Kaye for that site. That site gives me an opportunity to listen to interviews, seminars, discussion groups/panels and more that I would never have the chance to see/hear in person.

So, I believe there is valuable information available in podcasts. As to how pervasive it will become? Who knows. I don’t think it will “save” radio - as some have suggested. Why? Well, because radio isn’t on the verge of death nor is it in intensive care. The ‘time shifting’ a-la Tivo for radio is kind of cool. My Delphi MyFi xm2go offers that and I enjoy it.

The best part of podcasts, to me, is that they give a richer feeling of the blog author’s personality and background. From hearing their voice, to gaining the aural cues lost sometimes in writing - podcasts do add to a site’s feel and authenticity.

I received an email about podcasting last week from my Mass Communication Professor, Ric Smith. It was interesting to me but I really could not see podcasts making it. The article provided several examples that led me to believe that maybe I was wrong. Here is a copy of the article…

‘Podcasting’ takes broadcasting to the Internet
Monday, February 7, 2005 Posted: 11:03 AM EST (1603 GMT)

SAN JOSE, California (AP) — After getting a taste of the radio business in college, software designer Craig Patchett never lost his interest in broadcasting. But without a job in radio, it seemed likely to remain one of those unfulfilled passions — until something called “podcasting” came along.

Now, Patchett’s creating shows and sending them out to the masses every day — not over the airwaves to radios, but over the Internet, from his personal computer in Carlsbad, California.

His listeners download his shows to their iPods and other digital music players.

Patchett, 43, is among a growing number of people getting into podcasting, which is quickly becoming another of the Internet’s equalizing technologies.

Less than a year old, podcasting enables anyone with a PC to become a broadcaster. It has the potential to do to the radio business what Web logs have done to print journalism. By bringing the cost of broadcasting to nearly nothing, it’s enabling more voices and messages to be heard than ever before.

“It was just one of those things where you read about a technology and it clicks in your head: This is perfect and something I want to get involved with,” said Patchett, whose podcasts focus on Christian and family programming.

For listeners, podcasting offers a diverse menu of programs, which can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime. Unlike traditional radio, shows can be easily paused, rewound or fast-forwarded. The listener doesn’t need to be near a PC, unlike most forms of Internet radio.

The number of regular podcasts is well more than 800 and growing daily. Many focus on gadgets, technology and podcasting itself. Others highlight new bands and music or discuss the latest developments in politics, movies and sports. There are podcasts for beer lovers and wine aficionados, even a few for astronomy buffs and for activities performed in the buff.

Productions range from stream-of-consciousness rants punctuated by “uhs” to highly professional shows complete with sound effects and music. Unlike radio, there’s no time limit, deadlines or government oversight of what’s said.

“There are going to be podcast stars who are just entertaining to listen to,” said Adam Curry, a former MTV personality and a driving force behind podcasting. “There will be Howard Sterns who can use the seven dirty words on their shows.”

Before podcasting arrived, Curry was frustrated by the state of broadcasting on the Internet, which is often done by streaming feeds. Unlike with traditional radio, streaming costs grow with the audience, and it’s difficult for listeners to save the show or do anything else with it afterward.

By comparison, regular downloads of audio files can be more evenly distributed over time and let listeners move programs to portable devices. Before podcasting, however, there was no simple mechanism to do that automatically.

Curry saw potential in a technology called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, which automatically feeds text from Web logs and other sites to subscribers so they can read summaries from many sites at once.

After meeting with Curry in 1999, RSS co-inventor Dave Winer updated the protocol so that attachments, such as MP3 audio files, could be sent along with text.

But there was no program that could automatically transfer the files to a music player — until last summer when Curry taught himself the AppleScript programming language and created a small program called iPodder.

It caught the attention of programmers.

“Within in a week, not only had people improved the script dramatically, but they started creating their own versions in Python, Perl and Java” programming languages, Curry said. “A whole new category of software had been created.”

Curry also started up a podcast, “Daily Source Code,” to give the programmers something to listen to. But it didn’t take long for other shows to appear.

“Basically, it was a radio show for a very small community, which just grew astronomically,” he said. “Before I knew it, people were sending me links and clips from their own podcasts. We didn’t even have the name ‘podcast,’ we were calling them shows, audioblog posts all kinds of different names.”

Dannie Gregoire, working in Browning’s Brewery in Louisville, Kentucky, is said to have coined the term “podcast.”
It was in a September 15 online post that Dannie Gregoire of Louisville, Kentucky, coined “podcast.”

When entered into a Google search, the word now returns 1.6 million results. Curry says his own podcast now has 50,000 listeners, and Gregoire has created a portal that organizes podcasts by content. A number of Web sites do the same, including Curry’s ipodder.org and Patchett’s godcast.org.

But is there money to be made? Maybe, podcasters say.

Gregoire, who runs one of the go-to Web sites for anyone interested in the phenomenon, says he’s looking at a number of business models, including offering a service to host shows or simple tools to put them online.

“Even though it’s relatively easy, there are still stumbling blocks,” he said.

Real radio stations also are taking note. Public radio’s WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts, has started podcasting its weekly “American Stories” segment, which saw its downloads jump from 30 downloads in the first week to 57,000 in December.

“Those are the kinds of trend lines that get your attention,” said Bob Lyons, the station’s director of radio and new media initiatives. “They certainly got ours.”

The corporate world is also jumping in. Thomson Petersons, best known for its college guides and test-prep books, was expected to announce plans Tuesday to begin podcasting 10-minute audio files offering students general advice on college admissions, financial aid and standardized tests.

Podcasting isn’t likely to threaten traditional broadcasting any time soon, as the number of digital music players is only in the tens of millions, compared with hundreds of millions of radios. But as the player market grows — and more devices such as cell phones become capable of playing audio files — it could pull away advertising dollars, especially those that target younger generations.

Public radio is showing the most interest, both in distributing traditional programs as podcasts and looking for new voices.

“It’s easier for us to jump into this because our profit model is still very similar to the profit model of podcasting, which is put something out there and then figure out how to ask money for it,” said Brendan Greeley, site editor of the Public Radio Exchange, a distributor of programming.

Public Radio Exchange is one of the sites I download from a lot … some great content there. Good article.

Bill, I’m pretty bullish on podcasting and its possibilities. In fact, I was flying out here to Denver this eveing and was able to glean some knowledge/wisdom from influentials like Scoble, Breggeman and the Church of the Customer folks–just from the click of a button. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do in the past in a manner that is even more personal and conversational than blogs. I love this time-shifting of content ability…listening to what I want at a time that is very convenient for me. But of course it’s not without it’s shortcomings–primarily lack of access to content. Without text searching or automated transciption capabilities, we’re somewhat handicapped as far as being able to benefit optimally from these casts.

But let’s not forget that this technology is very nascent right now–it’s essentially been around for only about six months. David Berlind at ZDNet pointed out recently that podcasting went from 300 Google results in October to over one million today, and from zero to well over 2,000 podcasts today. In contrast, blogging has been around for nearly seven years and is just now coming into its own as a component of communications strategies.

Will it play a role in PR? Yes. Does it scare PR people? Some. But as with blogging, it can be viewed as a threat or an opportunity. Give it some time, it will come into its own. I can think of a number of corporate uses–internal and external–off the top of my head. Supplementary material/background to interviews–check out what Berlind has been doing at ZDNet. It’s highly likely we’ll see more reporting like this in the future. Another idea would be internal company updates or perhaps a monthly fireside chat with the CEO. Two other thoughts would be capturing audio from conferences specific to your corporation, competitive or applicable to your industry, or perhaps updated information and training enhancement for sales.

With some of the brilliant minds behind this new medium and conversations like this one going on around it, I can’t help but believe in its staying power and the possibilities for us to develop practices that will tap into its potential as another powerful channel for MarCom.

This is an interesting article. There definitely are “stumbling blocks.” For one, I see the fact that my not owning an iPod is not giving me the full “podcast experience.” I have to find a time when I can sit for an hour…or two…or three, and just listen to the podcast. And I’m just one of those people that refuses to break down and buy the iPod, so I don’t have the ability to just listen whenever or wherever I feel like.

Maybe one day I will succumb to the Apple craze…?