My friend Henry Domke has produced and posted the first Prairie Garden Trust Podcast. Friends and supporters of PGT can now get regular updates via podcast. While I’m not exactly an “outdoorsy” guy, I’m stoked about Henry using this new technology. He invested a couple of hundred bucks in a podcast starter set (mics, mixer, headphones, etc) and is using GarageBand3 (MacBook) to produce. In a matter of hours, he had his first show online, ready for subscribers. His first show has a couple of rough edges but he’ll smooth those out as he goes.
In The Old Days, he might have tried to find a radio station that would give him (sell him?) some time on a Sunday morning. Today, he’s global. Anybody, anytime, anywhere. If they care about his topic, they can listen. Still another example of The Long Tail at work. No topic is too obscure. If one person cares enough to produce the show … and one cares enough to listen, the costs of production and distribution are so close to zero, there is no barrier to getting started.
Traditional media has no shortage of challenges these days, but I’m not sure niche podcasts are any kind of immediate threat.
I suppose you could argue that any 15 minutes someone spends listening to a podcast, is 15 minutes not spent listening to my local radio station. But it’s likely some or all of those people weren’t listening to their local station anyway.
The larger issue, IMO, is that podcasts (and similar new media) are changing our listening/viewing habits and expectations. Every week, I listen to more podcasts…and refine my selection. I only listen to shows that I like. I no longer settle for “just okay” stuff. No program director can compete with that.
That is definitely amazing, and as a consumer I love it… But how does it vie for the future of broadcast radio, as we know it? Shouldn’t those who are stuck in the mud of “The Old Days” be worried?