Thanks to John for pointing us to this iPod thread on a forum at MissouriRadio.net. Interesting look at how real radio folk view what’s happening:
“For Christ’s sake, QUIT WORRYING about all that other crap. Movies didn’t kill us, TV didn’t kill us, satellite won’t kill us, and iPods sure as hell won’t kill us. So why all the damn fuss over this crap? Let’s just do some good radio, and all the hype over “Podcasting” and all that other irrelevant (yes, irrelevant) crap will eventually die down.”
“Podcasting is a whole new system, a whole new class of activity. It may be like radio, but we make a mistake if we understand it in terms of radio. Think of it instead as a new life form that’s native to the Net. That some of it can be leveraged, or harvested, for the radiosphere, fine. But understand that the pioneers here are blazing new trails, opening new frontiers. Not restoring old burned-out cities.”
— Doc Searls on podcasting and broadcasting
“The world’s first all-podcast radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting, the radio division of Viacom. Infinity plans to convert San Francisco’s 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio format, will be renamed KYOURadio.”
— Wired
Mark Ramsey (Radio Marketing Nexus) explains the difference between posting mp3’s for download and podcasting:
“…podcasting represents the passive movement of audio to your iPod without having to download it yourself. If you think that’s not different then consider the difference between going out to a restaurant and having your meal delivered to you at home.”
Another one of those things you have to experience to understand.
Rex Hammock knocks “the business of podcasting. Not the essence of podcasting” in a response to Darren Barefoot. I agree with Mr. Hammock about the content of podcasts:
The “killer-app” content will be that which has no professional alternative: A report from a Mom to her two children away in college; a recording of a Sunday School class for six people who couldn’t attend; an inspirationial chat from the regional sales manager to 15 sales people to listen to while driving between calls; an explanation of a new product by the lead engineer; a father’s play-by-play description of a Little League baseball game — all showing up automagically on the iPod or other MP3 player of the individuals who “subscribe” to it.
Evan Williams (the guy who founded Blogger) and Noah Glass (the guy you hear on NPR that does the really good radio) have started a new company called Odeo (sounds like rodeo) that is “aimed at making a business of podcasting.” From the NYT story:
“While still too much in its infancy to be considered an immediate threat to the radio industry, podcasting does present the prospect of a growing army of iPod-toting commuters who take programming decisions out of the hands of broadcasters and customize their own listening.”
“Odeo’s founders say they believe that, as with other old and new media, conventional radio and podcasting can coexist in the long term. If, through podcasting, conventional radio programs are increasingly stored and played back on the listener’s schedule, rather than the broadcaster’s, then the trend could have the same time-shifting impact that TiVo-style video recorders have had on the viewing habits of television audiences.”
“But Mr. Williams said that the real promise of podcasting might lie not in what it means for conventional radio but in the new forms of expression the medium will permit. “We’re going to let people do what they do,” he said, “and we’ll see what they do and hope they do it a lot.”
Rex Hammock, on the other hands, says “Podcasting does not want to have a ‘central place’.”
Correction: IRA Glass is the genius behind This American Life and other great radio. I’m not sure who Noah Glass is.
“The reason you’ve heard of podcasting is because no one first “demo’d” it at a conference and no corporate marketers were involved. But, when something is going to be big. Really big. You rarely see it demo’d. Usually, when something is big, it’s, well, boring and obvious…and, at first, not cool.”
NPR’s Robert Smith reports on the rise of “podcasts” — amateur music and talk shows created by the users of Apple’s popular iPod personal music devices and other digital music players. Whole “shows” of music and talk can be downloaded from the Internet to individual players automatically, and some of the show hosts have become celebrities among the burgeoning podcast audience. Related stories from NPR:Personal Radio Via Podcasting Grows More Popular; Slate’s Gizmos: The Future of Radio; Does the iPod Play Favorites?; TiVo, iPod, the Human Ego and the Future.
Michael Bazeley, writing in the Mercury News (My Very Own Radio Station), does the best job of ‘splaining the podcasting thing I’ve come across:
“Thanks to a new technology called podcasting, I’ve turned my iPod into a personalized radio station, loading it with talk shows and cutting edge music that I’d never be able hear on traditional radio stations. It’s transformed my listening habits overnight. Although it’s new, I’m convinced podcasting will transform the way many people consume media, just as blogging and TiVo have. When you can program your own radio station, carry it with you anywhere and pause and restart it at will, who needs mainstream, advertising-supported broadcast radio?”
His piece quotes Doc Searls who believes:
“Podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.”
Hey, I’m just posting this shit so I can say I told you so.
“In less than six months, more than 2,000 podcasters have sprung up. Eventually an iPod-like device will have a subscription capability built in so you won’t even need to be tethered to a computer. It’s not hard to imagine an iPod with WiFi capabilities that could become a radio with no geographic limits.”
— Dave Winer