A broadcast is a broadcast and pod casting has been around for a while and
some of it can be quite profesional or so I have heard.

Johnnie Apple Seed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Pierce" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 9:19 PM
Subject: [VICUG-L] Latest Audio Trend: Podcasting


I just ran across this article about a new audio trend.  I've checked out a
few podcasts myself and the programs are so intimate and personal that it
feels like I have been transported to a distant city and am three feet away
from the person in their living room.  I can't believe how these podcasts
(they are not really broadcasts because many don't match the technical
standards of broadcast radio or the content standards) draw me in and keep
me listening.

Kelly


    The Boston Globe

December 20, 2004

    Computer, microphone, iPod make broadcasting personal

    By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff

    Richie Carey has heard the future of radio. It's on an iPod music
player.

    Carey, a 38-year-old website developer and marketing consultant from
Sandwich, is among an early wave of fans for a new broadcast medium dubbed
''podcasting" -- audio content that listeners download from websites to
iPods or similar digital music player devices.

    ''I can subscribe to custom-made audio that is whatever I want to
hear, and that's powerful stuff in my mind," Carey said. ''I'm really in
love with the technology of it."

    So much so that Carey is not just a daily consumer of podcasted talk
shows about technology and politics but a fledgling podcaster himself. He
has a regular audience of about 50 people who download his ''definitely
not polished" spoken musings about life, personal electronics, and even
the importance of getting your brakes checked -- a ''podcast" he made and
instantly posted from his cellphone while sitting outside the Sears repair
shop one day recently.

    ''This is technology that gives me a voice I never had a month ago,"
Carey said. ''It's amazing how someone can now make a cellphone call that
can be heard all around the world."

    If Internet-based weblogs turned everyone into a potential newspaper
columnist, and digital cameras let them become photojournalists,
podcasting is promising to let everyone with a microphone and a computer
become a radio commentator.

    A key factor driving the blossoming trend is the booming sales of
Apple's iPod music devices. Financial analysts expect Apple to sell more
than 4 million units during the three months ending with Christmas, double
the rate of sales just three months earlier.

    Many retailers are calling the iPod this year's must-have gift craze
like Cabbage Patch dolls or the Rubik's Cube from decades past. Nearly 6
million iPods have been sold globally, and they account for nearly 90
percent of the market for portable digital music players that work off a
computer-chip memory.

    Two other geek-speak trends, weblogs and TiVo, also help explain the
podcasting phenomenon. Like weblogs, anything-goes Web pages in which
bloggers post observations and links to pages they recommend, podcasts are
a vehicle for delivering highly specialized, eclectic content to narrow
audiences. Like weblogs, many sound more like a heart-to-heart
conversation -- or rant -- than a radio broadcast.

    Podcasts have also been called ''TiVo for radio," referring to the
TiVo digital video recording boxes that let people record hours' worth of
television broadcasts to watch later when they want, and with the benefit
of a fast-forward button, too.

    A podcast clearinghouse called iPodderx.com now typically offers 900
to 1,700 podcasts each day, ranging from news on God to information about
sex, vegan diets, and music from obscure amateur artists.

    A heavy focus is chat about information technology and computers,
including ''Tech Chick Weekly," offering ''a female perspective" on geek
issues. Many podcasts are largely aural recreations of conventional
weblogs by the bloggers themselves.

    ''The cool thing about podcasts is I listen to them when I want to,"
said Steve Garfield, 46, a video producer and editor from Jamaica Plain
who has tuned into a podcast called ''Trade Secrets" since it went live on
Sept. 1. The show is co-produced by Adam Curry, a former host on the MTV
music video channel, and Dave Winer, a software developer who has produced
a Google-style search engine called iPodder. Winer's service not only
tracks down podcasts, it arranges for new ones to be automatically
syndicated to listeners' devices, which can just as easily be personal
computers as iPods.

    Garfield loves loading up his iPod, before taking a long walk around
Jamaica Pond, with the latest edition of ''The Dawn and Drew Show," the
real-life and often off-color bantering of a husband and wife in rural
Wisconsin. He also likes downloading one of the few mass-market shows now
being podcast, ''Morning Stories" on Boston's WGBH-FM public radio
station.

    The podcast version of ''Morning Stories," five-minute human-interest
segments, has posted numbers that people in the radio business would envy.

    In the past two months, the audience for the podcast segments of the
show has grown 12,000-fold, from a grand total of five downloads for the
entire month of September to 60,000 in November, according to producer
Tony Kahn.

    As a public station that doesn't have ads to skip, WGBH has nothing to
lose by making broadcasts available for free. Bob Lyons, director of radio
and new media initiatives for WGBH, said that technologically, ''it's
trivial" to reformat a broadcast for podcast downloads.

    Lyons said WGBH has been impressed by the rapidly growing demand for
''Morning Stories" podcasts but will move slowly on adding more programs.
''We could pretty much just shovel everything in there, but I think that
would be foolish," Lyons said. ''We need to focus on stuff that is
suitable for this particular delivery pipe," in particular broadcasts that
have a long shelf life and will be appealing to people days or weeks after
they've gone out over the airwaves.

    The British Broadcasting Corp. has also edged into podcasting, making
its history program ''In Our Time" available for podcasting, but only
seven days after it's been on the air.

    Commercial radio has to grapple with complex legal issues,
particularly stations that play copyrighted music that stations license
for broadcasting but not for listeners to download. Also, determining how
much conventional talk-oriented programming is really worth offering for
delayed listening is a major issue for radio executives such as Ted
Jordan, general manager of Boston's powerhouse WBZ-AM.

    ''I just can't imagine that this is our next wave," Jordan said. ''I
know some people out there are thinking that this is TiVo for radio, but I
have a hard time imagining podcasting supplanting a format that's as
habitual and as famous for appointment listening as radio is."

    Jordan's first reaction to the idea of making a late-night talk host
such as Paul Sullivan or Steve LeVeille available to morning listeners as
a podcast: ''Why would I want to create another competitor for Gary
LaPierre live in the morning?"

    But many podcast fans say what makes the technology so exciting is
that it really does not matter what mainstream radio outlets think.

    ''The thing about podcasting is that it's on your own terms, what you
want and when you want it, as opposed to radio," said Wayne Hudson, 33, a
computer system administrator from Braintree.

    ''After a while, you can get bored with politics and sports, which is
all that's out there for talk radio. With podcasting, if you're into
comedy or jazz or movies or anything else, it's out there," Hudson said.
''This podcasting thing just seems to be growing exponentially all the
time."

    Peter J. Howe can be reached at
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