Monday, April 30, 2012

The Evolution of Media: The Death of Podcasting?

CNET killed its podcasts. CNN just killed its podcasts. PRI the World
greatly modified its podcasts, reducing technology coverage and making
it more bland and catch all. BBC greatly modified, downgraded, its
podcasts. Has the era of podcasting come to an end?

I think one of the problems is that podcasters failed to develop a
good model. Too many podcasters attempted to develop original
content. This is labor intensive for little bang.

Others created content, and then flipped it into various mediums.
This is more the NPR model. NPR creates its new content, which it
produces for radio, gets posted to its website, get's linked from
social media, gets tweeted, and gets aggregated in podcasts. This
seems like a more viable model - separating content from medium;
creating content; and flipping it into whatever medium consumers
desire.

For me.... its all about Download on Demand. Podcasting to me is a
killer app turning "washing the dishes" into a productive time of
listening to tech news or some lecture. I always thought that DOD
would take over the world, transforming the media environment. I
guess it sort of is, but of course this is more true of entertainment,
than news or informative content.

Anyway, sitting listing to CNN's last technology podcast - and
brooding bc there is just less and less tech news audio out there.

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