Much has been written recently about podcasting as The Next Big Thing. Every time I open the newspaper or a magazine there’s something about “get yourself out there” along with recommendations for software and microphones. Radio stations (well, the mega-conglomerates that own the radio stations) are saying that the internet and podcasting are killing traditional radio. Steve Jobs, who not long ago referred to podcasting as “Wayne’s World,” added podcasts to the latest version of Apple’s iTunes software. Oh my God, the whole world is going to communicate through recordings played on pocket devices connected with white headphones!! Where’s my charger? Where’s my internet connection?! Why do they block this port at my office?!?!
Alright, let’s look at this with a cooler head, shall we?
A podcast is a recording that someone makes on their computer, and the listener downloads it to his/her portable music device to be enjoyed later. In many cases, the person doing the podcast produces them on a daily or weekly basis, so as a listener you can “subscribe” to them.
This is exactly what I did when I was a kid, when I recorded my own “radio shows” with a Panasonic tape recorder and played it back later– the only difference was that I had no internet on which to stick the tape, so those hours of my reading the headlines out of the Daily Herald simply languished in a drawer.
(To be fair, some of my “shows” were pretty cool. One of my favorites was catching all the different slogans on the First National Bank of Mt. Prospect’s time-and-temp phone line– “Don’t bank it in your sock, sock it in the bank!”)
What the breathless thousands aren’t talking about are the other aspects of podcasts, many of which need to be addressed (or at least kept in mind) before we can take it seriously.
1. Content: Let’s make an analogy. In the early days of movies, you had technology people trying to create art. Thomas Edison made a bunch of films which, when viewed today, are interesting only from an historical standpoint. It took a few years and people like M
