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How Podcasting and Satellite Changed Radio
prostoalex writes "Business Week magazine discusses how podcasting changes the radio industry: "Consider the basics: With no licenses, no frequencies, and no towers, ordinary people are busy creating audio programming for thousands of others. They're bypassing an entire industry."
The article notes about some advertising deals that podcasters managed to procure, but it also notes that another industry, satellite radio, represented by Sirius and XM Satellite radio, is already changing the radio landscape."
There is all this hype about podcasting but nothing about shoutcasting or other forms of internet radio -- which have been aroudn longer and have more than quite a bit of a userbase...
....am I the only one who's had absolutely no experience, nor been affected by either podcasting or satellite radio? I'm tempted to just write it off as a fad... who'd spend time downloading a multi-hour 'podcasting' program just to play later?
I personally would much rather go for a personal selection of mp3s.
To me, the advantage of radio is that stations exist that broadcast programming in specific formats. I can tune into these stations anytime and listen to programming that I enjoy.
For example, 3 FM stations exists within 25 miles of me that have 24/7 jazz formats. I'm a jazz fan, so that makes me happy.
I'm not aware of any podcast sources that provide comparable services. Podcasts require that I go out and find digital files I want and then set them up for play. I don't have the time to do that to build up a podcast playlist as lengthy as the one I can get just be turning on my radio.
There's no reason why someone couldn't hire a staff, pay them to create and collect podcasts and then broadcast them over AM or FM on a 24/7 format, but that would be very much the same as radio anyway.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I stopped listening to radio a long time ago - my MP3-cd player for the car was the best money I ever spent. Aside from our commercial-free public radio (CBC) I have only occasionall listened to commercial radio, and was driven off by the advertising within a few minutes. The only thing that is missing from my de-commercialized listening experience is a way to inject new music and news into the stream of music I have chosen so as to keep it fresh.
So - why not broadcast cue information about which stations are playing what so my (yet to be invented) intelligent radio/player can dash seamlessly between stations and canned tracks whilst avoiding the blaring Ads with tivo-like grace. We do it with the remote on television to avoid the chaff, why not with radio?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that the allure of Cable TV when it was introduced in the late 70's? I've never been much into TV, and didn't get cable til I hit my mid 30's, but I seem to remember that a lack of commercials was part of what you paid for.
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It was... and now look at it today. Commercials all over the place and even a lot of dedicated commercial tv stations (Home Shopping Network or whatever its called). As much as I hate most radio, if people switch to Satellite I only see it becoming worse and satellite becoming just as bad.
Reserved Word.
Commercial radio is BAD. It stopped being about anything besides delivering specific market segment a long time ago and a medium radio is capable of so much more.
It is only natural that somone that isn't as beholden to advertisers can be more creative and produce a higher quality product. Public radio has been demonstrating this for a long long time (at least here in MN).
Sirius/XM is cool and is an extension of the cable/sat TV business model, but I wonder about Podcasting. It's one thing to spam your signal in an unlimited fashion like radio can, but the infrastructure costs of pod casting could be an issue. Streaming and downloads are like collect calls and we all know that there is no free lunch when it comes to bandwidth. I think the bandwith costs will probably limit the growth of internet based distribution significantly...
In the US perhaps. Except in the UK we've had DAB for almost two years and DAB receivers are both cheap and widespread. And nobody would even dream of getting satelite radio. And 'podcasting' is just an excuse to shout "iPod! iPod!" ad infinitum. But then we have the BBC and you just have a load of crappy commercial broadcasters... Poor you...
DAB and Digital TV are already going full steam with the backing of the BBC. The BBC want to start podcasting soon, so that might help it take off here, as soon as they get legal problems sorted.
As for podcasting ever killing commercial radio, you might as well expect amateur movies filmed by bloggers to destroy Hollywood and music on Creative Commons to kill EMI.
Podcasting really needs a better name. The 'pod' bit, is just another commercial plug for Apple. It wouldn't be acceptable to call all PCs 'Window-machines', would it? Or websites 'Internet Explorer sites'?
I have an iRiver H120. On their front page they have someone listening to their new mini player, whilst crunching on a juice apple. Subtle?