Viacom Launches Podcast-Only Radio Station

prostoalex writes "Figuring out it couldn't get any worse, Viacom is turning an underperforming talk radio station in San Francisco into podcasting central. KYOU Radio performed so poorly in the ratings that it would not even show up on the official Arbitron radio rankings for the city of San Francisco. Now the Web site of the station owned by $56.5 billion corporation features a hip young look and claims to be the Open Source Radio. Visitors can upload the podcasts of their own in MP3, AIFF, AVI or WMA formats (no OGG support by someone who's so accepting of open source)."

Comments

Re:mp3 is better than .ogg

[codergeek42]

Wrong. MP3 (last I checked) can only do dual-channel audio, while Ogg Vorbis can do multi-channel audio, Also, Ogg Vorbis can store the same music with a higher quality/size ratio. Then you have the fact that the MP3 format is patent-encumbered while the Ogg Vorbis (and Theora video codec) are Free for anyone to use for any purpose (Theora is a reworking of On2's VP3 codec. It _is_ patented, but it's patented so that everyone can use it freely.)

The Jarvis Take

[KrackHouse]

From BuzzMachine.

Now having said all that, I'll repeat that YOURadio is big news and good news for a few reasons: First, it is big media recognizing that it's time to listen -- and do more than listen: Let the people speak. It is big media recognizing the value of citizens' media. Second, it is an admission that the old, one-size-fits-all, top-down, one-way models of programming are broken and the audience can do it better. Third, it an admission that the old business models are soon to break and that the people can provide more talent for less than the old talent could. It's nothing less than the economic salvation of old media... if old media is smart enough to financially support citizens' media and not just exploit it. What's important is that a big media company knew it was time to stick some dynamite up the alimentary canal and push the plunger. It is the tipping point.

Jay Rosen also has an interesting take on his blog, PressThink here.

This has already been done

[grqb]

Openpodcast.org does exactly this, they've been doing this now for a long time. And, there may even be plans to do the same thing over satellite radio (although you'd have to listen to about a 2hr podcast from Adam Curry to learn more)

shameless plug for my podcast: theWatt Weekly - energy news and discussion in mp3 format

Re:This has already been done

[grahams]

This article is talking about broadcasting the submitted podcasts over AM radio, which is distinctly and wholly different from Openpodcast.org, as far as I can tell..

Re:This has already been done

[david.heyman]

Adam Curry is the original owner of the domain MTV.com. He registered it while he was a VJ at MTV in the early 90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curry

Re:This has already been done

[grqb]

To listen to podcasts, all you really need is an mp3 player because they are mp3 files. For windows winamp is standard, for Linux xmms is pretty similar. There is a way of subscribing to a podcast, where you can have a program run in the background, checking for new podcasts that you have subscribed to via an rss feed and if it finds a news one, it automatically downloads it for you. If you want to "subscribe" in this way, iPodder is the standard cross platform program to use.

Re:It might not be so bad.

[tomhudson]

Maybe it won't be so bad.

... here's what they're saying ...

However, you cannot download Podcasts on kyouradio.com. Instead tune in to 1550 KYCY-AM or click Listen Live.

... so it's podcasting that isn't really podcasting. Sounds like they've taken some lessons from Microsoft to "embrace - extend - cripple".

Re:podcast != radio

[isaac_akira]

Did you read the article? Or even read the summary? This *is* radio. A real radio station that is broadcasting people's podcasts *over the airwaves*.

ogg support

[Cruciform]

Canada's CBC radio supports OGG streams.

Just check out Quirks and Quarks, a weekly science show broadcast on Saturdays.

Re:podcast != radio

[prockcore]

A real radio station that is broadcasting people's podcasts *over the airwaves*.

Goddammit. It's not a podcast if it's not wrapped in RSS. It's just an mp3. This is a *shoutcast* server that lets people submit mp3s to be broadcasted.

It has *nothing* to do with podcasting. The word "podcast" shouldn't even be used here.

It's also nothing new. Many shoutcast servers allow people to submit mp3s, many even allow you to "guest DJ" with winamp.

Re:What?

[kryptkpr]

Maybe they need transparency that works in every browser?

I just got through converting a bunch of PNGs to GIF for this exact reason (customer uses IE).