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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)."
That analogy is all wrong. You should point out that Slashdot claims to be about open source, but refused to switch to PNG over GIF.
This is supposed to be "citizens media" finally being recognized for the inexorable power it is, huh? Now we'll finally hear from "real people"? So, I suppose the DJs doing their shows before weren't citizens. But will we all of a sudden want to listen to those same DJs were they to put their schtick on an MP3 and accept no pay? Arguably not, but the podcasting cheerleaders seem to think that we'll certainly want to hear from some people with no training or prior interest in broadcasting. Yeah, that makes sense.
This is only considered a big deal by those folks who are so politically overcharged with their own bullshit that they buy into the notion of "corporations" vs. "us", as if corporations are somehow staffed by evil robots and the only real people are living in San Francisco working for software startups.
My prediction: to the extent podcasting becomes successful, it will begin to approximate the media it supposedly replaces. Just look at the blogs: the most popular ones are now owned by corporations, and are essentially traditional media outlets.
Except that by 1999 Angelfire was already including banner ads atop my horrible web page, and presumably making money off of it.
Also, 20 million people may listen to podcasts, but they aren't doing it entirely because they love amateur recording, writing, and speaking quality. They're doing it because it's convenient, and can be listened to on their schedule, not Wolfman Jack's.
A radio PLAYING podcasts takes away that major advantage. I like some of them, but I'm not going to tune in at a certain time and sit through advertisements to listen.
I think if they do make money it'll have to be in the same way that vanity publishers do: charge the artist.
What happens when someone says "fuck" in one of their podcasts?
It's all good. Just encapsulate the OGG in the AVI. AVI can hold almost anything. :)
I agree about the possiblity of being very profitable but what about commercials? The station needs to broadcast them:
1. Will they just slice out content and insert commercials? If so, who decides what gets cut?
2. Will they require producers to adhere to standard breaks and limit content time to something like 22:30 minutes per half hour with 3 breaks?
3. Could the broadcaster insert an ad for a bbq shack during a pro PETA show (unlikely, but could happen)? Will the producer be allowed to insert their own ads?
4. If the podcaster says one of the "seven dirty words" and it's gets broadcast couldn't the producer get hit with law suit from an injured third party (like an advertiser)?
Yes, there could be a lot of profit in it but IMO it will be a rocky road in the beginning. While some podcasters will adapt I hope that's the exception to the rule. I like podcasts the way they are.
Of course, it will probably end up being just as crappy as local public access channels. Except, instead of seeing teenagers prank call McDonald's it'll be wannabe Art Bells ranting about how George W. Bush is hiding Osama bin Laden on the dark side of the moon.
If that part was posted by alone it would get a +5, Funny. =)
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
"Does EVERY fucking article concerning compressed audio have to stick this little jab into each headline?"
Yes it does. This is an open source web site. I come here BECAUSE slashdot (and only slashdot) does that.
I have a choice os billion web sites to choose from and so do you. I chose to come here and read news with open source advocasy in mind. If you don't want to read about open source advocasy I might suggest gotdotnet or a million other web sites which are anti open source or don't give a flying donut about open source.
evil is as evil does
There are two main reasons why Ogg/Vorbis is used by the small number of people who use it. One is that the format is open source, so people can write all kinds of software for it without worrying about patents or licensing fees. Another reason (which is less of an issue since portable players are now available with storage that would put even a high end PC from five years ago to shame) is that the codec is much newer than mp3 and gives higher quality in a comparable file size.
One of the reasons that Ogg hasn't been widely adopted yet is that companies like Apple prefer to make their players support proprietary formats that are more friendly to DRM than open source codecs. That's the only real technical obstacle preventing people who don't know about it from hearing about it. Distributing content solely in mp3 format that is destined mainly for playback on a computer is mostly just ignorance, since EVERY well known player comes with a vorbis decoder by now. MP3 was the first breakthrough audio format, and the closest and digital audio format has come to a household name, so it will continue to dominate for quite some time.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
(oops bad formatting)... Have you ever heard of the ZBS foundation? They're worth a listen if you like radio drama - I like the Ruby and Jack Flanders series...