Slashdot Mirror
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)."
Mp3 may be better than ogg, but shouldn't this open source radio support all popular formats? This is a great idea, however although the exclusion of the ogg vorbis format is insignificant, it is troubling. Why would they leave this format out when it would be easy to include it?
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Radio that's just as good as your local public-access TV channels. Won't that be awesome.
From a business perspective this is genius. Content costs nothing because it's created by users and everything they make is pure profit. People will tune in to see if their content was picked or not.
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 it was ogg, it'd be an "oggcast"
;)
"podcast" was originally something to be listened to on your iPod. The iPod doesn't play ogg (by default)
"oggcast" would sound like a wild caveman anyway.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
shameless plug for my podcast: theWatt Weekly - energy news and discussion in mp3 format
Call me crazy, but I fail to see what all the hubbub is about podcasting (I also dislike the name). I think it is kind of neat as an idea, but I just don't see any financial strategy behind this that is in anyway sustainable. This isn't meant to be flamebait, I am really curious.
Can anyone explain this to me?
Does anyone know any relevent links about this topic?
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
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.
Please take the sentence above and insert "the web" where "podcasting" is currently placed. You could say much the same thing about the web lacking a financial strategy for content-oriented sites, especially back in 1999. But it evolved, at least somewhat. The same thing will happen to podcasts.
Of greater importance, though, is that something can be totally paradigm-shifting but not generate a lot of cash. If 20 million people soon do most of their "radio" listening by podcast, the implications to society are enormous regardless of how much money is being made.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Uh, Mel Karmazin is the CEO of Sirius, where Howard Stern is heading in 2006.
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.
<?php
while($that_may_be === true)
{
iconv("erse", "in", "php");
while (in_array("of", $user_comments)
{
cos("php rocks");
}
}
?>
Return the airwaves to the public. We could use those frequencies more efficiently with muni wifi !
Get rid of the FCC. Pure shills for monopolists.
Supply us with your programming for free, we'll intersperse it with ads and put it on our site. I wich I could come up with schemes like this. :0)
Does EVERY fucking article concerning compressed audio have to stick this little jab into each headline?
Slashdot's open source... "no WC3 conformity by someone who's so accepting of open source"
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
What happens when someone says "fuck" in one of their podcasts?
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*.
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
Are you insane? It's used by all PlaysForSure online music stores... i.e. just about everything except iTunes.
Canada's CBC radio supports OGG streams.
Just check out Quirks and Quarks, a weekly science show broadcast on Saturdays.
Folks, at its best Podcasting is supposed to break us free from the crappy world of FCC filtered, Clear Channel backed pablum that has been hoisted on us. Podcasting is the RESPONSE to years of having our airwaves taken away from us by govermental force and used by a few corporations to tell us what and when to listen to the music they want to seel us or to listen to the news they demand we belive.
Podcasting, heck any methodology that subverts the traditional communications paradigm of "We own you, you listen to what we tell you to" is a great and glorious thing. It gives us the possibility of finding our own voices, of putting out our own content and of sharing in these things across the whole of humanity.
But now those same tradionalists who took the airwaves from us want to join in the revoltuion against them? Something smell fishy to you yet?
Lets break the KYOU thing down
Infinity looses its biggest ever cash cow (Stern) and is DESPERATE for a new "thing". So whats new? (not much you..that should get the nprheads)
Podcasting, which is just mp3s passed around via automated apps (bashpodder being imnsfho the best) goes from 0 to Hyperspace speeds in under a year...
Many podcasters are living on the steam that they are changing the course of history, that each and every days recounting of thier lunch choices is a signal to the world of paradigm shifting import that EVERYONE needs to hear..(ok so some podcasters are not into this ego shit eating contest and yes some podcasts are just that fucking damn good and should be listened to... but enough fit this description that the idea holds.)
SO here is Infinity DESPERATE for Something New
SO here are some Podcaster DESPERATE to be heard
Hey look, linkup synchup dontcha just wana throw up..because...
INfinity pays NOTHING for the content, they sell ads and make the revenue, and the content is filtered to FCC cleaness standards to boot.
So the Podcasters have to be FCC filtered, thier works make revenue for Infinity alone, and man does this begin to sound like some radio execs wet dream or what?
Folks, this is fishy at best and a subversion of what indipendent media is suppose to be about at worst. I say no thanks.
Burn Radio Burn
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
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.
Finally, some sense in this thread.
They're basically just using the PODCASTING buzzword to be trendy and attract more peeps. Not to say that their project is bad, but it's unfortunate that they'll distort the meaning of podcasting for the sake of their marketing scheme.
The equally meaningless "open source radio" tag is bad enough.
Eh.
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
A shoutcast server does not use AM radio so I don't really see how it is the "same thing". In one case you are broadcasting over the Internet to a certain set of listeners (mostly people sitting at their computers). In the other you are broadcasting over the airwaves (e.g. to people in cars).