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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)."
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.
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
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?
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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.
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
Canada's CBC radio supports OGG streams.
Just check out Quirks and Quarks, a weekly science show broadcast on Saturdays.
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.
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