Wednesday, November 15, 2006
what makes a good podcast?
I'm not sure if any of you are into podcasts. (Strike that, I'm sure Scott is.) But I think it's a great medium, for many reasons. However, as a genre, the podcast seems to still be in its infancy. Most of the ones I've subscribed to via iTunes have decent production -- but that's often only because they're culled from radio and TV. I feel like the podcast may still be in the stage newspaper Web sites were in when they tried to post the entire paper online as a PDF. So what makes for a good podcast? And how can we make podcasts better?
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2 comments:
To me, it's a silly thing to conceive of good podcasts as different from good radio. It's a sound-only medium. The only difference is that there are fewer limitations.
This American Life just started releasing their programs as podcasts. I think anyone hoping to learn how to tell a story effectively in a podcast ought to listen to TAL.
I used to listen to mp3s TAL on burnt CDs before there were podcasts. This was when I worked in a medical records archive and did nothing but file all day and listen to various forms of NPR. It was nirvana.
You're right that in the actual minute-by-minute content, good podcasts are no different from good radio. Over the long run, though, there are some pretty important differences.
One is a far greater ability to connect with specific audiences. There are no radio shows devoted entirely to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Battlestar Galactica. There are several podcasts for each. Whether these are successful podcasts is an entirely different question; the point is that they wouldn't have existed on radio.
Another difference is the user's ability to arrange content. A few of the podcasts I listen to have commercials at the beginning or end, and I usually just skip them. But that seems like just a first step. Ideally, if I'm listening to NPR, I'd like to be able to arrange the stories I'm listening to on the fly. We're not there yet, but it seems like a logical destination. Won't that change the actual content in *some* way?
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