The other day. the NY Times had good piece on podcasting. There was a great quote from Dave Winer (one of the creators of podcasting), “I love podcasting because it turns us all into investigative journalists of our own lives.”. Here is Dave’s elaboration on the statement. One of the main things in the piece is the spectrum of investment people make into equipment for podcasting. There has been a bit of discussion going on online about production quality in podcasts. Dave Slusher has also written about it in response to to this piece posted by Steven Hill on Steve Gillmor’s blog.

Essentially a lot of traditional radio types are saying podcasting sucks because of bad production quality. This is bullshit. Production quality is not irrelevant, after all if you can’t understand what is being said, the content doesn’t mean much. But regular radio generally has what most would consider great production quality. But 90% of what you here on radio is shit content. I believe that the quality of the content is vastly more important than the production quality. I don’t care how good something sounds if there is nothing worthwhile to hear. As long as I can hear what is being said, I am fine with some background or ambient noise or the occasional umh, ahh or cough as long as the podcaster has something interesting/funny or relevant to say. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of podcasts out their with awesome production quality, check out Digital Flotsam, Bob and AJ, the Zedcast and Accident Hash for just a few examples. But there are plenty of podcasts with what many pro’s would consider poor production quality that are vastly more listenable than almost anything on the radio. Morning Coffee Notes, Evil Genius Chronicles and Dawn and Drew all qualify here. None of these are edited, all contain what would be considered flaws and I listen to all of them because they are real and have something to say to me. I have heard quite a few podcasters over the past year buy more elaborate gear to try get better sound quality. Frankly once they reach a certain point, the extra tweaks are only marginal improvements at best if they are even noticable. In many cases I have heard people talk about new mikes or mixers and frankly can’t tell any difference from the previous shows.

You don’t need a lot of expensive studio gear to make a great podcast. But you do need good content. If I can hear the content, that is what counts. Entertain me, inform me, make me think, make me laugh, introduce me to new music. This is what counts. the rest is just icing on the cake.

I was a long time listener to public radio. But in recent years I have largley given up on it and have stopped contributing money. The major programs like Morning Edition, All things considered, and talk of the nation have become more and more like commercial radio, parroting the statements of the Shrub administration and being less questioning of government policies, especially during the lead up to the Iraq war. I still listen to selected programs like On the Media and Le Show but I listen to them in podcast form. I almost never turn on the radio. Because of th enormous amount of money required to do tradional radio, NPR (and PBS and Corp for Public Broadcasting, especially CPB under republican hack Ken Tomlinson) have become water carriers for the government because they are terrified of getting completely de-funded. There is also the issue ofwanting to here the programs when I want to listen to them, not necessarilly when stations decide to broadcast them, if the local stations carry them at all.

Doug Kaye, who runs the amazing IT Conversations site and podcasts has a very good post on the future of public radio. In essence it like other mainstream media are doomed.

This started for me when I blogged about Doc’s suggestion that we all call our local public radio stations and request they carry the new show. It took me no time at all to realize how little sense that made. There’s no doubt that if KQED-FM were to broadcast the show at all, it would be at some obscure time of day when I wasn’t likely to listen. No, that’s not even correct. There’s no time of day that would be good for me. I don’t plan my days around a radio or TV schedule because, quite frankly, I don’t need to. I have an iPod and I can listen to what I want, where I want and when I want. And given that there’s already more good programming than I have time for, anyone who doesn’t make it easy for me by providing an RSS feed with enclosures simply won’t make the cut. Even in my car, unless it’s just a trip to the grocery store, I no longer tune in a broadcast station

With the technology that is available now and coming in the future, for both creating content, and distributing it, large television and radio networks will soon have no reason whatsoever to exist. This is a good thing because it will allow more specialised programming to flourish. The old technology required content to be generalized in order to make it economically viable. Because the audience for specialised programs might consist of many groups of relatively few people distributed over large geographic areas, it was not feasible to broadcast such programs because of the very limited bandwith of over the air communications. The internet and the technologies that enable podcasting allow these types of programs to reach an audience at relatively low cost now. A major change is underway in the media and it is irreversible no matter what main stream media tries to do about it.

In the past 9 months I have all but abandoned radio after 35= years of consistent listening. My ipod is now with me almost all the time. I listen to music that I have accumulated over the years from cds and vinyl and now to podcasts. Podcasts are audio (or video) programs that are included as enclosures with RSS feeds that you can subscribe to. The audio programs are generally in mp3 format. You can use any of several “podcatching” clients like ipodder, ipodderx, doppler or others to subscribe to the podcasts. They can automatically check subscribed feeds, download new programs and load them into your media player software and create a playlist. It works with any mp3 player (although ipods are still the best out there) The latest version of itunes (4.9) also has podcasting capability built right in. If you want to learn more visit podcastalley.com.

Basically what this means is that you subscribe to a podcast feed and then it is automatically downloaded to your computer and mp3 player whenever there is a show. There are podcasts on almost every subject imaginable, politics, tech, movies, music, comedy etc. Thanks to the intransigence of the RIAA podcasting has become a wonderful forum for finding all kinds of awesome new music. I have heard more great new bands in the last 9 months than I have heard in the last 15 years on the radio.

Goodbye radio. You blew it!!. I only listen to podcasts now.