An interesting article, Ian. I am a 'radio' person who took her show from the airwaves of a local AM station and turned it into a weekly podcast, and your observations are consistent with my own. My team, and I, do a two-hour show, formatted like a traditional terrestrial radio show, with bumpers and audio production and stop breaks, etc. from a fully equipped studio. We conduct interviews with the better and lesser known (last year we had an interview with comedian Mort Sahl just before his 80th birthday) and the experience of both our guests, and listeners, is that they're tuning into a 'radio' program. But as all of use have "square" jobs, promotion is left to word of mouth. As a result, after a bit over 2 years, we have, on average, between 1000 and 2000 downloads a week. By podcasting standards I'm told this is great (non-NPR/Ricky Gervais podcasting standards, that is...) But by traditional broadcasting standards this geographically diverse audience isn't large enough to be interesting to traditional advertisers. 1000 people jammed into a club to see a stand-up comedian on a Saturday night is a huge success, but 1000 people spread, quite literally, across the globe, is not a "market" (or at least, not in the traditional sense).

What I think needs to happen is for someone (smarter than me) to figure out to consolidate and promote shows, like mine, in a package, in exchange for ad insertion. If there were the "StarPod Network", for example, that was able to highlight/showcase smaller shows of a particular quality or targeted to a particular interest group, and sell these audiences to global advertisers, the form would, I think, be far more sustainable. Plus, standards (not so much content as production) would provide a goal for podcasters to reach.

What also needs to happen is to recognize that, unlike terrestrial radio, podcasts are much like "appointment radio". As we know, the average time spent listening, in radio, is measured in 15 minute segments. But my listeners tell me they listen to our entire two-hour show, cover to cover... This is a throw-back to the way people consumed radio before the advent of television. Perhaps success in podcasting will come from returning to those roots... everything old is new again!

Cheers!
robin
The Schnauzer Logic Radio Co.
www.schnauzerlogic.com