Podcasting: The New New Thing

There's a new threat to over-the-air broadcasting that Eddie Fritts can't control. It's completely uncensored and (almost) completely free, and all you need is an iPod or a PDA that plays MP3s and an Internet connection.

I stumbled across the Internet's latest killer app when conversing with Buzz Bruggeman, the father of Active Words. BTW.. If you rely on a ton of computer programs, Active Words is a must-have. Buzz plans to train people on how to use his software via audio files, automatically downloaded to the user's MP3 player.

That's how I first heard about Podcasting. In the short time since, I've listened to a ton of podcasts on my IPAQ and it's starting to diminish the amount of drive time I spend with NPR and Sirius/XM.

There's a free almost-ready-for-prime-time app out there called iPodder, that lets you plug in the URLs for your favorite podcasts. The software periodically checks to see if the content is updated and, if so, grabs it and syncs it with your iPod. It has some bugs and doesn't work well with my IPAQ, but it's darn close and within a couple of months will be percolating away on thousands of PCs around the world, quietly dumping audio content into all flavors of MP3 players.

Yeah, podcasting will never have the immediacy of broadcasting, but at least 80% of the stuff you hear on the air does not need to be live. In fact a ton of what we listen to on the radio is voice tracked at some past time in some far-away place. Podcasting may be the radio of choice for the next generation. Most already have iPods and cable modems. Podcast links can be spread with viral speed and best of all, anybody can be a broadcaster.

Those who mourn the death of Freak Radio Santa Cruise, the California Pirate FM that was recently shut down by the FCC after nearly ten years of operation, could conceivably get that kind of programming dumped directly to their iPod. NPR, the BBC and others already offer audio streams and it's just another small step to make those programs downloadable.

And with the declining cost of audio production equipment, getting "on the pod" is within reach of even the most starving college student. Ask Ken Rokowski, who's Ken Radio podcast gets something like 30,000 downloads a day. Even trail blazing bloggers like Adam Curry are podcasting. With so much content in the keener13.com air-check archive, we're tempted to podcast some of our faves. Unlike the airwaves, the diversity of voices is limited not by five or six mega companies, but only by the size of your hard drive.

Will podcasting drive a stake in the heart of broadcasting? Not any time soon. But it's likely that a growing number of folks will be downloading their audio content to their iPods and PDAs, and listening to what they want, when they want.