Radio vs Podcasting

Podcasting is NOT radio…

Ok one of the things that is really starting to bug me is the endless comparison of podcasting with radio – ‘podcasting will replace radio!’ – ‘it’s like TIVO for Radio’ and even Steve Jobs at the WWDC saying “We see it as the hottest thing going in radio” . Talk about being totally wrong – Steve Jobs is talking absolute bollocks

Firstly podcasting is NOT radio – when it started the media looked for an angle, took the easy route and started doing ‘podcasting will kill the radio star’ type articles. All fun and funky, but it’s kind of stuck – with radio corporates moving into podcasting (Rush Limbaugh ‘hottest thing in podcasting’?!? Get back to bed, honey!) the trend seems to be heading that radio shows can be just ripped, MP3’d and it’s just another delivery channel. WRONG.

Secondly don’t judge existing podcasts by radio standards – they’re not done for an average drive-time audience, or on thousands of pounds worth of kit, and that’s not the point. They have no advertising revenue and most don’t want to have advertising in their casts. So why is the ‘charts’ of PodcastAlley/Podcast pickle et al all so important? And why do people bitch about casts that have great content but don’t have that ‘radio’ sound?

Podcasting is a revolution exactly because it ISN’T radio – the low-or-no production values add charm but also validity – you’re getting this from a PERSON not a corporation.

The voice is distinct, human, clear and warm and more importantly unique – this is where the corporates will struggle to get that one-on-one feel, I doubt they will be able to. That human connection is what it’s about – remember podcasting used to be called audio blogging (I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted here, but I have to say this).

The low entry value means it’s accessible – and will get more so. Trying to build in more production values is dangerous as it raises that bar and stops the very people you need casting from doing so. This is the problem with existing media – ‘I can’t make a film! I can’t produce an album!’ – it encourages apathy through high production values. it inhibits – but that gloss doesn’t actually add any more information or content.

Content is king – if you have something to say and we can hear you, then that’s great, that’s what it’s about – I was listening to Lucky Bitch Radio and Wanda’s recent breakup and past struggles with addiction and thought this is what it’s about – you’re hearing someone’s view on the world at a crisis point pretty much unedited. You rarely get that connection even in so-called ‘reality shows’ which are highly staged. It’s not self-indulgent – that’s exactly the attitude that stops people from starting things like podcasts.

Radio is produced for a mass audience and is increasingly commoditised into smaller and smaller chunks and market niches – or what the marketeers think are there. Podcasting is not the new radio – like all new technologies it’s going through the infancy stages of copying an existing medium to seek validity – photography did this when it started, aping the impressionists and fine art to prove it’s worth. Eventually it decided to go it’s own way and created it’s own self-confidence.

This is what will happen with podcasting – the radio production nerds and wannabes will go off to XM or Sirius or KYOU and the rest of us will build a future for podcasting with our own language, and our values. It will happen sooner than you think…the danger of looking to radio for validity is that it is a medium in artistic and monetary crisis – why replicate them like a kid trying to look hard and older for his big brother? We’re in out infancy but shouldn’t try too hard to grow up just yet and be like the big boys – like Podshow and Odeo are. I’d rather go out and play wouldn’t you?

Anyway I thought Dawn and Drew taught us all this?

Or did we forget?

by

Tim B

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Comments

11 responses to “Podcasting is NOT radio…”

  1. Rev. Don Deeley avatar
    Rev. Don Deeley

    “This is the problem with existing media – ‘I can’t make a film! I can’t produce an album!’ – it encourages apathy through high production values.”
    It sounds like you’re talking about punk, specifically the punk asthetic, that DIY ethic. It’s disussed in the introductoin to Punk Planet’s collected interviews “We Owe You Nothing” as the “Why can’t we do this?” ideal.
    I keep trying to write a reply about how I think your fears about money and podcasting are unwarrented, but they all sound preachy, combative or both. And they’re really long. Basicly, the casts you like operate under the same ethic as you-they like what they do. The casts you don’t, the one’s that are selling out, don’t. They’re trying the latest scam, a few will make it, most won’t and even more will be completely unaware that anything had happened. Like a feud between experimental filmmakers.
    I also wanted to say that your criticism of casts trying to sound like radio is spot-on, but I’d also warn against casts sounding like “podcasts.” Beware a puritanical ideal for your hobby. When you get to the point of someone saying “This is podcasting, this isn’t,” you go down the same path that killed punk. Beware of that. The only limit is bandwidth, so why does everyone sound the same?
    Anything else I’d say is just niggling differences. Maybe it’s because I’m doing a radio show now and want to defend the medium though I really can’t. Love the show, relax about people whoring themselves. They always do. It’s why we have the phrase “whoring themselves.” It’s been going on a long time. Keep doing it your way. That’s the right way.
    D-

    Reply
  2. Adrian avatar
    Adrian

    Er – so why call your show Radio Clash?

    Just interested …

    Reply
  3. tim avatar
    tim

    thanks Rev Don – I try not to stress about it but sometimes you get pissed off – the review by Vox monitor and the great articles over at podcastingnews.net and the Steve Jobs quote combined to piss me off. It’s this idea that I have to talk less, produce beds and jingles, format the show and copy radio before I’m taken seriously in some quarters – they don’t ‘get it’ – now I know the danger in that and I don’t want to be elitist or intentionally indie – I want to explain to those people *why* they are wroing about podcasting…I would be interested in hearing your response tho – offline if necessary.

    Adrian – I called it Radio Clash after the Clash song which is about pirate radio, and the Jamaican soundclash and the clash of genres I wanted to play…to be honest I wish I’d chosen a different name but this was before all this radio vs podcasting debate and it’s too late now. I didn’t want to call it Mashup podcast – there already is a great cast called that, but I wanted to keep it eclectic and genre free…

    Certainly there is some irony in that name; since I don’t want to sound or become ‘radio’, but it does also remind me of the war we have versus radio corporates – we may not be radio but we’re pitched against them currently…there is a clash of cultures, so I suppose it’s strangely appropriate…

    Reply
  4. Rev. Don Deeley avatar
    Rev. Don Deeley

    I agree with you completely. Conforming to other people’s standards is unnecessay and trying to impose standards is unreasonable. Formats can be good, but only when self-imposed. When you operate within a box, it’s liberating cause you explore every aspect of what you can do within that box and can always decide how and when you leave it. When somebody else puts you in the box. it quickly goes to crap.
    As for radio and jingles, do the people suggesting these things have any idea of why radio does that stuff? Jingles (I’ve always known them as “stingers”) are to remind people and let them know what station they’re listening to. It’s a necessary response to the reality of being a broadcast medium-particularly one that initially used analog recievers (have you ever spun the dial and wondered where you’ve landed? Thus stingers). Podcasting doesn’t have that issue. No one randomly steps into the middle of a podcast.
    Sounding like radio goes back to what I said earlier. Don’t use other people’s boxes. If somebody wants to make their show sound like their idea of radio, either what it is or should be, that’s fine if that’s what they want to do with it. Saying pods have to be that way isn’t fine.
    And this discussion takes me back to some of the first questions I had about podcasting. What is it? It’s not TiVo for radio as the article said (just as the DAP is not your VCR). I initially thought of them as mixtapes but with wider distribution, and I’m not sure that’s completely wrong. However I’m not sure that the comparisons to radio are right at all outside of being a sonic medium. I’m not sure podcasting is even broadcasting or narrowcasting in the media studies sense of the terms. Rather, they’re kind of like books-readily available, accessable on an individual, mass-produced level, and the content bound not by what the audience might want, but what the author of the piece wants. Discussions like that though, are very much intellectual wankery. But it comes from needing to understand what we’re experiencing and talking about.
    As for talking, more vs. less, I generally vote for less. I hate DJs. I hate DJ voices. Every time they talk I think this is crap I don’t need. But that has nothing to do with talking specificly but entertainment in general. Every moment in entertainment has to be earned. The only sin is to be boring, like Eminem. I don’t think you should talk less at all. I think you succeed at being interesting on mic (I generally fail and thus strive to keep it short), especially when you’re talking about the mash-up and bear scenes. You also, at least I know you did in your earlier casts, edit your pieces down some. You trim. Some people make the mistake of thinking because they have a chance to say something it automatically makes whatever they say interesting. You seem to come from the other end, you have something to say and find means of saying it.
    Radio is desperate right now though. They’re trying to incorporate podcasting into their format as well as changing their formats to reflect podcasting. It’s called, I’m not kidding, “Jack.” A computer creates random playlists from the several thousand songs in its database. So 90’s hip-hop could follow 80’s hair metal. Ooh! How edgy! It’s all Top 40, though, so it’s not unfamiliar music and it’s not from a real DJ programing the set so there’s no personality. It’s basicly,
    “Let’s do that podcasting thing except without all the stuff that makes podcasting popular!”
    “Ingenious!”
    “Now Let’s do lines off a dead hooker’s ass!”
    “I see you’re on the fast track.”
    It strikes me as funny because just a few years ago, when satellite radio was getting so much press, the head of Clear Channel complained about genre-mixing and said that’s what college radio does. He called it “sonic hell.” Now they’re pushing it, but in their brainless, ham-fisted way that drove people away from radio in the first place.
    Oh, and I forgot to mention it earlier, but I saw Pump Up the Volume after listening to your podcast. I’d never seen it before. It’s great. Thanks for pointing it out. I also just saw Heathers which, and it’s only in one scene, features a radio show that all the kids tune in to and pay attention to. There’s nothing like that anymore. No local radio shows that people latch onto, no local TV shows. Christ, I remember growing up and seeing crappy sci-fi every Saturday afternoon on the local channels. Even that’s gone. MST3K was kind of the last gasp of that scene. And this is something beyond podcasting, but what’s become of local, community media. I don’t mean the kind the left frets and fumes about, the non-corporate independent news, but actual locally-produced and broadcast entertainment. Where are the people clamouring for their kids to see campy culture on TV? I live in Pittsburgh. Can’t we have a local Saturday-night wacko on KDKA? Aren’t there enough stoners here to make the ad revenue greater than what they’d get from rerunning a Ron Popeil infomercial?
    This went way off point. Sorry.

    Reply
  5. Fin avatar
    Fin

    Well I have to say that my Media Studies exam was on New Media, and I chose to talk about Podcasting (because it fit the question perfectly). I resisted using the Jobs description, but I had to in order to save time I stuck it in there. To people who are new to all of this, I would think it’s kind of a good way to describe the genre, but I always add in “anyone can do it”.

    Reply
  6. tim avatar
    tim

    Wow…good response!

    Rev Don – that didn’t sound off-topic or preachy at all (despite you name?) – this made me laugh:

    “Let’s do that podcasting thing except without all the stuff that makes podcasting popular!”
    “Ingenious!”
    “Now Let’s do lines off a dead hooker’s ass!”
    “I see you’re on the fast track.”

    😀

    That monoculture is gone or is quickly fracturing – I don’t know if the goastses and the oolongs are replacing them; like the Numa Dance or star wars kid that’s the only thing I can see that is close to ‘did you watch that show last night?’ – I’ve noticed that people have stopped asking that question largely; might be that I’m a disposable temp (wasn’t that a Marilyn Manson track? :-D) but I think with all those channels and the internet it’s far from clear if they would even know something was on…and I don’t watch TV anymore (apart from recently Dr Who – I hadn’t watched TV for a couple of years before that) – podcasting and the internet have replaced traditional media for me – I don’t know if I’m unique or the crest of a larger wave of people. Certainly the 20+ million viewing figures seem to be gone in the UK – with computer games and the internet taking over…I see that as far more healthy, at least computer games are more ‘active’ and demanding.

    So I don’t mourn that passing – although media moguls are probably gonna be scared and have to quickly learn to adapt via ‘on demand’ systems…I remember when you had no alternative to what you had on 3 channels, so it’s good people are being lured away.

    I’m glad you like Pump up the Volume – I have a confession; I was thinking of stopping at Radio Clash #25 til I saw that movie – it really inspired me to keep going, oddly, even though the teenage-pain thing was simplistic it had a similar effect on me as Network – another great film I saw many years ago, which also applies to podcasting. Tell the truth and people will switch on, not off. Reminded me that my art always has to in a way have some truth in it, even if it’s just my truth. It’s very true – people react best to what I see as being incredibly personal and probably not interesting to other people…what is a ‘confession’ in VoxMonitor terms. Why are people so upset about someone being so truthful and opening up their lives? It seems to really bother some.

    Fin: I suppose the Jobs quote will go down in history; it’s bothersome because I doubt Apple really understood what they’re getting into like they don’t really understand the needs of designers or video artists, they just bung a picture of Gandhi on their posters (something I found deeply offensive) and pretend like they do.

    Which is more than other people; but still they are corporate and blind…

    I work with both platforms and am going dual platform at home probably for work and play reasons – but I see Apple as a better marketed and designed Dell. They don’t understand Cluetrain, they don’t understand real technical revolution; the recent renaissance is as much an accident and Jonathan Ives doing as Jobs…moving to Intel and LinuX was inevitable, in a way. You don’t make money selling new unique hardware unless it’s low-level consumer hardware like iPods…which now is bankrolling the company.

    But they seem to want to own podcasting because of the Pod connection – which looking at their history with Apple rumours sites (ie suing them into non-existence) I doubt the online blogging community will want to get TOO far into bed with Apple…otherwise it’s just another Podshow.

    Wow! Sorry long rambles but this is a really interesting discussion 😀

    Reply
  7. Andrew Coffey avatar
    Andrew Coffey

    Your right about this and I see it happening on my show . However some of the sound issues need a certian level for the ear buds. I equate this to this when I wrote Grafitti in the early Eightys You needed atleast a few cans of Krylon. Then again Keith Hering used paint brushes. Actualy this this might a good podcast…
    Thanks Tim.

    .Oddly “Futura 2000” Was in that video “Radio Clash”

    Andrew
    http://www.exit50.com
    .

    Reply
  8. Fausto Fernos avatar
    Fausto Fernos

    Lovely article. It really clarifies the values of podcasting. Podcasting is a nice buzz word, but eventually we should move away from it into “audiocast” “photocast” “videocast” or “audio-feed”

    This is definitively an emerging genre with a distinct form and shape, separate from all other media.

    Reply
  9. eric avatar
    eric

    hi. I don’t think that you are representing our position very accurately.

    Remember, Vox Monitor is all about “what constitutes good art.” And we like this medium. Aside from that, however, we have no opinion about what people “should” or “shouldn’t” do. We just offer our perspective regarding the successes or failings of a given piece of art, as media. Is it engaging, does it keep my interest? Those of the sort of questions we ask, and our stated opinions are our answers to aesthetic, and only aesthetic, questions.

    thanks,

    eric

    Reply
  10. tim avatar
    tim

    thanks all for responding – and especially Fausto – means a lot because I’ve been listening to your casts a lot recently and am interested in what you’ve got to say 😀

    Well VoxMonitor comment was an aside to this thread – your point was that Radio Clash was too confessional and seemed to be comparing it to radio values – production; DJ style; talk etc.

    You both said some good things, and valid things, but the thing I found odd, and what I said above was that you seemed to critique my cast against radio values – confessional talk, non-DJ voices and rambling is part of what podcasting *is* – at least in my book; and I’m moving away from a produced ‘show’ anyway. Just thought it was odd to evaluate my show against existing ‘radio’ metrics when it’s clearly not a radio show, personal views aside.

    And you both seemed uncomfortable with the content of my cast regards me talking about sexuality – not a problem as it’s not all everyone’s cup of tea, but I noticed you did same on the SmallWORLD review?

    Reply
  11. Christian Lee avatar
    Christian Lee

    i enjoy Podcasting on my desktop PC. it really helps me share my ideas and thoughts over the internet:`~

    Reply

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