Podcasting ready for take-off: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2005/10/23 > Podcasting ready for take-off

Podcasting ready for take-off
Sunday, October 23, 2005 - By Catherine O'Mahony
Just a few short months ago, podcasting belonged to the realm of computer geeks.

These days, a click on the iTunes top 20 podcast chart and you'll find some rather more mainstream references - the Dublin music station FM104's The Strawberry Alarm Clock podcast is in top position, followed by some breakfast comedy routines from Spin 103.8 and extracts from 98FM's Sounds of the City.

All have become available for download - or podcasting - in the past six weeks.

Meanwhile, more Irish radio stations are getting in on the act. Dublin talk station Newstalk 106made its podcast debut last Friday and RTE will be airing a selection of its radio feature material by podcast over the next couple of months, with a view towards offering a considerably more comprehensive service in the new year.

In Britain, the BBC started a podcasting trial as early as October 2004 and Virgin Radio began earlier this year to produce a daily podcast of its popular breakfast show.

“Podcasting offers people a chance to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want, and wherever they want,” said RTE's head of operations, JP Coakley. “What we have to do is make our content available however people want to access it.”

What is podcasting? In practice, it simply means that people who have an iPod or other kind of MP3 player can download audio files such as a favourite radio show and listen to them while walking down the street.

It's a significant development from live audio streaming, which requires a listener to be present at his or her computer while the show is on.

Technically speaking, podcasting is a method of publishing audio and video programs via the internet.

In radio terms, it's a format for the iPod generation. Purists would argue that real podcasting involves creating tailor-made content, not just re-using existing radio output, but such distinctions don't mean much to consumers.

The big breakthrough for podcasting came this summer when iPod maker Apple started offering podcasts for download via iTunes.

The potential for radio stations to use podcasting as a platform to win more listeners is obvious. According to TNS MRBI's recent radio listenership survey,14 per cent of Irish adults use an MP3 player or iPod, 45 per cent have at-home internet access and a quarter of these people are already broadband-enabled.

It all augurs well for podcasting. Chris Doyle, music director at Spin, believes the format has considerable potential.

“It's limited because we can't play music on podcasts (for rights reasons), but the take-up has been strong in just three weeks,” he said.

According to Doyle, 3,500 people have accessed the Spin downloads so far (which compares with the station's overall listenership of 92,000).

NewsTalk 106 has fewer content limitations and has just started making available its Henry McKean's KidsTalk show and Off the Ball (the soccer show's news round-up) via podcasting.

Elaine Geraghty, chief executive of NewsTalk, said: “We recognised the arrival and value of podcasting early on and view it as a complementary means of listening to radio, as opposed to a substitute.

“The emergence of the technology forces us to think about how we can deliver our programming through more than one platform and indeed causes us to consider how radio consumption may be measured in the future.”

98FM's marketing manager Aisling Walsh said the station was taking a wait-and-see approach to podcasting.

“It's very early days,” she said. “The service is there just in case someone wants to listen.”

Like most of those making forays into podcasting, 98FM has no immediate plans to generate revenue from podcasting. It's a medium that doesn't lend itself well to regular advertising, as the capacity to fast forward through an ad break on any MP3 player is considerable.

Still, there are some who are making commercial deals on podcasts already. Irish IT firm Twelve Horses is sponsoring a business podcast called Ireland Digital. And the Irish Emigrant News newsletter has just adapted its content into a weekly audio podcast transmission.

Brian Greene of Doop Design, the web development company that is working with the Irish Emigrant, is aiming to persuade lots of Irish companies to start podcasting. A podcaster himself, Greene is a major enthusiast who welcomes the involvement of commercial radio stations in what used to be an ‘indie' activity.

“I welcome anything anyone's doing in this space,” said Greene. “I think this is an ideal delivery platform for companies that want to get their message across. It's going to be enormous . . . once video iPods become a reality, there will be an explosion in activity from the porn industry.”

Greene's own podcasts, which have been available since March, average about 1,500 to 2,000 ‘listens'. The Irish Emigrant's first three podcasts got 500 listeners to all three.

Greene said there were few totally reliable ways of tracking podcasts. “What needs to happen is that you get industry-proven tracking like Nielsen or ABC.”

Once this is in place, there will be considerable opportunities for sponsorship, he said.

“People will have to go back to the golden age of the sponsored Ovaltine hour.”

JP Coakley of RTE agreed.

“You certainly can't go in there with three minutes of ads. But we could explore how to expand existing sponsorship into downloads.

“But we'd have to tread carefully. We don't see any immediate strong commercial proposition, podcasting is more about access.”

If successful, RTE's podcasting offer will be the most comprehensive on the Irish market by far. Coakley is keen to offer an RSS feed, allowing anyone interested to subscribe to a service that will alert them when a new podcast becomes available.

He also said he would be keen to explore the possibilities for bypassing restrictions on playing music on podcasts.

The main obstacle at present was the difficulty in accessing podcasts, he said.

“People think iTunes is the only way to do it, but it's not.

“The opportunity is for content to be downloaded on to a whole range of portable devices, including mobile phones. I'd expect take-up to be reasonably low at the start. We're waiting for a technology that would make it all a lot easier.”

Exactly what content will be used remains unclear. “We have four stations with at least 20 hours each a day of original programming. Nobody can listen to all of that.”

Coakley said RTE's existing internet services, which include an audio feed, were performing extremely well. Last month the site had 15.6 million page impressions and 750,000 unique users, of whom roughly half were based in Ireland.

Last year a total of 4.3 million audio files were accessed over the site, translating into 135,000 unique users.

“We're at a stage where everyone's heard of podcasting, but comparatively few people know what it is,” he said.