Those who know me, even a little, know I like tech gadgets. My Sony Vaio laptop and my Treo are always close by me. Any chance I get to put them to use for the betterment of the world (or at least for my work or family, for instance) is further justification that all the money I've shelled out is well spent.
But so far I've resisted spending $300 or $400 to get on the
iPod train, even though I'm envious of those who carry around these sleekest of miniature amusements. I've even got 620 songs stored in iTunes just waiting to be freed from my laptop, but I just haven't felt the need to splurge for a portable music player.
What would move me to run to my nearest Apple Store is an iPod "killer app", in the form of useful, compelling, relevant and timely news content. But so far I haven't found it yet. I understand the value of blogs (I read dozens a day, and I write three of my own), and I understand the enormous efficiences through another Internet technology
RSS, but I haven't been able to put my hands around the value of podcasts. And as a local-news manager who's also in charge of my station's new website (the ultrahip
myFOXdfw.com, I want to be at the cutting-edge. And podcasts are certain cutting-edge, even as they're maturing.
There are many local-news outlets (TV stations among them) trying out podcasts. Some TV newsrooms are uploading audio (or video too) of their most recent on-air newscast. I guess that's OK, but as a consumer, I want more than time-shifted content, and as a producer I'm not sure there's a big audience out there for news that's not "live". Other local outlets are trying their hands at original content, and whether it's any good depends on your tastes and the nature of the content. But I haven't found that great gotta-have-it-every-day content that would drive me to 1) buy an iPod and 2) want to produce it for my station's site. We do have several good franchise pieces that might make good portable content. I suppose I would start there. We're already encoding them as videos for our website, but because they're embedded into a Flash video player, they're not in ready-for-podcast format. I suppose the conversion wouldn't be too difficult though.
Future-news-thinker
Terry Heaton has blogged about this before, and recommends local news TV stations find opportunities to produce original content. But is it worth the trouble, or on the other hand, is it a game we can no longer afford
not to play.
By the way, here's good information on
how many podcasts are out there, and what kind of business they're drawing. Big numbers to be sure, but is there any correlation between the podcast audience and the rest of our on-air and online audience?
Are you podcast-producer, and/or are you a podcast-consumer? I'd love to hear your experiences. E-mail me or post a comment.
