Beginning of radio compared to beginning of podcasting

[Rasheed]

I was listening to a couple of podcasts and suddenly it dawned upon me that radio was invented at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. If you look how devices from that area look, you can see how quaint the current devices must look in the eyes of people in the 22th century. The same applies, I think, to radio programming in the early days of radio, although nothing has survived afaik, compared to podcast programming today, compared to on-demand audio programming in the 22th century, when all listening patterns and habits has been established for the on-demand media (whichever those may be).

Do any of you sometimes think about podcasting in this way, about how nothing in podcasting has been established at this moment, and that most of us are still using what we're used to in other (read: broadcast) media?

[mdattilo]

I wrote about this some time ago on my blog. I believe there are many similarities between early radio and podcasting. Early radio was sort of anarchistic before the dawn of the FCC and, as we know, has been over-regulated nearly to death since then. Podcasting is still in that "wild West" phase, but there will be no FCC-like agency to regulate content, etc. (at least I hope not). For this reason, I believe podcasting will mainstream quickly as people realize that almost anything and everything can be found in the pod-o-sphere.

However, keep in mind that people have more entertainment options than they did in the early days of radio. That, too, has an effect on podcasting's growth and individual show numbers. For this reason, podcasting must fit a niche in people's lives: listening on the way to work or while working out or first thing in the morning over a cup of coffee. That's all the free time many people have these days.

[NeilShapiro]

I think there is one main difference between the two starts. Radio was a technology-driven medium. Podcasting is information-driven.

What I mean by that is that early radio pioneers were people like deForest and the early ham radio operators who were trying to understand how radio waves propagate and to master the technology of building transmitters and receivers. It was the technology that interested and drove these people to invent all that they did. Many of them, once they had the inventions, had no idea at all what to say on the air other than what the weather was like and, of course, what sort of "rig" they were using.

Podcast pioneers are driven by the urge to talk to people, to get their views out to a real audience. Yes, we do have to learn how to run a computer but at this point in time that is really not very techie. Perhaps the hardest technology we have to master is the soft technologies such as writing a rss file. But the technology is secondary. To us, the show is the reason that drives us.

IMHO anyhoo.

Neil

[paulyb]

You forgot to say that pioneering radio broadcasters weren't competing with every man and his dog having a go at the same thing ;)

[Yotto]

Not to mention that not only is 22th not a valid century, but we're actually in the 21st :)

But I think it's important to note that the monetary outlay for a podcaster now is *much less* than that of the radio broadcaster 100 years ago. I personally spent NO MONEY on podcasting for nearly 6 months, and then started paying $5/month for hosting. Now, I had my own website and computer already, but if you had *nothing* at all, you could start podcasting with off-the-shelf equipment for maybe $300 initial (cheapest computer you can find and a headset mic) and about $10-15/month (cheapest dialup internet access you can find and a libsyn account).

I don't know how much it cost the early radio adopters, but in 2007 dollars, I bet it was more than $300 down and $10 a month.

[WyethDigital]

You don't even need $300. With companies like TalkShoe (and there are more than one), all you really need is a phone and the price of a long distance call.

Eric

[Yotto]

There you go. Though you'd need to borrow a friends' computer to set up your account, or I suppose you could go to the library...

But really, what I was trying to get at is, if you are posting to this forum you very likely have, at your disposal, everything you need to make a podcast for free, and a fairly decent one (though it may require a fair amount of elbow grease) at that.

[WyethDigital]

There you go. Though you'd need to borrow a friends' computer to set up your account, or I suppose you could go to the library...

But really, what I was trying to get at is, if you are posting to this forum you very likely have, at your disposal, everything you need to make a podcast for free, and a fairly decent one (though it may require a fair amount of elbow grease) at that.

Oh, absolutely right. Having a computer and a reasonable internet connection makes it way easier to to do, and actually if you consider the cost of a regular one hour toll call to places like TalkShoe to record your podcast, the cost of owning a computer isn't going to seem especially prohibitive.

Eric

[paulyb]

Wow! Have you got telephones in Americky? We produce our show in a tree. It's the only way to make trunk calls in the British Isles.

[EndGamePR]

The big difference between radio and podcasting is that, thankfully, podcasting will never be regulated.