Podcasters (And Broadcasters) Are Losing the Plot

About the same time the internet gained measurable use audiences seemed to tune out traditional “one-to-all” programming. Narrow-casting to tightly defined audiences was a distribution problem, among other stressful issues. Broadcasters, public and private, depended on big audiences. Narrow-casting meant finding more distribution points. Digital services, from the internet to DAB (et alii digitalis), seemed to be the answer. The worst for the broadcasters, now narrow-casters, would be that audiences in aggregate might carry the same weight.

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Product branding replaced program production at the top of management strategy. Brand strength, easily translating to a revenue basis, was expected to overcome all obstacles (read: audience confusion) and keep people tuning in and paying attention. A major part of that brand strategy became platform ubiquity – get the brand name and major claim on every possible platform.

It was idyllic when TV was offered a bit on cable and a bit free-to-air or when radio was offered on FM and AM. Of course, now everything is everywhere. And, to confound anybody trying to pin down the one, perfect distribution point, thousands of clever techies – some with a lot of money – are creating new possibilities every day.

Podcasting is one of those possibilities and quite unique. Jonathan Marks uses a much better term: disruptive. “Without disruptive thinking,” he told the EBU’s Multimedia Meets Radio and TV workshop, “we’d still be trying to pump gas into bulbs for light.”

“We spend a lot of time coordinating frequencies and no time with program guides like Google.”

Jonathan Marks did not invent podcasting. But it seems as if podcasting was invented for him. After stepping down as Radio Netherlands’ Creative Director, Marks has been taking disruptive thinking on the road, applying it to the state of international and public broadcasting, which he calls “trapped by routine.”

Podcasting is one of several tools available to broadcasters for establishing the exchange of “social currency,” which Marks defines as “building sustainable conversations within communities.”

Broadcasters now offer podcasts by the thousands. Most downloads are previously aired programs. Marks believes that simply offering archive material for retrieval misses the plot. Broadcasters have, he says, succumbed to the popular assumption that listeners want to interact with the station. “No,” he says emphatically. “They want to interact with their friends.”

A year ago the BBC launched a quite different tool – BBC Backstage. The specialized – and growing - website offers a collection of BBC feeds and the tools to assemble them as one wishes. Users are free to use the wealth of BBC content, interact with other application program interfaces (API’s) like GoogleMaps, build their own podcasts and share them with like-minded minds.

Choice is the undeniable virtue of new media. Broadcasters have theirs: lead, follow or get out of the way.

Podcasters (And Broadcasters) Are Losing the Plot

Europe’s broadcasters wept and moaned when forcibly relocated from “broad-casting” to “narrow-casting.” Now arrives anew that great cleansing agent called change. Get set for “inter-casting.”