Are podcasts an efficient means of content delivery?
That’s the question Peter T Davis is asking on his blog. His main argument seems to be that
In the time I can listen to an average podcast, I could have caught up on my 50 favorite blogs, or read a chapter in a book, or read the latest issue of Red Herring magazine.
What interests me most about this post, and the amount of coverage it is getting on places like techmeme and Scoble’s blog, is that we used to hear this kind of argument a lot more 12 - 18 months ago but I haven’t heard it for ages. I had assumed most people now realized that comparing podcasts to blogs was like comparing radio to a newspaper. They are different mediums servicing different needs. And yet you never hear people arguing that radio is inefficient and we should all just read newspapers. Maybe there were people making that argument back in 1920, when Westinghouse’s KDKA-Pittsburgh broadcast the Harding-Cox election returns and began their daily schedule of radio programs?
Tags: podcasting
June 28th, 2006 at 12:03 am
I agree that podcasting and blogs are totally different mediums. I think that people need to also realise that there is an opportunity cost for everything we do. If we read a blog the cost might be that we did not listen to a podcast. If we listen to a podcast we did not watch a TV show. Sure we might be able to do these things later but then there would be an opportunity cost asociated with that as well!
But as far as meduims are concerned chalk and cheese, different and uncomparable.
People saying or implying that they are wasting time listening to podcasts, obviously are not multi-skilled enough to do both at once. Or they just don’t get it and should stick to their morning paper… I wonder how they cope when they have an email to reply to and they are reading the RSS feed! They must have palpitations thinking about it…
June 30th, 2006 at 8:03 am
I find it hard to concentrate on anything else when I’m listening to a podcast. To the point now where I make sure I’m not reading anything too in depth so as to absorb the pod content in its entirity. 95% of the casts I listen to are 100% voice. Problem is, there’s often so much I want to read and I find myself able to skim and consume more of what I want when I do. Can’t do that with podcasts quite so easily. I’ve also noticed slow talkers are getting on my nerves. They’re the ones I don’t go back to unless the content is gold.
I was listening to the gillmor gang the other day and a comment by one of the panel with regard to listening rates when providing a transcript next to the cast was quite interesting. A 225% increase in listeners resulted.
That tells me people are looking for relevent content per podcast and can’t be bothered listening through the crap to find out what’s on.
Thinking about it, including a seperate “summary” podcast, like a blog post extract, may entice more to listen to the entire cast aswell.