Call me a skeptical Sandy, but I don't think I'm quite ready to jump on the Podcast bandwagon just yet. While our book, The New Influencers, mentions a variety of wonderful applications podcasts can add to our lives, what remains to be seen is whether or not podcasts can become a viable force in the mainstream media world. And for that to occur, podcasts must begin to attract people to listen so that advertisers will be encouraged to pump money into them.
So how big of an audience is actually listening to podcasts? According to an Arbitron/Edison Media Research study in April of 2007, 30% of Americans over 12 have an iPod or other similar digital media player. Based on US census numbers, that would be about 73 million units and therefore 73 million listeners. Arbitron claims only 13% of the total audience has ever heard a podcast; meaning at the least, listened at least once to a podcast. Even more depressing, the study proceeds to claim that only about 1 to 2 million people WORLDWIDE listen to podcasts REGULARLY! Not a very large audience to advertise to, in any medium.
Now, this is not to say podcast audiences are growing by large amounts of numbers everyday. We know that each year the amount of money being advertised in podcasts is also increasing with audience size. But who is going to reap the benefits of this increased revenue. Well, leave it to Big Media to extend their Kraken like tentacles and sink the ship of independent podcasters.
As TechCrunch's Duncan Riley puts it, "While greater awareness of podcasting is growing the overall market for podcasts, the mainstream media is taking a big slice of the pie." Meaning that they are the ones that are benefitting the most from this new media form. Will podcasts sink or swim, and who will reap the benefits of their growth? It will be interesting to see if independent users will maintain a strong presence and not be swallowed up and consolidated much like radio has become. And we don't want that to happen because we ALL know:
"the radio will always suck".
1 comment:
The radio does suck. We're good there. However, as much as I love m podcasts, I kind of agree with you. Out of the three podcasts I listen to regularly, two have commercials from major corporations or retailers in them. My other criticism of podcasts is that they can only be input into an Ipod. I know that is what most people have for an MP3 player, but there are still other players and phones even that can play MP3s. Plus how do we identify how many people listen to podcasts? Just because it is downloaded doesn't verify for me if has been listened to.
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