Podcasting
Earlier this month Google purchased the video sharing website, YouTube, for 1.65 billion dollars in stock. The site allows visitors to view and post videos for free. The videos vary from congressional debates to concerts. As the high price tag might indicate the traffic to the site is growing exponentially each week. This week the traffic ranking website, Alexa, rated YouTube.com as the 6th most visited website on World Wide Web. The tremendous success of this website begs the question: Will podcasting overrun commercial media?
Podcasting as defined by Wikipedia is " multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers." Thursday's panel, led by members of Colorado Public Radio, seemed to agree that podcasting will be the future of media. The panel declined to say that commercial media would be replaced by podcasting, but rather podcasting would become a larger part of commercial media. The panel argued that they see an increase of podcasting surfacing for two reasons. One, as the commercial media market news quality becomes further downgraded a disgruntled public might seek alternative sources of media including podcasting. The second reason they sighted was that the commercial media market might begin to integrate user's podcasts as a way to decease costs and increase variety.
Kristina Tabor cited the innovation and success of Al Gore's network "Current" as evidence that podcasting is beginning to weld greater influence in the media. The advantage of the system is it allows people from all over the world to bring news to others. Often times podcasting allows stories to surface that would not otherwise be covered. McChesney would argue that this is because the current media have a tendency to rely on their stories from people in power. If Clinton gives a speech - it must be news. If Rumsfeld gives a briefing - it must be news. However, with podcasting it allows individuals to submit stories that are often ignored like the increased rate of autism in children.
The panel also cited job cuts in struggling commercial media as evidence that stations can't afford to place a cameraman and a news anchor in every city of the world. In fact, NBC announced just last week that they will be laying off almost 700 employees. Those job cuts mean that the range of stories the media covers could see further shrinking. Podcasting would allow the media to save even more money by decreasing the amount of programming the networks had to produce. For example, panelist Andrea Dukakis said that it took her about 20 hours to produce a five minute story for Colorado Public Radio. We can assume that the time to create a story for television is even longer. The uses of podcasts for just a percentage of network news could cut costs by millions of dollars for struggling media outlets.
Podcasting as defined by Wikipedia is " multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers." Thursday's panel, led by members of Colorado Public Radio, seemed to agree that podcasting will be the future of media. The panel declined to say that commercial media would be replaced by podcasting, but rather podcasting would become a larger part of commercial media. The panel argued that they see an increase of podcasting surfacing for two reasons. One, as the commercial media market news quality becomes further downgraded a disgruntled public might seek alternative sources of media including podcasting. The second reason they sighted was that the commercial media market might begin to integrate user's podcasts as a way to decease costs and increase variety.
Kristina Tabor cited the innovation and success of Al Gore's network "Current" as evidence that podcasting is beginning to weld greater influence in the media. The advantage of the system is it allows people from all over the world to bring news to others. Often times podcasting allows stories to surface that would not otherwise be covered. McChesney would argue that this is because the current media have a tendency to rely on their stories from people in power. If Clinton gives a speech - it must be news. If Rumsfeld gives a briefing - it must be news. However, with podcasting it allows individuals to submit stories that are often ignored like the increased rate of autism in children.
The panel also cited job cuts in struggling commercial media as evidence that stations can't afford to place a cameraman and a news anchor in every city of the world. In fact, NBC announced just last week that they will be laying off almost 700 employees. Those job cuts mean that the range of stories the media covers could see further shrinking. Podcasting would allow the media to save even more money by decreasing the amount of programming the networks had to produce. For example, panelist Andrea Dukakis said that it took her about 20 hours to produce a five minute story for Colorado Public Radio. We can assume that the time to create a story for television is even longer. The uses of podcasts for just a percentage of network news could cut costs by millions of dollars for struggling media outlets.
posted by Kyle at 12:39 PM
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