The 24 hour podcast - what can it mean for podcasting?

Next week, Todd Cochrane, CEO of RawVoice and host of the Geek News Central Podcast will be hosting a 24 hour marathon to raise money for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Starting at 6 am HST (11 AM EST) on December 21st, Todd will be on the air for 24 hours. His plan is to have many guests ask questions and talk about various items. The streams will be on Ustream.TV and Talkshoe.com.

This is a first for a tech podcaster. 24hourcomicpodcast.com did a 24 hour podcast for comics back in October. Still, Todd plans to be at the helm for 24 hours to talk with everyone. Hope he has enough Mountain Dew, Coffee and Red Bull. I even suggest some Tabasco drops on the tongue every hour to keep up…

Because of this, I started thinking about podcasting and what it really means. I run a podcast every week. Before Geekazine, I ran a few different music podcasts. I closed shop on them because of how much work was involved and how many legal issues could have strung from it.

For anyone that has a microphone attached to their computer, making a podcast is actually pretty straightforward. Record a show then put it up on the web. So with it being that simple, who should we listen to? Better yet, who is listening and will they be around in the future for us to listen to more?

I went out to the web and looked at podcasts out there. Blubrry.com has 1808 podcasts in their directory. You can search through thousands of casts on iTunes, ZenCast, Podcast Alley, Zune Marketplace or many other websites. Most of them will be the exact same podcasts for they want to let people know they are out there.

Out of those 1808 shows, the tail end was podcasts that haven’t been updated. A couple shows didn’t even have a single feed to them. Blubrry tends to watch through the shows and weed out the ones with no activity. Unfortunately, iTunes – with a larger customer base – does not do that. There have been many a time where I have subscribed to a deadcast; which are shows that were last produced over 6 months ago.

The reality is these deadcasts will continue to happen. Why? Well, Business Week might have an answer. They ran a great article back in February called “The Next Big Ad Medium: Podcasts”. They state by 2011, advertisers will spend more than $400 million on podcasting. They report of podcast ad automation - where an ad is inserted based on the keywords – within the next 5 years.

That will be great – if a podcast is reputable and has a long history of shows. However, it will also attract the part-timers that start a show, but don’t want to sit in front of a microphone every week to continue on.

For this, Radio still has an advantage in a few ways. First off, most people have a radio in their car and if they want to listen to something, all they have to do is flip the dial. The radio station then programs the content. If you are a republican, you listen to a right wing station. If you are a sports fan, then sports radio is your station of choice.

Podcasting is breaking into this medium; however it will take a while. Then you still have the issue of programming, the amount of time they dedicate to a show and the attention span of the listener. The average person listens to the radio in their car in transit to work and back – with the occasional “pick up the kids from soccer” or “go to the grocery store for milk”. The average commute time is 25 minutes. That is 50 minutes a day. Out of that time, the focus will be split between driving, talking to the kids, preparing for work/school/etc. What do you listen to for 25 minutes? Music? News? Gibberish?

Then we have the issue of occurrence – when does this show update, and will there be another next week? Statistics say we take 3 weeks to get into a habit. Once the habit is formed, the cycle usually only gets broken if parameters change – in the commuting case we can say distance to drive, the times you drive and if the podcast is available to download at that time.

One issue podcasting has is there is no good process for downloading new episodes. The user has to be at the computer updating the casts. Then - depending on the size – have to wait for the show to load. If the user listens to 5-6 shows, that can take a while. Wireless internet is helping change that, however it’s not to where podcasting could take advantage of it.

Back to the advertising issue. How many times have you listened to the radio, then when a commercial comes on, you start to “Scan”? With the podcast, scanning means going to another podcast or turning podcasts off completely. That may be counter-productive.

For those who don’t fall under this category and actually take the time to download and listen to their favorite shows, this will not be an issue. One really has to dedicate the time to listen to an hour long show. For average Joe consumer, the 5 hours they can dedicate to this has to be split up between meals, family, TV and other tasks. Gives weeding through podcasts a pretty small window of oppertunity.

I listen to shows when I work out. I can give the show more attention. When working, a podcast can be playing in the background, however when I have to focus, music or silence is most likely what I have running. With thousands of shows out there, I have to be very picky on what I want to get into.

Finding a niche for your specific market is the real key. Something that people will want to choose your cast over the others. Sometimes, frequency of a show is the key. Other times time of a show will play into things. Content and the ability to pleasantly come across to the audience is going to be the key.

The Naked News was an attempt at getting more viewers. It had a niche (girls taking their clothes off while reporting the news) and it worked well for the site. Audio podcasts don’t have the “Visual stimulation” factor, but they can still entertain people. Frequency, content, decent mixing of the show and accuracy of the content is going to be the main factors of keeping the audience.

All in all, there is a lot to figure out when putting a show together. It’s not going to be a hit right away. Promotion and frequency will, over time, give an audience. After all, there are still some people out there that don’t know what a podcast is. I still find myself asking people that question when I talk about my show.

As for Todd’s 24 hour cast, we at Geekazine proudly support it. It’s something everybody should partake in – not only because it’s for a good cause, but because it’s breaking ground on internet broadcasting. And if it even introduces 1 new person into the world of podcasts, then it made the effort worth it.