Are Podcasts Rubbish?

Lately I have been wondering where the “podcast revolution” is going. Frankly, a significant number of podcasts are just rubbish. Part of the problem is poor editing and, well, poor discipline.

At the moment I subscribe to eleven podcasts via iTunes and track a further five podcasts. This yields around nine hours per week of material, which frankly I do not have the time to listen to. When I do tune into them, it is in the car, or late at night or while doing work around the house. Yes, these podcasts are really just a radio-substitute.

But also there is a content problem. I spend about fifty minutes, four to five times a week reading blogs and the news articles they link towards. This investment of around four hours per week lets me read literally hundreds of pieces and opinions from the ninety or so blogs that I regularly track. Consider that a twenty minute podcast contains around two-thousand words only, the length of medium essay and you can quickly see that podcasts can be a poor investment of time.

The salvation for podcasts is the same as for any branch of communication, to be compelling in content and presentation and to differentiate from other media. To do this, most podcasts will need to be better thought out, better edited and better packaged. If you are contemplating adding a podcast bear that in mind, before the market shrinks away from you.

[tags] Podcast, Podcasting [/tags]