I’ve been caught up in a discussion this week about (surprise, surprise) podcasting, and the radio industry’s response to the iPod phenomenon. The conversation is taking place on the Radio Studies list – a discussion forum for, well, people like me.

Much of the conversation has been at the level of ‘look how the radio industry seems to have adapted to this new competitive threat – by emulating iPods on shuffle (Jack FM) and by providing its own podcasts’.

I’ve weighed in a couple of times, but I thought my last substantial post captured the majority of my thoughts on the topic, and never one to duplicate work, I thought I’d cut and paste it to my blog:

A couple of thoughts occur. Okay, four.

1) I think the danger here is to assume too much about podcasting and radio. The assumptions many seem to make (and my guess is erroneously) include:

– Podcasts are a category of audio content, rather than a
technology of distribution and a pattern of consumption

– Radio is what comes out of the speakers, rather than a
series of institutional infrastructures and professional
practices

– Podcasting is a derivative of radio

– Radio and podcasting are inherently in competition with
each other

– People listen to podcasts as a replacement for time spent
listening to radio and entirely because of a dissatisfaction
with radio programming

– Podcasts challenge the form and content of radio

None of these is necessarily true, despite some lazy mainstream journalism and rhetoric from the podcasting community itself that treat these notions as given, and continue to reinforce these notions as the context for the interplay between the two media.

2) While podcasting can learn from radio and vice-versa, it probably shares far more genetic material with blogging than it does with radio broadcasting.

3) I think it’s worth keeping podcasting separate from the Jack-FM scenario which is, purely and simply, (poorly conceived) piggyback marketing. A radio station that plays a somewhat less predictable mix of Rod Stewart, Robbie Williams, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder and Madonna is hardly transformed by the pressure of new technology, and nor is it responding to a “kick in the pants” from what the audience is doing.

And while “the iPod may not kill the radio star” (to borrow from Richard), the radio industry is in danger of following the record industry down a dark path – and is just as likely to react in the same kinds of reactionary, protectionist and ultimately detrimental ways on the way.

For instance, responding to a perceived competitor by pointing out that you can do some of the same things almost as well, rather than emphasising your own strengths and points of difference, seems like idiocy to me.

I can imagine a parallel marketing campaign: “Music Television: we’re just like radio, only you have to sit down, face the same direction at all times and not go anywhere in order to listen to it”

But then, I’ve seen worse ideas, and the radio industry, like the music industry, has lost the capacity to surprise me in that regard.

4) Finally, if you want to see what radio can do creatively and imaginatively with podcasting (and vice versa), there are some genuinely interesting experiments going on, mostly in the public broadcasting sector:

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/downloadtrial/

and particularly:
http://about.prx.org/podcast/
http://podcast.transom.org/

But then, I’ve always thought PRX and Transom were two of the most exciting radio projects around to start with. Both are prescribed texts for all of my students.

Cheers,

Dubber

I’ll let you know if the conversation takes any particularly surprising turns, but I feel like I’ve said my bit for the moment.

Curiously, my iPod is on shuffle as I type, and is throwing up seemingly appropriate tracks. Joy Division’s Transmission, for instance, is in my ears right now.

Now if there was really going to be a radio renaissance, that should be its theme song…