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Podcasting part three: Where to start.

This is the third in a series of articles about podcasting by BPR’s Wayne Clouten

For those public broadcasters blessed with the largesse of having budgets paid for by other people it’s easy to find and justify the resources required to create great podcast content.  For those in the commercial radio sector it’s a much different story.  At present commercial broadcasters are heavily geared to the production and monetisation of a live/linear program.  In this environment podcasting content generally has to be drawn from existing content produced for the live/linear program.  such as:

• “Best of” show segments.
• Longer versions of interviews that may have been edited down for the linear program.
• Recycled/repackage benchmarks.
• Listener feedback (comment montages)
• Longer versions of the news and/or news editorials.

In this context such content provides a listening opportunity extension for the core linear business and can also serve to build the brand of the station and reach people that would normally not listen to the linear program of the radio station.

There are however a couple of simple rules to follow in doing this:

• Never offer all your “best” content for time shifted consumption unless you can be certain such listening is going to be measured in the official radio survey methodology.
• Always contain station brand/call sign information at least three times during the podcast (beginning, middle, end)
• Always point back to the linear program of the radio station and create specific listening appointments for the live program.
• Always leave the podcast listener with a sense that there is “more” to be enjoyed by listening to the live program of the radio station.

While it is important for radio broadcasters to embrace the podcast opportunity, never give up on your premium product being the “live” program.  “Live and local” is what podcasting cannot do and will ultimately define radio’s niche within the audio consumption market.

PODCASTING part one

PODCASTING part two

Tags: Podcasting