A nice man from America emailed me recently, asking me lots of questions, for his student thesis about podcasting. I’ve spotted a “Content Repurposing Opportunity™” and have cynically copied/pasted the answers I gave here to make a new blog posting. (As regular readers know, these are my personal views and not those of the BBC.)

>How is podcasting affecting radio listener figures and listening patterns?

Well, let’s start by not caring about podcasting.

Listeners listen to great radio. They do so by enjoying radio live (tuning into a radio, or a live internet stream), or they do so by enjoying on-demand radio.

On-demand radio can be streamed or downloaded. A download could be a simple download of an .mp3 file, or a more complex automated download using RSS feeds and enclosures. And the listener frankly doesn’t care too much. And nor should we.

The BBC iPlayer lets you listen to live radio as well as on-demand radio (streaming radio over the internet); and separately, the BBC offers on-demand radio via download – either ad-hoc downloads or via RSS feed, at the rather nicely redesigned www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts; at the end of it, though, there’s little distinction between the content available in both ways (except for rights reasons). It’s all great radio.

So, assuming your question actually is “how is on-demand affecting radio listener figures and listening patterns”, the quick answer is that it does have a small effect. A few years ago, for example, it was reported that one BBC programme, The Archers, had dipped slightly in terms of off-air live listening, but once you’d also included on-demand listening via the BBC iPlayer, the audience for the programme had actually increased. (I blogged about this speech, delivered by Jenny Abramsky, at the time).

However, listening to on-demand radio accounts for a very small percentage of all radio listening. That’s not to say it isn’t important; but it’s certainly not as mainstream as some would think.

>How have broadcasters adapted their approach to programme-making since the advent of podcasts? Is there much of a difference between commercial stations and public broadcasters, such as the BBC and NPR?

Some programmes seem to thrive particularly well as on-demand radio. The BBC is proud of the runaway success of a tremendously cerebral programme, “In Our Time”, which was one of the first podcasts and continues to show excellent figures; and similar goes for other programmes such as The Geoff Show, a programme on Virgin Radio (now Absolute Radio), which gained a significant following as an on-demand programme.

What it does mean for broadcasters is that some niche programmes can be more creatively scheduled on the air. On-demand means you can move some niche programmes to rather more, um, niche timeslots, while repackaging them to allow them to also thrive in an online environment. Perhaps a good example of this might be BBC Radio 5 live‘s “Pods and Blogs”, a segment of a much longer programme that goes out overnight, but packaged up as a programme of its own right for podcast listening, for example.

>How can broadcasters make podcasting pay? Or is it just a high-tech black hole that drains cash from a bottom line (as some have argued)?

During my time there, Virgin Radio successfully placed advertising into podcasts and on-demand material, and by repurposing on-air content, the products were profitable, rather than a “high-tech black hole”. They also found the marketing value of a front-page appearance in iTunes to also be valuable. It’s too easy to overlook the marketing benefit of what you do.

>What systems are in place to ensure podcasting standards? Are any needed?

Standards in terms of editorial policies and guidelines? One would hope that broadcasters and publishers continue to apply the high standards they use for on-air (though some broadcasters – not my employer – deliberately do things on internet radio that isn’t legal to do on-air, like swearing or slightly more overt commercial placement). Poor quality radio won’t be listened-to, in any case; the audience is too clever for that.

>How could podcasting overcome any potential royalties and copyright issues?

They’ve already been overcome – for example, there’s licenced commercial music in many podcasts in the UK, from both the BBC and commercial radio. By engaging with rights-holders – and by rights-holders being far-sighted and understanding of the new world of the internet – podcasts are richer than ever.

But just to underline the point. The real story here is not just concentrating on “RSS feeds with audio enclosures”, because the method of delivery is moderately irrelevant. Let’s concentrate on great radio through whatever platform, both live and on-demand; and put our efforts into a great user interface to discover great content. Because that’s all the audience cares about.

Photo: Ian Hayhurst. Used under licence – thanks!

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