Byline: Marc Cabrera
Oct. 28--It's a gray Sunday afternoon in Monterey and Garland Thompson and Shawn Singletary frantically prepare to podcast to the world from their makeshift home studio.
On this day, the cramped apartment bedroom has been transformed into Studio T (short for Thompson), where a trio of computers are plugged into a 16-track Mackie recording mixer.
Sound levels are checked on standard CD player headphones. The two Monterey-based poets operate their show, "Sunday Go To Meetin'" -- a reference to a popular Southern slang term denoting a post-church service gathering -- as if they will broadcast live to an audience of thousands; in reality, they'll be lucky if they get a few hundred.
"Welcome to the wonderful world of podcasting," Singletary says with a laugh
Podcasting involves homemade radio and video broadcasts that are posted on the Internet for listeners' consumption. It is a growing phenomenon among Internet-savvy computer users tired of the commercial radio format. According to online reference guide Wikipedia, it became popular in late 2004 with the spread of free software that enabled automatic downloading of audio MP3 files onto computers and mobile MP3 players.
Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, rather than one-time delivery, according to Wikipedia. A series of files are delivered because subscribers want to get the information regularly -- to be enjoyed at the listener's convenience.
It has gained its following particularly among the iPod carrying set; people can subscribe to podcasts through Web sites such as www.iTunes.com, the Apple Computer site that sells song downloads for a dollar. iPod users can download podcasts directly to their players and listen to them at their convenience.
"The traditional model is you have TV and radio programs and you're a slave to their schedule," Thompson said. "Where as with podcasting, the program is at your beckon call."
The way it works is sort of simple, or sort of complex, depending on one's computer knowledge. To download a podcast, you'll need a computer with Internet access and, if you want to start your own podcast, access to podcasting software, which is free at a number of Web sites (a quick google search for free podcast software can reveal dozens of no-cost options).
To download a podcast, a person can log on to one of hundreds of Web sites that either host podcasts or provide links to podcasts, including iTunes.com, blogmatrix.com and podcast.yahoo.com.
Looking on a directory such as iTunes.com, which requires its users to download the podcast software for free, one can enter podcast into the search engine and be sent to a directory with more than 20,000 links to various podcasts on everything from the ESPN sports radio and CNN news to homemade shows such as the one produced by Thompson and Singletary.
With such a vast selection that seems to grow literally by the hour, the concept is quickly putting the power and freedom of programming choice in the listener's hands.
"Podcasting is one component of a larger trend in media," said Jesse Thorn, host of the radio show "The Sound of Young America" on the UC-Santa Cruz radio station KZSC in Santa Cruz. "It's an Internet media model in which people choose what they want to listen to and consume."
Thorn has been converting his show to podcast on iTunes and podcast.yahoo.com, sometimes going so far as to edit the show differently for the podcast. He has uploaded podcasts of his show for almost a year, initially billing it as, "the only podcast west of the Mississippi." The weekly show can be downloaded at http://www.maximumfun.org.
Applying his sharply ironic sense of humor to the traditional talk-show interview format, Thorn has had lively on-air discussions with a multitude of guests, including comedians such as Bob Odenkirk, David Cross and most recently Chris Elliott, as well as musicians ranging from surf-guitar god Dick Dale to indie hip-hop darlings Blackalicious.
"All of my guests fall into the category of (stuff) Jesse likes," he said.
As a result, the show has gone from a simple student endeavor to a well-chronicled entity with a devout following on both the UC Santa Cruz campus and the Net.
Both iTunes and the newly launched podcast.yahoo.com have lauded the show, and when Yahoo! launched its new podcast page in mid-October, Thorn's show was one of four picked from thousands world wide as a staff recommendation.
"One day I woke up and I got four e-mails saying, "hey, Jesse, you're on Yahoo!," Thorn remembered with a disbelieving grin. " I don't know how that happened. I guess somebody at Yahoo! listens to the show."
The added pub has boosted Thorn's podcast audience, which he measures by the number of downloads, termed "hits," he gets for any given show.
"Ordinarily, a show gets about 500 direct downloads," Thorn said. "(After Yahoo! put him on the staff pick list) I got about an additional 2,000 people."
While Thorn is pretty confident with his math, he's even more so with the potential for crossover appeal using his podcast listeners as a viable demographic.
"I think the show has a potential to be a national public radio show, and that's with lowercase letters," he said, making the distinction between his own vision and the radio institution known as NPR. "If I could get to 10,000 listeners, I could probably get an underwriter and work on the show full time.
And while Thorn's ambitions drive him to pursue this goal, his success would appear to be the exception. Most podcasters are independent of media affiliations, nor do they have established followings. More than likely, they do it just for the heck of it.
Back at Studio T, Thompson and Singletary have finished recording their weekly podcast, which can be downloaded at http://gtpoet.blogmatrix.com/. Their most recent podcast included an intense discussion of a national news story about a pair of 13-year-old twin sisters from Bakersfield who sing songs that support white supremacy.
The hour-long show is free-form, allowing both to converse with their audience, something the best podcasts seem to do well.
That's definitely the case for Thompson, who sees podcasting as a "grand equalizer," allowing him and computer users access to a platform that is as varied as the listeners it aims to reach.
"The President and the Pope have podcasts, and I have my own podcast as well," Thompson said. "I can have my own address on par with them."
To see more of the Monterey County Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.montereyherald.com.
Copyright (c) 2005, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.
TICKER SYMBOL(S): AAPL, 6689
No comments:
Post a Comment