POD CASTING

Pod casting

Pod casting

Introduction

Amid declining newspaper revenue and circulation, many observers hope that journalism can be invigorated by embracing newer media, including online editions, blogs, chats—and a fairly recent adaptation of broadcasting called pod casting. Podcasts (the term comes from a combination of iPod and broadcasting and refers to both the content and the process used to carry that content) is most often audio programs that are downloaded to a computer or portable listening device so they can be listened to at any time. Indeed, some have called pod casting “radio on demand,” as they provide AM and FM broadcasts with the ability to time-shift when one listens. But pod casts can be also be made up of original material formatted especially for the Internet (Vasinda & McLeod, 2011). And, though more complex, video pod casts are growing in popularity as well. Yet to a considerable degree, pod casting remains a technology still searching for success. It provides yet another means of distributing existing (and some new) content. But thus far it has lacked a clear business model that might pave the way to expansion (pod casts are regularly used only by a fairly small minority of people), more original content, and new markets.

Discussion

The technology underlying pod casting was less than a decade old when this volume went to press. As a concept, pod casting developed out of many bloggers' desire to include audio and video clips in their otherwise text-based blogs. That growing demand led to technical experiments necessary to create the means for pod casting starting in the late 1990s. Two people are especially credited with creating and promoting the means to bring the idea to reality. They built upon the RSS (eventually dubbed “Really Simple Syndication”) software first developed for Netscape in 1999, and later modified by others. Adam Curry (who had been a video DJ on the MTV cable network from 1987 to 1994) promoted the use of audio in blogs and a means to make them easy to access (Chester, Buntine, Hammond & Atkinson, 2011). He promoted the use of modified RSS' software as an “aggregator,” a kind of automatic “news reader.” This is either client software (housed on individual computer disc drives) or a web application which aggregates (or gathers) syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, pod casts, and video logs in a single location for easy viewing. Curry developed some of the first pod cast examples by aficionados.

Curry approached software programmer Dave Winer to develop a means of helping users stay current when pod casts were changed or otherwise updated. Winer undertook to improve the underlying RSS' software to make finding current pod-casts far easier for those lacking deep computer experience. Working with his own ideas combined with those from others, Winer had developed RSS 2.0 by early 2001 with “enclosure” technology, a software means of attaching multimedia (audio or video) content to RSS feeds (Swan & Hofer, 2011). Those enclosures or attachments would enable the creation of audio blogs ...