-

Could Kelner be right about podcasting?

Posted by Patrick Smith on 20 March 2007 at 20:15
Tags: Independent, Podcasting

Only 13 per cent of people in America have “ever” listened to a podcast, according to a new study.

This grim view of the online audio world was given by Tom Webster at this week’s Commercial Podcasting Summit in London. The figures come from the as-yet unreleased Arbitron/Edison Internet and Multimedia Study 2007.

The gathered new media industry chiefs did learn however that the figure had risen since last year. By two per cent.

In a move that seems to closely resemble clutching at straws, the chairman of the summit, Paul Colligan, whose mission is to prove the profitability of podcasting, said that awareness of podcasting had increased from 22 per cent last year to 37 per cent now.

He may be right in saying that the study shows that 40 per cent of those who had ever downloaded a podcast had paid for it, but this figure represents a low percentage of a very low percentage of people.

This news comes hard on the heels of Independent editor-in-chief Simon Kelner’s remarks about the irrelevance of podcasting. “I’ve never met anyone who listens to podcasts”, he asserted. It seems ironic that he chose the new media-crazy, and better performing, Guardian as the stage to denounce industry innovations.

The Guardian itself estimates that the podcast figures are a bit better in the UK. In October 2006, The Guardian found that 8 per cent of UK internet users — about three million people — have downloaded a podcast. And the paper claims to be reaching more than 1 million audio downloads each month

And Kelner clearly hasn’t met Adrian Monck or his fellow commuters. Monck points out that the podcast Kelner picks out as particularly pointless — Simon Heffer analysing David Cameron’s latest policy announcement — may not even exist.

Related:

• Britons baffled by new media buzzwords
• Report: US podcast ads worth $300m by 2010
• Chasing the zeitgeist
• Podcasters should follow Telegraph’s lead

Tags: Independent, Podcasting

Comments

Add your own comment

1. Tom Webster |  21 March 2007 at 2:10am

   To be precise, the stat about paying for content referred to the fact that 40% of podcast listeners had ever paid for “digital content”, such as a song from the iTunes music store, and not for a podcast per se, which would no doubt be significantly lower. We’ll have the full report up on our site later this week for you to link to properly, which will hopefully clear up a lot of confusion.

2. Adrian Monck |  21 March 2007 at 12:01pm

   Update: Telegraph’s Shane Richmond thinks it does exist…

3. Chris |  21 March 2007 at 5:06pm

   13% of Americans is more than 32,000,000 people, which isn’t a tiny tiny number…

   That said I’m not convinced about podcasting. I think it works better in some sectors than others, specifically tech.

4. Tom Webster |  21 March 2007 at 6:12pm

   In some circles, 32 million is a honkin’ big number. It all depends on your frame of reference.

   Cheers,

   Tom

5. Richard Fairhurst |  22 March 2007 at 10:46am

   There’s a big difference between podcasting as timeshifting, which is what the BBC does and what Adrian Monck refers to; and podcasting as new content.

   Timeshifting is a major innovation and has made the daily commute more pleasurable for thousands of people. It’s radio evolving for the Internet generation.

   But the new content, which I think Kelner was referring to, is _generally_ a bit of a dud. Why indeed would you want to listen to stream-of-consciousness Heffer rants, when you can read a more thoughtful article of his in a quarter of the time?

   By the same token, I get exasperated every time the Guardian plugs one of its “Media Talk” podcasts. I fail to see why I should waste half an hour of my time just because they can’t be bothered to spend some time transcribing it into a two-minute read.

6. David Burckhard |  22 March 2007 at 4:35pm

   Indeed, the single number alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Consider just how podcasting has spread throughout the under-graduate schools and podcasting’s use in business, especially business-to-business which mostly ignores the “Internet Radio” model with its attendant commercial advertisement as a means for gathering revenue and you have the potential for explosive growth. I think what we’re seeing now is a levelling off of Podcasting as a vanity broadcasting medium and only the beginning of podcasting and subscription RSS feeds used as another viable business and organizational medium.

7. Olly |  23 March 2007 at 12:51pm

   Surely Simon Kelner has met his brother, who does a weekly podcast?

   On Richard Fiarhurst’s point about the Guardian’s Media Talk - I tend to listen to it on the train journey into work… it’s easier to access than a newspaper on a tube and also you get a sense of involvement that you don’t with written content.

   It’s just a different way of delivering content; I don’t think one is necessarily better - it’s just what people prefer.

Leave a Comment