More times than not, if I'm going running or working in the yard, and I'm firing up the Nano, I'm listening to podcasts rather than music. The simple logic, I suppose, is that while I can read and grade to music, I can't multitask to the point of following the argument of an essay along with the conversational thread of a podcast simultaneously...
I was really bummed a few years back when Lietuvos Radijas closed down their daily English-language show (and podcast!) "Radio Vilnius." (Full disclosure: I wrote and presented for RaVil in 2000-2001 while conducting dissertation research.) I still have the last week of the show in my iTunes--and I still can't bring myself to listen to those final broadcasts. Someday.
Over break, I found myself listening to the last podcast of the New York Times' "Tech Talk," a show I've listened to regularly in the past few years, in conjunction with teaching "Media Literacy" (COMM 311). (I also subscribed to, and admittedly underutilized, their "Music Popcast.")
It seems like the Times is redoubling its efforts in terms of apps, utilizing a "freemium" model: for instance, allowing access to a limited number of stories, but requiring payment (either a la carte or as part of a subscription) to access all areas. I'm planning on checking out their election app for the iPhone, for instance--but I'm hoping they repackage their technology hub in app form quick-like.
The Times is in business to make money, of course--they clearly feel that the opportunity cost of producing free audio content as a means to move folks to the paper itself (either physically or online) was too high. If this trend plays out across commercial producers, then podcasts become the realm of public broadcasters like the BBC ("Click") and NPR ("This American Life"). Of course, the former has had to rebrand in the last few years, being tied more closely to the TV show of the same name; and the latter regularly solicits donations above and beyond station membership to sustain its availability...
The web radio situation has actually gotten better, rather than worse, in recent years. It's not like we're stuck listening to UVB-76, right? For instance, our system no longer crashes if we try to bring in Lithuanian pop station "Lietus," which is a big deal in our household.
Still, the days of the free podcast (at least in the form we've had in the past decade) seem numbered. Perhaps the app environment, in which podcasts are more aggressively bundled with other multimedia content, will once again carve out a creative space for this flavor of audio content delivery.
