A Decade Of Podcasting

by | Nov 26, 2014 | advertising, Apple, Australian media, iPhone, media 2.0, TPN

Today is the tenth anniversary of my first podcast – G’Day World #1 in 2004.

It wasn’t only MY first podcast, it was a milestone in a number of ways:

  • It was the first podcast ever produced in Australia (AFAIK)
  • It was the first podcast produced over Skype (AFAIK)
  • It was the first podcast to include live guests (AFAIK – but that didn’t happen until a couple of weeks later when I interviewed my mate Buzz Bruggeman)
  • It was the first podcast on The Podcast Network, the world’s first podcast production business that I co-founded in Feb 2005.

Podcasting has come a long way since 2004. Back then I was predicting that it would become mainstream within a decade. Has it? I’m not sure how you measure “mainstream” – or even it that’s a worthy metric at all. It certainly hasn’t taken over the world. And I still meet people who have never listened to one and don’t really know what a podcast is.

But here are my thoughts on the matter.

  1. The most recent stats I’ve seen suggest there are about 225,000 active podcasts being produced (but I’ve no idea how they arrived at that number or how credible it is). That probably means there are millions of listeners at least.
  2. The advertising industry still isn’t on board. I produce one of the top podcasts in the world and I don’t have potential advertisers beating down my door. We did sell quite a bit of advertising in the early years, 2006 – 2008, but the GFC hit and that all disappeared – and hasn’t returned.
  3. The technology has improved a great deal. Back then it was pretty hard to FIND and SUBSCRIBE to podcasts. Even after Steve Jobs announced in May 2005 that the next version of iTunes would have a podcast directory (and sent me an email about it), it was still a clunky process to find a podcast, subscribe to it and get it onto your iPod. These days of course there are a bunch of iPhone and Android apps that make it simple and quick.
  4. The business model for podcasting is emerging as listener donations. On my Life Of Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte podcasts, we get regular listener donations. Nowhere near enough yet to make a living out of it, but we hope to change that with our new series that starts in a couple of weeks. I prefer the donation or subscriber model to advertising as it gives us greater independence. We aren’t relying on sponsors to continue their support. If we get them, they will be cream. I know a couple of guys who make a living out of their podcasts, so I know it can be done. This wouldn’t have been possible 10 or even 5 years ago.
  5. While the models for listening and monetizing podcasts has evolved, the technical side of setting up and running a premium podcast hasn’t. There are certain services like LibSyn and Blubrry that provide some options, but their premium services are out of the price range for the average podcaster. If the small podcaster has a chance to get up and running and making money out of their show, we need better tools and guides. I’m currently writing such a guide that is based on my experience over the last year building the Caesar show. I hope to get it finished in the next month or so and think it will help a lot of podcaster take their shows to the next level. Disappointingly, ten years later, iTunes still doesn’t allow podcasters to charge for their shows, meaning we have to jump through way too many hoops to do that ourselves.
  6. In terms of marketing and delivering a podcast, iTunes is still the kingmaker. It accounts of about 90% of our downloads and I’m sure that pretty true for most podcasts. Why haven’t Google, Microsoft or Yahoo done more to promote podcasts? I don’t know.
  7. Has my decade of podcasting been a good thing? Yes. Not financially – but certainly it has in other ways. Most importantly, I wouldn’t have met my beautiful wife Chrissy if it wasn’t for podcasting (we met at Napoleon conference in Corsica in 2008) and we wouldn’t have our baby Fox. I’ve made many wonderful friends around the world who came from listening to my podcasts. I’ve made friends with other podcasters who did a show on TPN back in the day, including David Markham and my current co-host Ray Harris. I’ve interviewed guests from Noam Chomsky to Ray Kurzweil, from Leo Sayer to Jeffrey Katzenberg. It’s been a wonderful adventure.

I maintain today, as I did in this SMH article in 2008, that radio is boring. Every now and again I turn it on in the car and it bores me to tears. It’s still the homogenous shit it was ten years ago and that inspired me to create intelligent content. Yes, there are exceptions – the ABC in Australia, NPR in the United States, etc – but commercial radio is a wasteland of nonsense. Radio listenership in metro Australian cities are in decline but not by much (about 1% per year over the last five years). Will that change when podcasts are available built-in to cars, as Stitcher is promising?  Perhaps. We’ll have to wait and see what the second decade of podcasting delivers.

Five Years and A New Beginning

by | Nov 11, 2009 | Podcast, TPN

As G’Day World is five years old this month (it started life on November 29, 2004), I’ve decided to sort of retire it. A show that started as a tech news podcast has, over the years, become my personal exploration of what’s really going on in the world. Hence the new name: No Illusions. I don’t think the G’Day World name really tells people who have never listened to the show before what to expect. Hopefully the new name is more descriptive. The format for the show is going to stay the same and the old URL will point to the new site, so there shouldn’t be any drop in continuity.

Also you’ll have noticed the new site design. Xminds have been working on this for me for the last few weeks. The No Illusions logo is something I threw together quickly last night and I’ll get a better one designed soon. But I’d love to get any other feedback from you on what you like and don’t like about the design so we can get the template right and roll it out across TPN.

neo.org – a social network with a purpose

by | Jul 28, 2009 | TPN, TPN Corporate

I want to give a huge shout-out to TPN’s new network sponsor – neo.org.

Neo is a team of global volunteers and partners who have powerful Declarations and a wish to have a world that works for everyone. It is a social network with a purpose – to transform the world by enabling people to transform themselves.

One of the people behind neo is Australian entrepreneur Bill Liao. I interviewed Bill early last year and you can hear him talk about neo (which was then called Declare!) and the vision for bringing together people around the world who want to make a positive difference.

Neo proves that social networking can be about more than just talking about the weather. As I’m fond of saying – the Internet is just a tool, like a hammer. And we can use a hammer to hit someone on the head – or to discover the statue of David inside a discarded block of Carrara marble. It’s just a tool. Neo is one way we can use this particular tool for good.

And so – I would like each of you to support TPN’s new sponsor – and figure out how YOU are going to make the world a better place – by visiting neo’s site and signing The Declaration.

Urgent TPN Funding Crisis

by | Mar 16, 2009 | TPN

Dear friends,

I’ve just been hit with a large hosting bill for TPN’s servers and bandwidth and unfortunately I don’t have the funds to cover it this month. So I have set up a special fund raising exercise via ChipIn which will run for this week. Out of TPN’s hundreds of thousands of listeners, I’m hoping a few hundred will be able to chip in $10 to help us stay on the air. Please click on the widget below if you’re willing to help out.

http://widget.chipin.com/widget/id/52017437fabd1803

Be A Devil

by | Jan 27, 2009 | TPN

TPN needs your help. Support indy media by donating a small amount of money towards TPN’s operating costs each month. For the price of a latte you can make the world a better place by supporting original indy media.

Click here for the TPN Pledge.

(Thanks to Bob Seal for the toon!)