Casting a wide net
A member of Team Pegasus asks:
What's your opinion on podcasting? From where I sit, it seems to be approximately one skrillion times more relevant than SMS/MMS/cellular/wireless/the automodictographotelemophone or whatever they're calling it now, but I know that's your thing and I respect that.
So I was just wondering is all.
I don't know that one is more or less relevant right now. I think they serve very different needs. To me, podcasting is more useful for non-temporal media (a term I made up seconds ago to refer to books, music and non-news driven radio shows). Wireless messaging, I think, is more valuable for time-sensitive material.
We're in both the temporal (news) and non-temporal (archive) biz, so both will have a role. I've been more focused on wireless because:
- While Ipods and other MP3 players are taking over the world, there are still a lot more cell phones.
- I haven't been able to wrap my mind around how to monetize podcasting via "podvertising." Steve Rubel, whom as far as I know coined the podvertising term, has some thoughts, along with a good overview of podcasting for the uninitiated.
When we first started gelling the concepts for Pegasus this summer, I had envisoned a regular broadcast radio show featuring audio collected by our reporters in the field. While we're still open to that, I think it's more likely that we'll have clips embedded in stories, with a podcast show of the best stuff.
Steve Rubel, whom as far as I know coined the podvertising term
And who is therefore going to hell.
You know, based on the availability of both recorders and computer-based editing and encoding applications, it seems to me that it's a lot easier to publish video and audio of an event than it is to publish audio only.
I'm starting to think that written commentary and reporting and videography are going to become more and more inextricably linked.
Ironically, the odd man out is old-fashioned still photography. It's more work to take a RAW or DNG file off of a camera, crop it and scale it to make it suitable for Web use and convert it to a JPEG than it is to take DV footage from a camera and edit it into Web video.
Posted by: Jeff Harrell | December 09, 2004 at 01:02 AM
Basically, what I meant, but utterly failed to say, is whatever we collect. Taped phone interviews? Audio. Live events? Video and audio.
Posted by: Publisher | December 09, 2004 at 01:49 AM
I wanted a comment on the irony, dammit! Say something about the irony!
Posted by: Jeff Harrell | December 09, 2004 at 11:21 AM
Mrs. Peg got mad this morning because the shirt I handed her to iron was actually dirty.
Oh! The iron-y!
Posted by: Publisher | December 09, 2004 at 11:57 AM
Congrats, chief. You just managed to piss off (1) people who hate puns and (2) feminists.
Sometimes it's amazing that you haven't landed billions in venture funding yet.
Posted by: Jeff Harrell | December 09, 2004 at 08:48 PM
Don't sell me short, Jeff. I'm pretty sure that people who like puns are prolly out for my head too.
Posted by: Publisher | December 09, 2004 at 10:17 PM