The Affari Edge Blog

There are tons of stories floating through cyberspace about how television network news is dead. While the ratings for network television news have declined sharply over the past several years, the forum for the 30-minute nighttime newscast is hardly dead in America. However, the television networks know that in order to keep the younger end of the crucial 25-54 demographic interested in the network news, especially the tech-savvy 18-34-year-old crowd, a little reinventing of the wheel needs to be done.

Now I’m not saying the wheel is network news broadcasts themselves. Networks have tried over and over again during the past few years to bump up ratings by changing hosts such as CBS and NBC have done, or by switching to a two-host system which ABC tried briefly in 2006 before Bob Woodruff was seriously injured while reporting in Iraq. I’m talking about “the wheel” as network newscasts on line.

Up until now a network’s website, which was heavily promoted throughout the newscast, featured repackaged news segments. Basically the website served as a dumping ground for features you may have missed or would like to see again. But that begs the question, if you didn’t see the feature the first time around are you really inclined to go searching a website for it? It’s the old “tree in the forest” adage at play here. If you’re not watching the network news in the first place, are you going to go out of your way to find a network news feature on the network’s website? Probably not, and I highly doubt anyone has been so moved by a network news feature recently they e-mailed all of their friends and said, “You’ve got to see this piece on Medicare from NBC!”

ABC News is trying to change that, and I love their approach detailed in this article from the New York Times. ABC’s internet webcast, titled simply “World News”, features regular ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson as host (most of the time). What’s unique about this though is Gibson merely isn’t cuing up eight or nine feature already shown on the ABC World News report that night. Instead, this 15-minute webcast features stories shot by the ABC News staff specifically for the webcast. What’s really interesting to me is how these stories are presented.

Jason Samuels, the senior producer of the webcast, takes a fresh approach to presenting the news to a generation of people whose lives don’t fit the network television schedule like generations past.

“I don’t have to count the seconds,” he said. “I just try to put in a good show that’s around 15 minutes. Do one long stand-up, do much longer sound bites, play an interview,” he said, summing up his advice to the staff. “Produce a story in any way you think is engaging — there are no rules.”

That right there sums up EXACTLY what network news programs have to do with their online content. Break all of the rules– the same rules that have been dragging down network news ratings for more than 20 years now. Reporters aren’t tied to 90-second or 2-minute packages, and unlike most newscasts stories aren’t bogged down with network promos masquerading as news stories or celebrity gossip. And staples of newscasts from the past, or newsmagazine shows prior to Chris Hansen busting one pervert after another, in-depth interviews are featured.

My favorite part of this webcast is the lack of commercials. There’s only one commercial, 15 seconds long, at the start of the webcast. After that, it’s laid out for convenience. The webcast on October 11, 2007, was a mere 16:27 long, and starts with updated headlines. The remaining 14 minutes starts with Gibson giving “signposts” to upcoming stories. Those same signposts are featured underneath the video player screen. Not only are there no commercial interruptions, you know exactly what you will get in that newscast, something someone my age (soon to be 30) appreciates greatly. Instead of dressing up reporters, sets, or story ideas with 53-year-old adults trying to look hip, ABC manages to deliver the news straight and without the bells and whistles others in the past have tried.

The big question is, will the coveted 18-34-year-old crowd actually tune in on a regular basis? To date, ABC averages 4.5 million downloads of the World News webcast per month. That averages to only about 150,000 a day, or roughly the amount of households watching a major market local newscast on any given night. ABC has a great product here, but the trick is to tell those 18-34-year-olds who don’t watch the network news on a regular basis to actually sign on and listen to a guy they probably remember as the host of Good Morning America 15 years ago.

BusinessWeek Online posted an article in advance of the April 9th magazine with the title “Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Podcasters”.

So, once again, something we don’t understand we mock? The traditional media never takes the time to understand why the “little people” embrace a new voice in the wilderness.

The fact is, most podcasters do produce shows while maintaining a day job. Yours truly not only produces podcasts professionally, but I promote other companies using various web technologies, I service computers and networks, and currently writing a book and kit about podcasting for small businesses!

Quoting from their own article;

While there has been an explosion of shows over the past couple of years, offering everything from advice on how to manage your money to Italian lessons, podcasting’s business prospects are just developing. The share of Americans who listen to audio downloads from the Web has grown only slightly in the past year, to 13% from 11%, according to a survey released last month by Edison Media Research. Those listeners increasingly are crowding around the most popular podcasts. But a lack of standards for placing podcast ads or measuring audiences has hobbled ad spending, which only hit $80 million last year.”

So, in the same article where they slam the content, and the producers, they admit that a measly 2% growth resulted in $80 million in revenue, for a few thousand “indie” shows? Seems like someone should revisit 5th grade math! This is an amazing phenomenon! 2% growth shows revenue increase of over $30 million in one year?

A big factor in how revenue is tracked in podcasting is how many companies produce podcasts for advertising (like ESP and Affari Edge!) vs. how many shows are “indie” content, hobbiests, or, the larger slice, companies producing podcast content for self-promotion or training? Would it surprise you to learn that less than 5% of podcasts are produced with revenue from ads as their main reason for existence?

I can tell you that this is a labor of love for the vast majority of producers, myself included. However, the trend shows VAST growth in households who know what a podcast is, and have been exposed to one in the last year.

Even the author of the study from the Edison Media Research center, Tom Webster, author of “New Podcasting Statistics - Is The Glass Half-Full, or Half-Empty?” had this to say on their site:

Certainly, given the impressive growth in awareness of the term “podcast,” one might have expected more than a two percentage point increase in the behavior. On the other hand, this is 13% of America we are talking about–and while I am not…yet…at liberty to release the percentage of Americans this year who subscribe to Satellite Radio, it is pretty close. So, on the one hand, growth is relatively small, but on the other, podcasting has achieved a similar penetration to Satellite Radio, without the benefit of a honkin’ big marketing campaign, Howard Stern, or Oprah.”

I would think that BusinessWeek should look a little more closely at the numbers before snubbing 50,000 potential subscribers, audience members in the millions, and colleagues in the industry.

The fact is, those of us who produce podcasts for profit, also produce many more for fun, for free, or for a free voice in the new media.

The numbers are growing rapidly, as people learn they don’t need an mp3 player, or Ipod to hear a podcast, and will likely see a change in how they “timeshift” their entertainment, news, music, and yes, even their magazines. RSS changed the world, and shows little sign of slowing down.

The irony is, when I go to the article to read in full on BusinessWeek, they have a full-screen, intrusive pop-up style ad running on the page, blocking my view (which rotates between sponsors) and is more than a little annoying. Geesh, when will they learn?

In the time that I have spent in the production world, and now in the advertising world, I’ve been able to see just what goes into a successful campaign to market a product or service. If you are new to the world of advertising or just intrigued by what goes into making a successful campaign work I think you will find that it’s all about doing the research on who your product or service appeals to, but also how your product or service is represented to your clients.

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In 2005, the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary declared “podcasting” the word of the year, defining the term as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player”. That’s pretty good, but it is no longer good enough.

Here’s another one, from Wikipedia.org: “A podcast is a multimedia file that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Like ‘radio’, it can mean both the content and the method of broadcast. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.”

Not bad, but I like this one too…
“Podcasting is an automatic mechanism whereby multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client, which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type”.

OK, all cleared up for you now? No? Here is my definition:
“A podcast is any media content, usually audio or video shows, that are subscribable and transferable, to a consumer for use at any time, on any computer, laptop, portable media or MP3 player.
And no, you don’t need an Ipod to listen to my podcast!”

Netcasting is a synonym, and, if I had my way, would replace the term “podcast” to include blogging, audio, video, music, and pictuers in a channel that can be subscribed to.

As you can see, there are many different things that mean “Podcast”, but the simplest thing I can say about it is this: “Whatever makes an MP3 or Video file a Podcast is that you can subscribe to it, usually for free, and it downloads automatically, whenever the author releases a new episode.” That’s it. It really is that simple. Make a file, put it on the internet, and tell people to subscribe to it.

Our sister company, ESP Podcasting produces most of our shows, and turns them into Podcasts, where they are mainly hosted on the IPN Network. IPN is a free Blog, Podcast, News and Music host for you to create your own content, and get your word out to the masses. Anyone who has an interest, hobby, or message, and wants to shout it out to the world can become a podcaster. You probably have most of what you need already at your disposal.. Now that you have the basics, go to www.ipnetcast.com and start your blog/podcast/news site today!

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Full Disclosure: Chuck Palm is the owner of both sites ESP Podcasting and the IPN Network, where we host many of our free and for-profit podcasts. The preceding was an excerpt from the upcoming book “What the Heck is Podcasting”, due out in spring of 2007.

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Chuck Palm, Director of Web Technology, and I have done a podcast on the Jet Blue post I wrote earlier today.
Download Link Jet Blew - Affari Podcast Special Edition