New.Journalism.Review

The Guardian, the producers of Media Talk and the Sony Award nominated Islamophonic, has revealed some impressive download stats for its range of podcasts.

Some stats:
1.5m – downloads for its 12 Guardian pods in December.
80-100,000 downloads of it’s Football Weekly pod a week [Proving that football and cricket analysis has a massive, global, audience - but we don't need to tell The Times or Telegraph this].
15-20,000: MediaTalk downloads a week.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

To put these figures in some kind of perspective BBC London, a local radio station, pulls in weekly audience of around 500,000 a week for its entire output.

Assuming the other Guardian pods not mentioned above are getting an average of around 10,000 downloads per week each, it appears its investment in pod studio technology is finally paying off and the service should become profitable soon.

But how easy is to generate revenue from podcasts? On paper, they have a lot going for them. If you look at the ludicrous way traditional radio figures are counted in the UK by Rajar [Rajar reissues listening figures], you can be far more precise with measurements. Evidence from Edison in the US suggests podcasts audiences are upmarket, I also feel podcast audiences really do listen.They’ve bothered to download the file after all. But whilst the market is expanding, it is still relatively small. Rajar estimated around 15-20% of those with MP3 players have downloaded podcasts,  this is broadly matched by figures from the US.

But I’m not entirely sure how The Guardian plan to integrate the adverts into the broadcast. It has tried sponsorship before on the Media Talk pod, but I just fast forwarded through it.

It would be less annoying if sponsorship messages or adverts appeared on the screen of your iPod or Zen Micro, rather than having to listen to it.

But hopefully these stats will give a much needed boost to UK podcasts. It would be nice to see some successful independent and home produced pods coming through, as has happened in the US. But we need the big guys to prove a revenue model first.

A particularly brilliant Guardian Media podcast [14th March] flowed from my Creative Zen Plus, through a pair of Sony cans, via my wingnut ears and into my brain this week. It raised a number of interesting reflections regarding the future of the world………

Monetizing content: When it comes to news sites it seems that ‘free’ is where it’s at. This got me thinking. Exactly ten years ago this month .Net magazine ran a front cover with the headline "The End of The Free!"  and asked the question "How long  will it be before we start paying for our favourite websites?". With the benefit of hindsight, we can now say at least TEN YEARS!!!  But back in 1998 most of us thought that Hotmail / Rocketmail would eventually start to charge. We didn’t think that Google would do good things like allowing free access to online word processor apps. 

Today, WSJ and FT.com are examples of only a handful of newspaper sites that have a pay-wall. FT has changed its policy. You get access to 30 articles a month for free. Above that, you’ve got to flash the cash (to the tune of 98 smackers). To me that just sounds like one of the most irritating and moronic subscription models known to mankind. Rival business newspaper the WSJ still has most of its stuff stuck firmly behind a wall. It has 1.3million subscribers – very useful in an ad downturn, but it doesn’t get you Google placements or indeed links on blogs.

As Emily Bell of The Guardian said: "If you’re not on Google people are not reading your journalism." You could also say that if people can’t link to you then they won’t be talking about you. Also people won’t buy your paper just because you don’t have a website. The people that look at your website are a different audience to those who buy the paper.

‘Reach’ first, followed by (hopefully) ‘revenue’. The web is all about reach. I still think newspapers need to come up with more innovative discounts for their loyal print readers – the type of people that get the paper delivered.

Finally DAB Radio: As with the manufacturers of Freeview boxes, DAB radios seem to be made by strange companies, like Pure and Goodmans. The likes of Sony and Panasonic aren’t that interested in supplying to little old-UK – not until there is a European DAB  standard. This also explains why Halfords won’t sell me a  DAB stereo for my car. And the boffins at Honda RnD lab in Tokyo care not one jot that I want to listen to BBC 6 Music in my Civic.This has the potential to stifle growth because your only other big audience for DAB is the housewives and the dish-washers of the world. Everyone else will access via broadband. Or you could listen via your digital TV (but that just feels REALLY strange to have the TV on, but no picture). The podcast was highly critical of Channel 4 Radio’s strategy on the DAB issue, but you have to take the Guardian view with a lump of salt as the publishers are rivals in this sector.

To make sense of the above download this fine podcast via: Media Talk podcast: a new future for Channel 4 and a round-up of the Changing Media Summit | Media | guardian.co.uk.