The Medium and the Message

You certainly can binge listen to interview shows, as I had done while traveling on business recently, but shows doing creative audio fiction like “Welcome to Night Vale” (most recently ranked 65^th in Stitcher’s top 100 podcasts) and its spinoff, “Alice Isn't Dead,” are a better fit for this. They are, in effect, reviving what radio dramas used to do from the 1930s through 1950s, only with far less content constraints than that era.

If podcasting is truly going to become a binge medium, appealing to audiences who like shows like “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black” or “Transparent,” it will need more shows like those -- series that are more like audio theatre than audio books.

A cursory search finds plenty of podcast audio drama efforts in the sci-fi and horror genres, but few if any of those have become part of a broader cultural conversation like the true-crime podcast “Serial” has. “Night Vale” isn’t the only one out there, if you look for general interest audio theatre. “The Thrilling Adventure Hour,” “The Truth” and “Limetown” are bubbling up just behind “Night Vale,” as far as gaining notoriety and attention among those who already engaged podcast listeners, who like fictional audio theatre rather than any other type of podcast.

Is it even possible for podcasts like these to catch on and make an impact as binge-able entertainment – on the same scale that streaming TV series have? Is the format of audio podcast theatre too idiosyncratic and specialized, at least at this time, to have the same reach? Wired pointed out back in the fall that “The Message,” a fiction podcast backed by podcast advertising network Panoply [referred to in this entry], advertising giant BBDO and General Electric, as its sponsor, is significant because it is one of the first, if not the first, podcast whose creation was actually driven by corporate entities.

Podcasting began as a grass-roots medium, and one could say it still mostly is that, but is it possible – would some call it heresy? – to say that to have broader cultural impact and reach, it needs more shows like “The Message”? As it took the corporate engine and technological advance of Netflix streaming to bring binge watching (and specific series) into the general public consciousness, so it might be necessary to have an organized business with deeper pockets to muscle content into that consciousness.

Reader survey

The "Shash On Pod" blog wants to hear about your binge listening preferences and experiences for consideration in an upcoming entry. Please make a comment here or email directly to Michael.shashoua@gmail.com

Here are a few questions as a guide to what I'm looking for, from your responses:

1. What podcasts do you find yourself listening to in large chunks of episodes at a time?
2. What is it about those shows that leads you to "binge listen" to them?
3. What's your preferred mode of listening? When you're deskbound and working on other tasks that may not require full attention? When out for a walk or at the gym? When commuting by subway or train? Or when commuting while driving?
4. Do you think "binge listening" is becoming or can become a phenomenon in the same way "binge watching" video programming already is?
5. Do you personally prefer "binge listening" to "binge watching," and in what situations do you prefer one of these means of entertainment to the other?

I greatly appreciate whatever attention you can give this informal survey and whatever insights you can share as food for thought for a "Shash On Pod" blog piece.

Podcasting's lesson for cable television providers and channels

This week I want to indulge in a detour from podcasting but still within media as a field. A few years ago, as part of a graduate class on innovation in media business models, I presented a proposal for a la carte cable television packages that aimed to split the difference between consumers’ interest and the interests of the cable companies.

 

The plan was to offer packages of 25, 50, 75 or 100 channels – but not pre-selected by the provider. Consumers could assemble a custom list of channels. The intention of this plan was to slow down “cord cutting” (customers dropping cable in favor of online streaming video services and sources), and keep customers on board by offering greater choice in programming, within certain price points. The plan wouldn’t go as far as offering single channel choices for $1, $2 or $5 a month (depending on the popularity of the channel) but instead require the customer to pay at least $25 a month (or some price point close to that) for 25 channels, to guarantee some level of income for the provider in return for services.

 

To date, I haven’t seen or heard of any cable provider offer anything like this. The only attempt to retain or recover lost customers I’ve seen is a Time Warner Cable offering lost customers a streaming service for basic broadcast channels through a Roku box at no more than one tenth of the price of typical cable box service. But this doesn’t extend to or include any basic cable level channels, except perhaps C-SPAN, because that’s a public service on some level.

 

The Roku box or Google’s Chromecast could be ways for cable companies to offer the kind of a la carte plan I proposed in the course. Several basic cable networks, on their own, already offer their programming as apps on Roku boxes and smartphones, but these are predicated on already having a cable subscription being used at home. HBO and Showtime, as premium channels, have now made themselves available without a cable subscription, but the basic cable channels are dependent on the carriage fees, so it may take them a lot longer to go independent. Cord cutting apparently hasn’t yet hit enough of a tipping point to make them follow HBO’s lead.

 

The industrial interests of the cable industry remain too strong. They’re more entrenched and dug in than something like Howl, covered last week and earlier in entries of this blog, the podcast aggregator that is battling to succeed with a collected programming offering that in some ways is like a cable TV package with varied channels – if you consider the audience for more serious Slate or NPR style audio fare completely removed from the audience for stand-up comedy.

 

The podcasting medium doesn’t seem ripe or varied enough yet to make a paid a la carte model realistic. But that model is still one that could become necessary for the cable industry once it can no longer rely on inconsistent strategies used by different cable channels – USA, FX and others do allow cable customers to view their programs through apps on both mobile devices and the Roku box, while TBS and others only offer smartphone apps that are purposely do not offer the ability to transmit through a Chromecast device to traditional home flat screen TVs. Cord cutters might not be bothered to pick up on channels whose online versions are not as easy to access.

 

Podcast of the Week

 

I had meant to do this a few weeks back already, but I hope to give a listening recommendation with each blog post, based on what I've enjoyed most in the past week. For the first one, go check out the iTunes podcast versions of Opie Radio from January 7 and 8, where Opie, Jim Norton and a few other comics dissect the Netflix documentary series "Making A Murderer," in their own special way.

Evolution of support and delivery models for podcasts is happening, but where it's going, no one knows

We are at a moment when podcasting can evolve as a medium, but that’s dependent on how listener preferences emerge.

Nicholas Quah, the author of the Hot Pod newsletter about the podcast industry, wrote last month that both terrestrial and satellite radio programming, along with subscription audio services, will merge with podcasts into a new, as yet unnamed media genre.

However, there are such big differences, particularly in business models, between podcasts and streaming subscription programming, whatever the delivery method, that this seems unlikely.

There is still a lot to sort out about delivery methods for “spoken audio entertainment.” Let’s call it that to differentiate it from the music channels on SiriusXM, Spotify and Pandora. However, it gets tricky with Spotify and Pandora, which as Quah reports, is considering offering more audio/video “shows.” Anyway, the automotive industry is said to be looking at embedding more streaming audio technology into vehicles, which could streamline the possibility that Quah envisions.

SiriusXM already has audio “show” offerings. Spotify and Pandora could also be joined by Google Play in trying to turn podcasting into a streaming medium. The other entrant into the streaming game that is actually here now is Howl, the podcast network described weeks ago in this blog. We have not yet seen what interfaces Spotify, Pandora and Google Play plan for streaming podcasts. In the case of Google Play, we don’t know what price point or price plan they would offer or what content they would include in a streaming podcast subscription service, and whether it would compare favorably with Howl’s $4.99 per month. If Google Play has far more podcast or “audio show” content to offer, at a lower price, it could undercut Howl severely, though.

The prospects of SiriusXM, Spotify and Pandora could depend more on their interfaces. Their subscription or advertising models are more established. SiriusXM has the audio show content, although accessing it on demand is more feasible on mobile devices than in vehicles. Spotify and Pandora would ostensibly just be adding audio shows as new content – but their problem might be allowing listeners to access specific episodes easily, the way one can with iTunes or an iPod.

Podcast or spoken audio entertainment listeners have a choice to make – whether the free content, advertiser-supported model will persist, or subscription models like Howl or Spotify and Pandora, if they enter this area, will win out. On either side of that choice, the delivery and interface technology can vary, including streaming in vehicles, streaming on mobile devices, on demand selections (as on SiriusXM), and on-demand as offered through iTunes or other online distribution channels.

There may end up being room for combinations and permutations of all of these put together, or there may be a dominant leader. We just haven’t seen how it may evolve yet.