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What if you don't have a trust fund?
Posted by: Pejk Malinovski on October 22, 2005 10:51 AM | Comments (3)
The session "Podcasting, believe the hype" presented by Todd Maffin of CBC and Benjamen Walker of Benjamen Walker, opened with the rhetorical question What makes a good podcast? And they answered themselves: The same things that make up good radio. Go figure.
So what is good radio? Tod kept coming back to Dean Olshers presentation two years ago about having “it� (listen here), defining “it� as intimacy, originality, being "true to ones own voice". Yes, podcasters are good at this, and many of them are good at it without even knowing it cause often that is what a podcast is really all about. Being your own weird self. Tod played a cut from a "how to" podcast he’s been doing. In the cut Tod was having his ass vaxed. There was a countdown then there was a sound that I’m sure you can imagine and then there was screaming. Intimate? Certainly. Original? Revolutionary? Hmmm. Fun? Yes, we laughed.
Ben played a series of interviews he’d done with people about how they use podcasts, and what they want to hear and it confirmed how this medium favors the geeky, techie, narrow content. One of the interviewees said he would listen to a show about a man walking down the street. Yes, a man walking down the street. Someone do that show – quick! before Ben does it.
Eric Nuzum from NPR came to the mic and informed us that npr has done a little stat on the phenomenon; basically those who listens to postcasts are men (96%) and they’re between 25-40 years old. The demographics it seems, don’t really match the inherent democratic nature of the technology. Guess the same was probably true for the early days of the internet though. Eric said NPR have had 3 million downloads of their podcast since they went up 7 weeks ago. This is not just a hype. Ben told me later he has about 8000 downloads per show. That’s a lot.
But see, here is my problem with the hype: everyone keep saying how great this tool is for independent producers. Yes, independent producers with a trust fund. Ben spends a lot of time doing his show (the excellent Theory of Everything) and he doesn’t earn a penny. He has a day job. He might have gotten his day job because of his show, but, hmmm, Ben feels that it would be "degrading" to set up a pay pal and ask his listeners for money. I can understand that. There is a certain amount of integrity and dignity at stake here. Because Ben’s show is so much Ben I guess, you know that IS weird, to ask people to pay him for being him. Ideally he would get funding through CPB. Interestingly, the single most popular podcast of TOE was "The Grant Application" where Ben traces his efforts in writing a grant to the CPB to get funding. He didn’t get any. This time anyway.
I'd be interested in hearing some comments about what people think is really in it for independent producers. I mean, I know there is a lot in it, but how are we going to pay the salt for our hard boiled eggs?
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