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Viacom Launches Podcast-Only Radio Station
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Apr 30, 2005 09:32 PM
from the mix-tapes-for-crushes dept.
from the mix-tapes-for-crushes dept.
prostoalex writes "Figuring out it couldn't get any worse, Viacom is turning an underperforming talk radio station in San Francisco into podcasting central. KYOU Radio performed so poorly in the ratings that it would not even show up on the official Arbitron radio rankings for the city of San Francisco. Now the Web site of the station owned by $56.5 billion corporation features a hip young look and claims to be the Open Source Radio. Visitors can upload the podcasts of their own in MP3, AIFF, AVI or WMA formats (no OGG support by someone who's so accepting of open source)."
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Good idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it will probably end up being just as crappy as local public access channels. Except, instead of seeing teenagers prank call McDonald's it'll be wannabe Art Bells ranting about how George W. Bush is hiding Osama bin Laden on the dark side of the moon.
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:2)
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Commercials? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree about the possiblity of being very profitable but what about commercials? The station needs to broadcast them:
1. Will they just slice out content and insert commercials? If so, who decides what gets cut?
2. Will they require producers to adhere to standard breaks and limit content time to something like 22:30 minutes per half hour with 3 breaks?
3. Could the broadcaster insert an ad for a bbq shack during a pro PETA show (unlikely, but could happen)? Will the producer be allowed to insert their own ads?
4. If the podcaster says one of the "seven dirty words" and it's gets broadcast couldn't the producer get hit with law suit from an injured third party (like an advertiser)?
Yes, there could be a lot of profit in it but IMO it will be a rocky road in the beginning. While some podcasters will adapt I hope that's the exception to the rule. I like podcasts the way they are.
Of course, it will probably end up being just as crappy as local public access channels. Except, instead of seeing teenagers prank call McDonald's it'll be wannabe Art Bells ranting about how George W. Bush is hiding Osama bin Laden on the dark side of the moon.
If that part was posted by alone it would get a +5, Funny. =)
Parent
no ogg? duh (Score:3, Funny)
"podcast" was originally something to be listened to on your iPod. The iPod doesn't play ogg (by default)
"oggcast" would sound like a wild caveman anyway.
The Jarvis Take (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Jarvis Take (Score:2)
Re:The Jarvis Take (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
This has already been done (Score:4, Informative)
shameless plug for my podcast: theWatt Weekly [thewatt.com] - energy news and discussion in mp3 format
Re:This has already been done (Score:2)
Re:This has already been done (Score:3, Informative)
Adam Curry (Score:2)
My favorites: bbc's fighting talk, cbc's quirks and quarks, the laporte report, benjamin walker's theory of everything. Thanks to these, audiobooks and NPR my daily commute is almost bearable.
Yes I know I didn't link, how about adding linking as a feature to slashcode?
Re:This has already been done (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:This has already been done (Score:2)
Call me crazy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Can anyone explain this to me?
Does anyone know any relevent links about this topic?
OK, you're crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Please take the sentence above and insert "the web" where "podcasting" is currently placed. You could say much the same thing about the web lacking a financial strategy for content-oriented sites, especially back in 1999. But it evolved, at least somewhat. The same thing will happen to podcasts.
Of greater importance, though, is that something can be totally paradigm-shifting but not generate a lot of cash. If 20 million people soon do most of their "radio" listening by podcast, the implications to society are enormous regardless of how much money is being made.
Parent
Re:OK, you're crazy (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, 20 million people may listen to podcasts, but they aren't doing it entirely because they love amateur recording, writing, and speaking quality. They're doing it because it's convenient, and can be listened to on their schedule, not Wolfman Jack's.
A radio PLAYING podcasts takes away that major advantage. I like some of them, but I'm not going to tune in at a certain time and
With apologies to the Buggles (Score:5, Funny)
Yawn! (Score:2, Interesting)
Forget podcasting !! Return the airwaves ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Get rid of the FCC. Pure shills for monopolists.
This is BRILLIANT (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does EVERY fucking article concerning compressed audio have to stick this little jab into each headline?
Slashdot's open source... "no WC3 conformity by someone who's so accepting of open source"
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes it does. This is an open source web site. I come here BECAUSE slashdot (and only slashdot) does that.
I have a choice os billion web sites to choose from and so do you. I chose to come here and read news with open source advocasy in mind. If you don't want to read about open source advocasy I might suggest gotdotnet or a million other web sites which are anti open source or don't give a flying donut about open source.
Parent
FCC (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FCC (Score:2)
Probably the same thing that happens when you type it here on slashdot: people can still read it if they choose, even though it's a troll.
Re:FCC (Score:3, Insightful)
We need a better name (Score:2)
BTW, someone this year filed a trademark claim on "PODCAST" [uspto.gov], something that I'm sure will get disputed by someone.
I just think there has to be a better name out there.
ogg support (Score:4, Informative)
Just check out Quirks and Quarks [www.cbc.ca], a weekly science show broadcast on Saturdays.
AM radio? Is that still on? (Score:2)
The Geeks Get Got? (Score:3, Insightful)
Folks, at its best Podcasting is supposed to break us free from the crappy world of FCC filtered, Clear Channel backed pablum that has been hoisted on us. Podcasting is the RESPONSE to years of having our airwaves taken away from us by govermental force and used by a few corporations to tell us what and when to listen to the music they want to seel us or to listen to the news they demand we belive.
Podcasting, heck any methodology that subverts the traditional communications paradigm of "We own you, you listen to what we tell you to" is a great and glorious thing. It gives us the possibility of finding our own voices, of putting out our own content and of sharing in these things across the whole of humanity.
But now those same tradionalists who took the airwaves from us want to join in the revoltuion against them? Something smell fishy to you yet?
Lets break the KYOU thing down
Infinity looses its biggest ever cash cow (Stern) and is DESPERATE for a new "thing". So whats new? (not much you..that should get the nprheads)
Podcasting, which is just mp3s passed around via automated apps (bashpodder being imnsfho the best) goes from 0 to Hyperspace speeds in under a year...
Many podcasters are living on the steam that they are changing the course of history, that each and every days recounting of thier lunch choices is a signal to the world of paradigm shifting import that EVERYONE needs to hear..(ok so some podcasters are not into this ego shit eating contest and yes some podcasts are just that fucking damn good and should be listened to... but enough fit this description that the idea holds.)
SO here is Infinity DESPERATE for Something New
SO here are some Podcaster DESPERATE to be heard
Hey look, linkup synchup dontcha just wana throw up..because...
INfinity pays NOTHING for the content, they sell ads and make the revenue, and the content is filtered to FCC cleaness standards to boot.
So the Podcasters have to be FCC filtered, thier works make revenue for Infinity alone, and man does this begin to sound like some radio execs wet dream or what?
Folks, this is fishy at best and a subversion of what indipendent media is suppose to be about at worst. I say no thanks.
Burn Radio Burn
Re:mp3 is better than .ogg (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:mp3 is better than .ogg (Score:2)
Re:mp3 is better than .ogg (Score:2)
Have you by chance caught the first couple of pocasts of "Revenge (or Return) of the Bleep" with Leo/Patrick/Kevin? The first week was just mp3, but after receiving a fair bit of email, they offered both mp3 and ogg the second week. And they made a point of mentioning that it's probably only one percent, albeit a vocal one percent, who want ogg format.
If you're in the position to offer up content in mp3 format, it's trivial to make another
Re:mp3 is better than .ogg (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two main reasons why Ogg/Vorbis is used by the small number of people who use it. One is that the format is open source, so people can write all kinds of software for it without worrying about patents or licensing fees. Another reason (which is less of an issue since portable players are now available with storage that would put even a high end PC from five years ago to shame) is that the codec is much newer than mp3 and gives higher quality in a comparable file size.
One of the reasons that Ogg hasn't been widely adopted yet is that companies like Apple prefer to make their players support proprietary formats that are more friendly to DRM than open source codecs. That's the only real technical obstacle preventing people who don't know about it from hearing about it. Distributing content solely in mp3 format that is destined mainly for playback on a computer is mostly just ignorance, since EVERY well known player comes with a vorbis decoder by now. MP3 was the first breakthrough audio format, and the closest and digital audio format has come to a household name, so it will continue to dominate for quite some time.
Parent
What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)
I just got through converting a bunch of PNGs to GIF for this exact reason (customer uses IE).
Re:No Ogg support == Not open source? (Score:4, Funny)
while($that_may_be === true)
{
iconv("erse", "in", "php");
while (in_array("of", $user_comments)
{
cos("php rocks");
}
}
?>
Parent
Re:Howard Stern, Forget Satellite... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Howard Stern, Forget Satellite... (Score:2)
Re:It might not be so bad. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually (Score:2)
Re:podcast != radio (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:podcast != radio (Score:4, Informative)
Goddammit. It's not a podcast if it's not wrapped in RSS. It's just an mp3. This is a *shoutcast* server that lets people submit mp3s to be broadcasted.
It has *nothing* to do with podcasting. The word "podcast" shouldn't even be used here.
It's also nothing new. Many shoutcast servers allow people to submit mp3s, many even allow you to "guest DJ" with winamp.
Parent
Re:podcast != radio (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:podcast != radio (Score:2)
Which is clearly an insufficent definition, since that would include television. Radio in this usage is clearly audio-only.
This whole fad of calling various forms of digital audio distributed over the internet 'radio', just goes to emphasize the technical illiteracy of the current crop of 'nerds'.
Or it emphasizes how languages change and grow to fill new-found gaps by extension of
Re:Isn't .WMA No Longer Supported By Microsoft? (Score:2, Insightful)