Comments on: Where are the podcast listeners going?

By: Joe Hartman

Joe Hartman — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:13:51 +0000

Personally I’m not seeing most of my friends (I’m 40) listening to podcasts and when I talked to my 19 and 27 year old nephews they says almost none of their friends listen to any podcasts so I’m not sure the market is really growing anymore.

I like podcasts but find that I want to listen to a wide variety of items (NPR/PBS/BBC, Tech Related, Sport etc) and find that most podcasts (including Geek News Central) are becoming longer than I’m willing to listen to. I think Mike of the Mike Tech show has it right keeping his podcast approximately 40 minutes with limited user voice mail.

I think podcast need to become more focused and less rambling if you really want to continue growing because I listen to podcast to hear the presenters opinions and interesting news, not rambling questions or opinions from unknown users. I started skipping user messages on GNC then just unsubscribed because I decided it was not worth the effort and the show has just become too long.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:47:27 +0000

I used to listen to Todd and other podcasts all the time, but I have kind of moved away to follow Video Podcasts instead, I dont subscribe to them but I am watching them on the websites they belong to. Also the busier I get the shorter shows I want, a 5- minutes video cast usually satisfies me more these days. I also think that the moment Podcasters started adverting, they lost a lot of listeners, personally I am tired of hearing about GoDaddy, it is a crummy host and I would never use them even if I saved 90% on the monthly bill, so I have made it a personal goal to not listen to any casts offering GoDaddy, which is not easy find.

By: Peter J

Peter J — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:46:33 +0000

The problem is, just like old media, many podcasts talk about the same things over and over. If you listen to one podcast, you really don't need to listen to the rest of them anymore. And you sure aren't going to gain new listeners by telling them to check out old shows. For many podcasts, 6 month old shows mean 6 month old news. It's kind of cool for somebody like me or other techies, but for most casual listeners, they aren't going to listen for very long if you can't attract them with the most recent show. Put it this way, how many people really want to tune into tv and see news from six months ago? Not that many. And therein lies the biggest problem in attracting newer more casual listeners. You just aren't going to attract them by pointing them to older shows. The content is just too old for most casual listeners and no longer relevant. If we go back to many shows in June, it would be mostly IPhone this and IPhone that.. And then a lot of the more web created popular podcasts and even blogs became nothing more than Facebook hype, Apple hype, IPhone hype and Digg hype, google hype, twitter hype and so on. Even TWIT and many of Leo's other podcast's have started to become some inner clique where it seems more of the interviews are kiss ups and love fests rather than real interviews with real information. And how many times can people really listen to "IPHONE update number 2" on 10 different podcasts? I listen to geek news central because Todd seems to stay in that middle ground where he isn't some fanboy who has an unrealistic perspective on things. But unfortunately many podcasts today have become nothing more than fanboys in one way or another. Hey that's great that they are huge fans of some company or product, but I don't listen to or watch old media shows where it's a one sided opinion. Think Rush, think any of the Democratic or Republican political shows and so on. And to me that's where the major issue is now. I got tired of that crap on the radio and on tv, why would I put up with it in a podcast? And it's not just podcasts, it's everything in old media, the publishing world, real life events, sports, music, and so on. People have a ton of choices and to attract more people or listeners, you need to start attracting casual listeners or fans. And honestly, I'm not sure anybody has done a good job of that for more than a few months. Something becomes popular, tons of lemmings jump to catch the wave, then things start to die down and people move on to the next wave.... So the reality is, when every other podcast seems to speak about the same things, people just aren't going to listen to every one of them unless they really like the host or hosts. And even that wanes after awhile when news stories become slow or the hosts start to sound more like fanboys.