"U.S. Republican Senators Begin Weekly Podcast
Posted by Shawn Cruikshank on 21 Jun 2005 - 02:58

The Pennsylvania Senate Republican Caucus has launched a new program allowing state residents to listen to weekly podcasts on state issues. The group is hoping the trend will catch with tech savvy users, allowing it to become another form of communication between politicians and voters.

"Podcasting will improve our ability to provide in-depth analysis, up-to-date information, and insights from individual members about crucial topics affecting people and communities around the commonwealth," said staff representative for a Pennsylvania state Senator. "[Podcasting is] revolutionizing the way information is disseminated, and we want our members to be at the front-end of that," he said.

Though the Republican Caucus says it will use the podcast to "address legislation before the Senate and issues of importance to Pennsylvanians," the innovative technology is expected to bring about concern. Podcasting, with the intent of furthering political ethics by a party, could be construed as government propaganda if used the wrong way. The Bush administration came under fire last year for 'fake' news reports posing as adverts on US TV networks.

The first podcast is available this week through the Pennsylvania Republican Caucus' website.

View: Pennsylvania Republican Caucus Website"

Clear Channel Expands Podcast Offerings
June 23, 2005
By Ken Tucker and Katy Bachman

Buoyed by the success of its "Phone Tap" podcast downloads on WHTZ-FM, Clear Channel's Top 40 station in New York, the company announced Thursday it will expand its portfolio of podcast feeds. The accelerated rollout will offer nearly 20 new podcasts of popular on-air content from 12 more stations, with an additional 10 expected to launch later this week.

Less than two weeks after the podcast launch on June 3 of the "Elvis Duran & The Z Morning Zoo Phone Tap," listeners have downloaded or streamed from the Z100 site 20,500 pieces of content, according to the company.

"The early results from Z100's 'Phone Tap' validated our theory -- there is a huge appetite for station-created, short-form content via multiple-delivery formats," said Evan Harrison, executive vp of CC and head of the company's online music and radio unit, launched last year.

Downloadable content will vary by station, but may include artist and celebrity interviews, prank calls, "best of" shows, commentary and comedy bits.

In addition to WHTZ, the CC stations that will make podcasts available on the web sites are: Classic rock WAXQ-FM, and Rhythmic Top 40 WKTU-FM New York; Adult Top 40 KYSR-FM in Los Angeles; Classic Hits KGB-FM, Top 40 KHTS-FM, Active Rock KIOZ-FM in San Diego; Top 40 KKRZ-FM in Portland, Ore.; News/Talk WLW-AM in Cincinnati; Rock KRZR-FM in Fresno, Calif.; Rock WDVE-FM in Pittsburgh; and Rock WZZO-FM in Allentown, Penn.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000967413

Audible to begin RSS delivery and podcast service
By Dennis Lloyd | 06.24.05 | Podcasting

Today, Audible announced plans to distribute the New York Times Audio Digest, Wall Street Journal and other periodic audio content via RSS. Audible customers can schedule automatic delivery of their periodic programming to their computers and to any one of more than 135 AudibleReady handheld devices, including the iPod.

Audible has also launched an information page outlining its strategy behind profitable podcasting. "Starting June 24th, you can put Audible's management experience, platforms and tools to work for you and your podcasting strategy. Audible now offers content producers the infrastructure for circulation control, paid subscriptions and advertising management needed to effortlessly produce and manage podcasting - and turn that audio content into predictable, incremental revenue." [via I-Newswire.com]"

"Sub Pop Records Says Podcast Our Music, Before We Change Our Mind
June 07, 2005

Sub Pop Records, home of bands like Nirvana, Afghan Whigs, Combustible Edison, The Reverend Horton Heat, Sleater-Kinney and Soundgarden, has announced that they are encouraging podcasters to use their promotional tracks within podcasts.

The label has added a podcast of their free music.

According to Sub Pop's Dean Hudson, "We've basically set up our MP3 downloads (which we were offering as promotional freebees already) as an RSS 2.0 feed, so folks can suck them into their iPods ala iPodder and the like."

Their FAQ elaborates on their somewhat tentative approach to podcasting: "You may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website into your podcasts. HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time. Fickle, no?""

Excerpt from: "5 Reasons Podcasting Matters to Ebusinesses

1) Podcasts lower the threshold for publishing audio content.

Anybody with a computer, a mic and an Internet connection can now publish an audio show, creating competition for traditional radio. This also puts audio content publishing within the reach of any company. This is likely to result in an explosion of web-based audio content. It will make it possible to publish audio programming that would have been previously been cost-prohibitive.

2) Podcasts encourage two-way communication with listeners.

Because podcasts are built on RSS 2.0, the lingua franca of the blog world, podcast content is easy to subscribe to and blog about. This encourages other publishers to add their meta-comments about a podcast.

Because podcast feeds are often built with blog-tools, they frequently support comments and track back, which encourage a two-way dialog about the content. This two-way conversation is important, because it creates 3rd party content about your podcast, and encourages links to your content.

3) Podcasts extend the reach of Internet sites.

Web sites have limited opportunities to interact with their users. Users access web content within a limited time window, so your content will typically only get a slice of that time.

Podcasts can be listened to at any time, while a user is connected to the Internet, or via a portable media player. This effectively extends the range of web sites into times and places where users would not otherwise be giving their attention to web-based content.

4) Podcasting can be used to increase the frequency of contact with customers.

One approach to understanding the value of customers to a business is recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) analysis. It looks at customer interactions in terms of how recently they've visited a site or made a purchase, how frequently they visit or purchase, and how much they spend. An increase of any of these parameters increases the long-term value of the customer relationship.

Podcasts are being used to improve the "stickiness" of web sites. An effective podcast encourages listeners to subscribe to the podcast news feed. This lets users automatically download the most recent shows, increasing the likelihood of regular contact with customers.

5) Podcasts make audio files easy to find on the Internet.

News feeds provide meta information about MP3 audio files, making it easier to find relevant audio content on the Web. Podcasts are often created using blogging tools, which makes podcast feeds easy to frequently update. Frequent updates tends to provide a boost in search engine rankings, giving podcast audio content an advantage over other audio content on the Internet."

"Infinity To Podcast 9 News Stations
June 02, 2005
By Ken Tucker, Billboard Radio Monitor

Following its launch of all-podcasting KYCY (KYOU Radio) San Francisco, Infinity moves even deeper into the fledgling medium by announcing it will offer free daily podcasts from its nine news stations, with flagship WINS (1010 Wins) New York set to lead the way in July."

Rush is "pushing" instead of "pulling"

Rush Limbaugh started offering his radio show in downloadable mp3 format, but for some reason, he has decided to only offer it via manual download, or his special program that "pushes" the file to your computer.

The instructions for his "podcast" are as follows:

No clicking. No waiting. No wasted time -- at no extra charge to the Rush 24/7 subscriber. Listen to the award-winning Rush Limbaugh Show on the go whenever and wherever you want -- 24/7. One download does it all... Drop the Rush Limbaugh Podcast into your iPod or MP3 player for mobile listening, or just turn up the speakers and listen right there on your computer! Getting started is simple. Click the PC or Mac download link to run the installer (Guide), enter your Rush 24/7 username and password -- and then forget about it. You don't have to do a thing! The Podcast will automatically download the MP3 audio files to your hard drive after each day's excursion into broadcast excellence, and Rush will be waiting for you when you have the time to listen.