According to the NY Times, Podcast meister Adam Curry has signed a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to run a daily 4-hour “PodShow”. (Sirius Radio is one of those subscription satellite radio companies in the US – you pay $12 a month to access a set of radio channels, usually with few/no adverts).
Apparently, the format of his daily show will be Adam playing various podcasts from across the Internet. Dawn and Drew are apparently up for it.
Great, but doesn’t that kind of undermine the whole point of Podcasting? It’s an on-demand medium, unlike radio. Surely the point of Podcasting is that you download it and it’s available when you want it? Why do that in a radio show that you have to tune in for? And why would you want to pay 12 bucks a month to listen to audio content that’s already free (free to listen to, free to download and consume on your terms)?
I listen to Adam’s Daily Source Code Podcast (which isn’t always released daily, btw) – he is certainly very busy traveling the globe to “ferment the froth” of podcasting. I haven’t really heard him talk much about existing revenue streams; maybe this is why Adam’s done this… Does he need the cash to maintain the momentum?
All in all, I’m a little frustrated. I’m always pushing my big media company to release it’s content in a way that’s suitable for “on demand” consumption (ie make it downloadable). What I see here is a triumph of grassroots on-demand content taking a bit of a backwards step.