What was not mentioned in this article is how awful talk radio is these days. Especially morning-zoo radio [1] where they have the exact same 3 person radio show in every city: 1) the old school radio guy, 2) the young "edgy" dude who goes too far, and 3) the girl who never contributes anything, except to tell the guys they are being too "crazy and wild".
The shows use something called 'prep burger' which is prerecorded or prewritten comedy bits that multiple stations reuse, such as fake prank calls (real ones are illegal now). They buy access to a database of them and shameless reuse comedy bits with zero originality.
It's like mainstream pop music, the corporations have focus-grouped all the creativity out of the shows and keep everything within the safe confines of control and management. And I won't even get into their obsession for political correctness.
The days of Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony style talk shows are gone. Even XM Satelite radio talk shows have all been neutered.
This is why podcasts are new and interesting. The personailities are free to do and say whatever they want. They dont have management or producers telling them what audiences want to hear. So they create authentic and original content.
Everything you mentioned is a negative for traditional radio.
Podcasting became "a thing" many years ago, but it's experiencing a 'Renaissance' in 2014, which means that it's "coming back" to put it simply.
What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?
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I personally believe it's the success of internet connected mobile devices. Your phone is a true functional replacement for your car radio. Today, you can TRIVIALLY listen to live or prerecorded podcasts.
In 2006 you would have to pre-download everything you wanted to listen to, using a PC or a Laptop. If you wanted to listen to something on a whim, your only choice was radio.
Today, you can see a tweet from someone you follow, tap a link, and listen without any technical knowledge.
> What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?
Podcasting is no longer the domain of amateurs and the tech savvy. Talk radio is a professional business and the talent from that industry are beginning to start their own podcasts, and sometimes totally leaving FM/AM/satelitte radio behind.
In addition to pro radio hosts, nearly every comedian is also starting their own podcasts. Bill Burr runs one of the best. Hollywood is also adopting podcasts. Kevin Pollack runs a super popular show and is getting big interviews guests such as celebrities like Tom Hanks.
Podcasting is merging with the traditional entertainment industry and branching out from purely simple niche topics. Advertising is paying a lot of attention to podcasting. I heard one radio host gets paid $2 million/yr and he's not even the top podcast on iTunes.
So the difference is it's becoming a general, mainstream entertainment platform.
But WHY? You're just describing what happens when a medium takes off.
Why are all of these pros suddenly starting their own? Why is it becoming mainstream now instead of in 2004? Certainly there are some trailblazers in there that through luck or foresight were doing it early, but a lot are doing it because they've seen that the audience is there and it won't be a waste of time.
I agree with the article because it fits my personal experience. I bought a car a year ago with a Bluetooth enabled sound system and almost immediately starting devouring podcasts because of how easy it was.
Podcasting is more accessible, and the fact that it is far better than the mundane competition (traditional radio) means people are happy to jump to the alternative of choosing their own programming.
Sure, the iPod made it easier, but beyond connected cars, which the article suggests, capable software and Wi-Fi (or 3G/4G) on every device means it costs almost no effort. When I first got into podcasting, I had to plug in my iPod to a computer every night to let iTunes handle the transfer, and sometimes even then it didn't work and I would be stuck the whole day without my programming. Now, you can just pick a podcast aggregator and download the latest five episodes of any podcast in a matter of minutes. The fact that it has become so easy is what drives people to switch from listening to their local talk shows to listening what they actually want to hear.
I believe a parallel can be drawn to the threat felt by cable TV now that HBO is offering content to subscribers independent of their cable subscriptions.
> was the world of radio so different 8 years ago?
Absolutely. Ad rates have fallen and the number of outlets that you can listen to radio in are fading away. Clock radios are being replaced by smartphones, and kitchen radios are something your mother had 15 years ago. Go to Target... Clock radios had 16ft of shelf space in 2004. Today, there are like 8 choices on a single shelf sandwiched between Bluetooth speakers and cordless phones.
AM radio cannot afford local talent or local news. So it's mostly devolved into the crazy political stuff and infomercial style programming. The few stations that make an effort to have local content are often pushing mobile apps for listening more heavily.
Podcasting is growing because we've saturated the population with smartphones, and people are figuring out how to produce a professional sounding show cheap.
My life is enriched with the phrase "morning zoo", to be sure.
But most FM radio has never really been talk radio with NPR stations being the notable exception. On top of that, FM radio's ads (during music) have always made it completely unpalatable for me.
AM radio has had talk radio for a long time, but AM is of extra-low quality at any distance from the transmitter, and often has a certain zoo-like quality of its own.
It's also interesting that about a quarter of the podcasts that I listen to now are NPR/PRI podcasts.
"where they have the exact same 3 person radio show in every city"
On every station, not in every city. There is no radio alternative where I live other than morning zoo shows.
This is a typical indication of aggressive narrowcasting. "Our goal is to increase our percentage of morning zoo listeners by becoming a better morning zoo". Unfortunately the product that is the most popular among zoo listeners is likely abhorrent to the general population. They're going to chase each other all the way down until the few advertisers left won't be able to pay the electric bill, and right up to the bitter end they'll be trumpeting their "percent of total listeners" metrics rather than "total number of listeners" metrics. All I care about is having a bigger slice of the pie, and don't care how much smaller the whole pie gets.
I think these things are not always inherent. I think podcast are a very free medium. That in itself often invites quality. There really is a difference between free media and non-free media and these things are relative to each other.
Ultimately, people listen to podcasts because they're good.
The radio I listen to (in my car, the only place I think anyone listens to radio) is WQED (SF public radio), WCBS (news station), BBC and Bloomberg on satellite, and when genuinely desperate, CNBC.
Everything else, both terrestrial and satellite, seems to be horrible.
The shows use something called 'prep burger' which is prerecorded or prewritten comedy bits that multiple stations reuse, such as fake prank calls (real ones are illegal now). They buy access to a database of them and shameless reuse comedy bits with zero originality.
It's like mainstream pop music, the corporations have focus-grouped all the creativity out of the shows and keep everything within the safe confines of control and management. And I won't even get into their obsession for political correctness.
The days of Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony style talk shows are gone. Even XM Satelite radio talk shows have all been neutered.
This is why podcasts are new and interesting. The personailities are free to do and say whatever they want. They dont have management or producers telling them what audiences want to hear. So they create authentic and original content.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_zoo