Talking Voices Ireland

[SiliconRepublic.com] 28.11.2005 - A new representative body has been established to guide the ever-increasing community of Irish podcasters through the labyrinthine maze of issues ranging from libel and music licensing to sponsorship and product placement, siliconrepublic.com has learned Because the organisation is so new it has only been tentatively titled the Podcasting Representative Body (PodRepBod), explains founder Brian Greene of Doop Design, and like Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) is part of a growing movement focusing on the rights of individuals in the online world. “Effectively it is a forum for people who podcast,” says Greene.

Unlike DRI, which champions and fights various issues, PodRepBod will focus on informing podcasters of topics such as libel law and music licensing regulations so hopefully they won’t run into trouble. Greene is establishing the group because he believes the need exists to safeguard the activity of podcasters with regards to licensing, the law and a range of other issues such as standards, training, hosting, product placement and sponsorship.
8< more

it takes me all night, to do what I used to do all night (im the oldest swinger in town)

in 10 months I have recorded 10 personal podcasts, and in ten weeks I have recorded 10 Irish emigrant podcasts.

some observations on 10. the emigrant cast is 15 mins plus and production time is down from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours. the personal cast is 40mins plus and the production time is static at twice the length of the show, but pre production on it has increased as the months have expanded.

the growth of a weekly versus a monthly is greater than a factor of 4, thus the more often you cast the wider a net you have. frequency converts into numbers. Can I do this without diluting the content, im sure I can. A daily 5 minute has more pull than a fortnightly 50 min cast.

I am seriously considering a daily, mon-fri 5-10 minute podcast which will most probably be experimenting over the long Christmas break. This will entail a max 100 minute production per week with 60 - 120 minutes (a week) pre production added. So if 3.5 hrs a week can be found, in Jan 2006 a daily episode with advance recording of 3-6 shows is in the offing.

10-10 is CB’ers code for “Transmission completed, standing by”

The IIA podcast has been launched. You can hear the full proceedings of the Irish Internet Association & CheetahMail Net Visionary Awards Winners 2005 on the podcast. The feed for the podcast is at http://www.netvisionary.ie/rss.xml or you can listen to the MP3 here.

The podcast was recorded and built by doop.ie and will also feature future conferences and talks given by the IIA from various locations around the country.

snipped from http://peterchen.members.grokthis.net/research

a number of interesting relationships between audience size and show characteristics are examined. Some key findings include:

* Episode frequency exerts a strong influence on audience size, with the release of daily episodes demonstrating the highest average audience size. Presently, most shows are produced on a weekly basis,
* There are few specific production-side determinants on popularity (including production time per episode), with the exception of collaborative shows, where there is a significant positive correlation between the number of staff or collaborators and show popularity, and
* There appears to be an emerging negative relationship within the podcasting production community between the prevalence of shows in some genres and lower average audience sizes. While this relationship is not significant, it may indicate that the market in some genres is saturating and further efforts need to be undertaken to expand the overall size of the market.

In the final discussion, some additional comments are provided on issues of copyright and other legal concerns, policy considerations to address gender inequality, and questions associated with definitional inspecificity.

BitTorrent has shaken hands with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). BitTorrent has a lot to teach to the internet industry, and Podcasting has a lot to learn from BitTorrent.
pcpro.co.uk reports

Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent software, hopes to sign deals with the major studios to allow BitTorrent to offer legal movies for download. The studios themselves are reportedly sufficiently interested to want to extend the use of BitTorrent technology to create a market of downloadable movies similar to the current growth in downloadable music. BitTorrent has already raised $8.75 million in venture capital to build a legitimate online media distribution business.

‘BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely,’ said Cohen in a statement. ‘BitTorrent discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a licence to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine’.

UPDATE: archive link of the interview

I was interviewed live on Near FM today re podcasting and the representative body we are setting up. The show is called ‘Majority World’ and is repeated at 9am Friday. the stream is at http://www.nearfm.ie/livestream.htm Its weird been on Near 20 years after I started by broadcasting on itfore runner NDCR in ‘85 an event I will play out in my next show (to be recorded tonight) so if you want to hear 15 year old me on the radio,,, tune in and sync it.

comments welcome
is it just me or do all podcasters/bloggers crave feedback?

A. Jacob Metz writes

MIKE BUTLER JUST got a new job, and he can’t shut up about it, on or off the air. Butler, a house painter and local musician (Exodus, American Heartbreak), was understandably nervous about closing down his business, Michael Butler Painting, which he founded in the late 1970s, and starting work at PodShow (www.podshow.com). In early November he began his first-ever office job as one of the newest employees of the company, which is owned by former MTV VJ Adam Curry and longtime business partner Ron
Bloom.

UPDATE: feed updated 25/11/05 the 17/11/05 was skipped (has anyone got a copy of that show?)

6 days after its most recent broadcast and 1 day before its next; The Quantum Leap podcast rss feed has yet to be updated, whats up? the MP3 has not shown up either.

Way back in May 2005 RTE Lyric FM claimed via press releases that it was the first station in Ireland to podcast, it had in fact only put up an MP3 for download without an RSS feed.

RTÉ if you are reading this, please please me and all the fans of the show and update the feed. Comment welcome.

John Kennedy of Silicon Republic Reports:-

Having completed the first stage in the development of a digital terrestrial television (DTT) pilot, Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey TD, is seeking tenders for the transmission equipment elements of the pilot. Deals for the network component have already been signed with BT Ireland, Chorus and Siemens.

So mid 2006 DTT will test again from 3 Rock and Clermont Carn, and Minister Dempsey said “he will be looking to explore possibilities for citizen-focused digital television services that can be delivered across all platforms during the course of the pilot”

What the heck does that mean? but slagging aside, Noel uses the ‘C’ word, and its not customer, its Citizen, a word dropped and replaced with customer by the current Govt. Perhaps a shift of focus, or was he off script?
[disclaimer: silicon republic is powered by NewsVendor a doopdesign CMS product]
[disclaimer#2: my next podcast (show#10) will feature a clip of an interview with John Kennedy after he won the Tech Journalist Award at this years IIA Net Visionary Awards]

hypothetical podcast about the collection of fuses. A fuse collector wants to share his passion with like minded people. We know fuse collecting isn’t big or popular like soccer, we crave an audience a feedback for the service, listeners.

So how to get 10,000 listeners. organically, build it up slowly, but this is niche radio there are not 10,000 fuse collectors in your City… but there are less much less in many other cities. OK get 1 listener in 100 cities world wide (english speaking?).

Most effort is the first 20, then community kicks in. Its not easy (did I say it was) It might not even work for you, but the numbers do add up. With 100 cities x 1 listener, you passed your milestone, and on to the next, 10 listeners in 100 cities. This involves the first listener and you! starting to sound like a pyramid sales talk, not far off. Finding fuse collectors ain’t easy, but should pyramid sales be the exclusive territory of heroin dealers? 1 becomes 10 x 100 slowly we have 1000.

now broaden your horizons from city to regional, aim now is 50 listeners in 200 centres, 100 cities 100 regional, for this your 10 base would need a incentive. You supply your own secret ingredient here. Add that to your unique selling point and work the 1,000 into 10,000 over time.

To reach this base you will require channels, ezine, postal, website, rss push & tie in with traditional media where you can blag your gig.

Now remove the fuse from the scenario, its your gig, do you want 10,000 to sell to or to just reach? if there are only 800 fuse collectors world wide and this number is declining with the advent of ELCB and only 10% of these have net access and half of those have no sound card, would you not be happy with 40. Its a lot easier to make the 40 people happy than the 10,000. Would the 10,000 make you rich or famous? heck no, 10,000 listeners might sell ads on local radio in a metro area, but online to a niche it wont pay bills. This is why a sponsor to the 40 is more valuable than to the 10,000 if there are only 40. The sponsor to the 40 will exceed the cost of delivery to the 40, at least it should; GET THE MESSAGE

ps: up late putting Irish Emigrant Podcast to bed