Podcasting: A Made-to-Order Change for Listeners -- and Perhaps Stations, Too

Podcasting, the latest grass-roots entry in the catalogue ofmiseries facing the radio industry, may yet turn out to be a boost togood old broadcast radio.

Like satellite radio, Internet radio and iPods, podcasting isanother step toward the Radio Me idea in which listeners pick out themusic they want to hear and essentially program their own stations. Apodcast is a radio show, created by anyone who owns a computer and amicrophone, that can be downloaded onto listeners' computers orportable music players. The Web site www.ipodder.org provides a listof podcasts and instructions on how to listen to them. In theory,podcasts will draw listeners away from the sameness of over-the-airradio and into a world of infinite variety.

Podcasts -- the most popular version of the technology wasdeveloped last year by former MTV veejay Adam Curry -- can bepainfully amateurish or delightfully quirky. They are a naturaldescendant of the mix tapes that music lovers made and traded in theearly years of the cassette era in the 1970s.

But the radio business -- like other mass media, suffering acontinuing decline in its share of Americans' time -- is alreadyfiguring out how to do what big media do best: co-opt the revolution,whatever it may be.

Tom Webster, vice president of Edison Media Research, andexecutives at some of the largest radio companies are suggesting thatradio stations develop their own podcasts and make them available atno charge to listeners seeking a more varied or obscure selection oftunes. The idea is to ease the pressure that broadcasters now feel tobroaden the array of music on over-the-air radio. Give choosierlisteners what they want, without making them wait for the 11 p.m.Sunday show, when radio has traditionally offered less popular formsof music.

Once listeners get into the habit of downloading inventivepodcasts from their local radio station, they're more likely to tunein to that station's broadcasts when they're in the car or at work.

Or so goes the theory. The few broadcast stations that have takenthe leap into podcasting are mainly news stations, includingWashington's WTOP, which puts out a brief news summary, available fordownloading each afternoon at 4:30. But music stations will be theresoon, and just as Internet radio evolved from making your own radiostation in your bedroom into an industry dominated by MSN and AOL, sotoo will podcasting go corporate.