Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond

Podcasting is the foundation for a new media landscape, where independently produced content coexists with "professional" programs created and distributed by big media companies. Apple is selling as many as 34 million iPods a year, based on current quarterly sales figures. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and innumerable other production companies are offering shows for download.

Making the most of the opportunity to communicate is what you, the prospective podcaster, need to keep in mind as you contemplate where this market is going. A narrow definition of podcasting could prevent you from seeing how to apply these tools to the needs of your family, your company, or a vast international audience.

Podcasting isn't about making "shows" as though, like some 1930s Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland film, you've found out your dad has a chest full of costumes and Judy's barn is the perfect place to put on a fundraiser to save the pastor's ailing racehorse. It can be about establishing regular communication with your customers. If you're a dentist or a physician, think about printing a podcast feed address on your appointment cards and delivering a weekly minute-long recording about teenager's teeth or preventing the flu. A small business — even a large one — can use podcasts to promote new products and services or to offer tips on getting the most from something the company sells to improve post-sale satisfaction among customers. Workgroups within a company or across many companies can keep in constant contact by recording conference calls and making them available as podcasts for team reviews or just to let folks who miss a meeting catch up. Professors and school teachers can upload audio or video of their lectures for students to review and, if the lectures are great, maybe build a global "class" of thousands of students who subscribe in order to get a leg up on their own studies.

And podcasting can be all about the show. If you're already producing radio or television programming, the millions of new podcast-ready listeners buying iPods and other portable digital audio players each month are already looking for new ways to control their listening. Broadcasters who refuse to accommodate the audience's desire to listen on their own schedule risk losing their listeners and the advertising dollars that came with them. Likewise, if you've just dreamed of making a radio or television program, the podcasting market is still so wide open that you can have your shot at winning the first thousand audience members who, if they love your work, will help bring the next 20,000 subscribers. Plenty of local television programs succeed on audience numbers of those sizes, but podcasting doesn't limit you to the people within the reach of your radio or television signal. Podcast foundations could support media empires in the future, although there will be lots of work involved.