BuzzMachine

Leo Laporte wants to change the name of “podcasts” to “netcasts” because “pod” makes people think they need an iPod. I’m afraid that once names stick, they stick. How many times have we heard people wish for different names than “blog,” “blogosphere,” “RSS,” “HTML,” and all that. When you think about it, “elevator” is a silly and rather haughty word; “lift” is much better. But here we elevate. We blog. We podcast.

I was saddened to listen to the 400th episode of Schlaflos in Muenchen, for it is the last. Annik Rubens, the Valkyrie-voiced podcaster and princess of German podcasts I wrote about for The Guardian, said she will move onto something new after a two-week hiatus and she has other podcasts, like Filme und So. Still, she just tired of the form of her original podcast.

At the same time, the British prince of podcasting, Ricky Gervais, hangs up his microphone on his record-setting show.

What’s going on here? The death of podcasts? Naw. Step back from the keyboard before you start writing that made-up trend story. I sense that people (Winer aside) don’t flame out on blogs the way they might on podcasts and I think the reason for that is that podscasts are both more of a production and more of a performance. It’s harder. That’s also why fewer will start podcasts — and why I haven’t. It’s easier to blather through a keyboard than a microphone.

I complained that CNN wasn’t letting me listen to Howie Kurtz’s show on my iPod and on my schedule. But what do I find in iTunes today: the Reliable Sources podcast.

Nielsen released a report today on the economics of podcasting with some juicy stats to add to yesterday’s Pew numbers (here’s a only I to a PDF of the press release):

* 6 percent of U.S. adults — 9 million people — have downloaded podcasts in the last 30 days. The same number call themselves regular podcast listeners.
* More than 75 percent of them are male.
* 38 percent of active podcast listeners told Nielsen that they are listening to radio less often.
* The most successful podcasts, Nielsen says, are get two million downloads a month. (I’m curious to hear the stats for Diggnation and other big ones.)
* 60 percent said they always fast-forward past commercials.
* 72 percent of regular downloaders get one to three podcasts a week; heavy users — 10 percent of them — take eight or more.

Nielsen also said it is going to launch an iPod panel with 400 users. That’s good. But I’ll caution that you can’t measure the mass of niches that way you could measure the masses; a sample won’t get the — pardon me — long tail. Still, in a new medium, data is good because it makes the medium real.

City AM, a new, free paper in London aimed at the financial district, has just started a podcast with a twist or two. First, they call it City PM, which means that they expand their service and brand into another daypart. When they registered that name, some thought they’d producing a second edition of the paper. But, instead, they’re producing a show; they’re thinking past their medium. And instead of just downloading these podcasts (I can’t find the site where I could), they’re ‘casting them through the air via bluetooth:

It is now launching the podcast via mobile using Bluetooth technology targeting homeward-bound business commuters using London’s Liverpool Street and Waterloo stations. Under a deal struck with outdoor specialist Titan, the “transvision” screens in both stations will run a 15-second commercial for the service, every two minutes from 5.30pm to 7.30pm daily. The ad will air 45 times a day.
The five-minute podcast can be delivered to 150 mobile phones simultaneously.

That may be geekgimmick or it may be a sensible way to distribute ‘cast content in an unwired world.

Here’s another overdue recommendation: One of my favorite podcasts from two of my favorite podcasters — Filme und So (translation: movies and stuff) — is now in video, as I hoped it would be. Fans of Annik Rubins and her most charming voice from her other podcast, Schlaflos in München, can now see her award-winning dimpled smile. Cohost Timo Hetzel has produced a simple and shorter versin of the audio podcast and I like the added connection it gives us with both of them. They know how to podcast well by being informative and casual but still professional and just slick enough. OK, so most of you won’t be able to understand a word (and I can’t understand every word) but I use them as a model for what podcasts and vlogs can be.

: I also just saw that Annik Rubins has a podcasting book from O’Reilly (auf Deutsch).

: And more: Annik held a contest to come up with a podcasting logo. I like it.

Alex Albrecht, costar of Diggnation, has just premiered his new cooking show for geeks with the greatest title alive: Ctrl+Alt+Chicken (download it there or watch it, free, via iTunes).

It’s a hoot and a half. He and his girlfriend (I think), Heather Stewart, try to make chicken cordon bleu but fail spectacularly. It ends up burned on the outside and perilously raw on the inside. But it’s still fun watching them and, if you care, you do get the recipe. The show goes just a touch over the top when actors must act in a sketch moment near the start. It’s best when they’re just having fun in the kitchen and, in the great tradition of the Galloping Gourmet before he found the wagon, they’re getting sloshed on wine. The couple thing works. So does the honesty. As they’re melting fat and more fat in a pot and they get rather disgusted at this, Alex says in a cooking show, “This is why people don’t cook. Becuase you look at it while it’s cooking and you don’t want to eat it.” Heather says, “It takes forever and my pizza would have already been here.” They’re planning an episode when they just eat the cold pizza. Now that is cooking for geeks.

Note well that this isn’t just people sitting and talking to the camera. They’re actually doing something. They’re entertaining. They made a show. And they showed the world. They did it without studios or executives or networks. Welcome to the future of TV. I like it.

Media Guardian, where I am proud to write a column, has started a podcast. Here’s the first episode (MP3), with my editor, Matt Wells, as host. I’ll be listening in the car in the a.m.

Having been sent into podcast orbit by the Guardian, Ricky Gervais is now planning to charge for his show via Audible. Hmmm. I enjoyed it but I’m not sure I’d buy.

NPR has a new directory with tons of public-radio podcasts. I just with This American Life was on it. It’s the only thing I still subscribe to via Audible but I never go get the shows because it’s such a pain in the ass.

Harvard Medical School is putting its lectures on podcasts. And here’s a list of medical podcasts.

The Ricky Gervais podcast has passed 2 million downloads:

“Usually, in order to be heard by millions of people you have to do a show on Radio 1 or Radio 2,” said Gervais. “The problem is, those stations expect you to be competent and professional. We had to find a way around that.” …

“To have such a huge success with a podcast so early in the medium’s development is enormously encouraging,” said Emily Bell, the editor in chief of Guardian Unlimited.

“Guardian Unlimited’s approach to podcasting, as with all new opportunities that the internet opens, is that we want to challenge assumptions and exceed expectations of what a newspaper website is and what it can deliver.”

Challenge assumptions, indeed.

: And by the way, a great new line from Pilkington delivering monkey news in the latest ‘cast: “A chimp off the old block.”