An Interesting Thought On Podcasting
I have begun to wonder if there is a problem with Podcasting lately.
There are plenty of reasons why Podcasting has exploded over the past year with, by some accounts, over 100,000 available podcasts already online (
www.PodcastEmpire.com has over 1,000 and is growing fast!). But there is one popular area where it seems Podcasting has not quite caught on.
Not only that, but I am talking about a segment of the population which traditionally embraces new technologies...
University and College kids.
When I started University in the early 90's, the Internet was still in it's infancy, a place my sister thought only fish went (Inter-net - HaHa), but for us young academia's who had broken our teeth in the world of the online BBS (That would be Bulletin Board Systems, an Internet Precursor, for those not in the 'know'), everything was new and the possibilities were endless.
We leapt on every new trend to hit the Net, and kept each other notified with the help of our trusty Pinemail (text based email client - no IM's back then!). There were few things online that the average university student didn't embrace...
Flash forward ten plus years, we have been bombarded by Blogs for years now, and the University crowd accounts for their fair share of content. But for some reason, Podcasting is different. The populace at large seems to be able to tell me more about podcasting than any of the University folk I know.
Why?!?
Why are co-ed Dorms across the continent not rife with after-hour Pirate radio stations? Why are all of these 20-somethings walking around with an Ipod in one hand, and an MP3 enabled phone in the other, not listening to Podshows?
I don't get it. Where it is usually this group of people who thrive on, and push new technologies in to the mainstream (or at least carry them along as they themselves become mainstream), it seems that the university folk seem to have missed the boat this time around.
There must be a logical reason for it...
Could it be that University has become more erudite since I graduate, and the students haven't time for more trivial pursuits like creating or listening to podcast shows? Not likely...
Could this younger generation of people be more 'institutionalized' than those who came before them? Willing to throw their easy-won money away on CD's and pay-to-download music services?
Could it just be that an older generation is pushing this podcast wave while dreaming of the good old days when they listened to pirate radio stations on their hamm radios?
I don't know, but I am curious...
When will Podcasting catch on with the bar-set crowd?
Michael V
podcastempire@gmail.com
