A Little More Press on Podcasting

From the Boston Globe today --

Podcasting facesgrowing pains

By Scott Kirsner | February 28, 2005

Benjamen Walker is an independent radio producer in Cambridge who used to work for WBUR. His half-hour documentary show, ''Theory of Everything," is heard each week by 1,500 people who ''subscribe" to his podcast, and it is also broadcast on a handful of radio stations, like Boston College's WZBC and WCAI on Cape Cod. He pays $49.95 each month for the Internet bandwidth required to support his podcasts; that's $600 a year for the privilege of distributing his podcast, which has dealt with topics like the changing face of Kenmore Square.

Walker has been thinking about producing a ''pledgecast," to ask his regular listeners to help defray some of his costs. He believes that most podcasters don't have large enough audiences to interest advertisers. ''I would love to have a sponsor, and put one 30-second ad at the top of the show," he says. ''That wouldn't bother me at all. But I just don't see it, until the numbers really get higher." (WGBH, another local public radio station, did sell a sponsorship in January for its ''Morning Stories" podcast, which is a ''digital rebroadcast" of content that was originally produced for radio.)

-Amar