johng Blog

Well we had the big (and overly long) strategy cast from Adam Curry and Ron Bloom last night. On one hand I agree with Dave Winer that this Ron Bloom character has appeared on the podcasting scene out of nowhere and therefore can only be in it for one thing. Also Adam already was the ‘go to guy’ in the mainstream media for podcasting and by establishing this commercial business he will become the only tunnel through which other podcasts can thrive.

On the other hand we have the people like Dawn and Drew who will be benefiting the most from this deal apart from Adam and Ron. Long term, if their plans come to fruition, they should be able to become full time podcasters and not have to worry about being able to find the time or money to produce their show.

Boku as they are called want to give podcasting a kick up the backside and boot it into the mainstream possibly before it’s ready. I can’t help feeling if they had left it alone and given it time to mature and gestate we could have avoided this and had a fully decentralised network not reliant on one source of income or traffic. You only have to go back and look at Dawn and Drew to see they have been independently attracting sponsors to their show. I’m sure, given time, they would have snowballed and increased their listeners without having to resort to the over commercialisation of this medium.