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The podcast I have been listening most to is OnThePage: Screenwriting with Pilar Allesandra. The web site features a cool interface that was designed in Flash. It’s easy to find everything you want to know about script consulting or classes offered by On The Page. However, there is a massive, gaping hole where the blog should be and it will take some hunting to find the link to the podcast. I don’t really understand that. Is she downplaying the podcast and finds no need for a blog? Or is it something she didn’t expect to find such a large following and hasn’t gotten around to updating her web page on? Either way, this is a big mistake. I have emailed with her in the past this quarter so I will contact her and suggest she make some adjustments.
Truth be told, the only blog I follow with regularity is Stuff White People Like. I think it’s absolutely hilarious. I know there a lot of people who don’t, but the don’t like Family Guy or South Park either, or Will Ferrel, and well, I do. So what? The design is really just a basic Word Press design but they do a spectacular job with the photos so that the whole thing looks like a Pottery Barn catalog or something from J. Crew. They are publishing a book next month and maybe they will have an entire new design since they are getting so popular.
Our readings this week mention that it’s okay to have lots of interests. Boy, I sure do. One of the biggest, along with wine, photography, screenwriting, Japanese maples, and comedy, is history. I found this podcast and find it to be great. I wish it came out more but Dan Carlin puts a lot into it, so I understand the once a month frequency.
Chapter 4 of the Business Podcasting Book goes into some detail about how to form a plan of attack when trying to get a large organization behind the idea of podcasting. As I was reading along I was thinking about the recommendations they were making—finding an internal champion, overcoming resistance to new media, gradual change, encouraging collaboration across departments, among others— and I couldn’t help snickering. I work for a huge company of well over 100,000 employees. Trying to get anything done, especially new things, in my company is next to impossible. It’s like trying to push a cruise ship across the Pacific Ocean with a fly. In order to podcast at my company we would indeed need an internal champion. However, this internal champion would have to be one of the highest ranking members of the company and he or she would have to gain the acquiescence of most of the senior management. Have you seen senior level executives in action? They are some of the most terrified people on earth, forever worried about how each decision they make will make them look to other executives. As for new media? These people barely know how to operate their email. (I know of two senior people who have their administrative assistants print out all their email for them to read on paper. One told me bald faced that never heard of a .zip file). I wish I was just poking fun here, but sadly the truth is new media will have to become old media before it is adopted by large organizations.
Look at the “green” wave spilling over corporate America in the past few months. It’s laughable how they have appropriated this 25 year-old idea into their marketing and advertising as something new. Their “new” internal commitment to green business practices seem so antiquated that it’s very hard to take them seriously. Better late than never for sure, but don’t pitch it as if you are saving the planet when everyone knows damn well that corporate America is justifiably to blame for a big portion of our current environmental issues.
My company ought to be ready to podcast on a regular basis both internally and externally in about 2020, because it will take them that long to politically work it all out and figure out how to get 150 people to approve the content before the law staff gets it’s hands on it and strips out any content that may have any value for fear of being sued. When they do finally publish the podcast the material will be so stale that the moment the first download ends it will be only good for bread crumbs or croûtons.
While I applaud the BPB authors and their efforts at motivating companies to get caught up to the 21st-century, I know from experience that only small to medium size companies or executives at very large companies that are savvy and very powerful will be doing any valuable podcasting. Even Greg Cangialosi, the author, writes candidly about his experience with Verizon in a similar vein. I could feel his frustration through his carefully worded prose describing the experience. Fortunately for him, he has also had good experiences with larger firms. I gather they had the powerful executives mentioned above pushing it through.
As an example of who we might follow in our team podcasts on the Mariner’s, I found Skinny on Sports. Two brothers Matt and Andy Skinn do a fast 10 minutes on sports offering opinions and a little humor. Very Canadian. 
Eh?
This week’s readings were all about format. What kind of format should my podcast be about and what kind of podcast would my team produce?
For my own personal podcast, I am following the advice given in the Business Podcasting Book and focusing on a very specific niche. I’ve also listened to all of my “competitors” out there and have made a determination about where I can differentiate myself. Of course, they aren’t really competitors at all, more like mentors and what I aspire to be like. Yes, I am purposely not saying what the show will be.
The Tricks of the Podcasting Masters reading really gave me a breakdown on the more popular types of genres. I’ve listened to the sports examples so that my team will have the knowledge it needs to make a good show without copying others too closely. It’s amazing just how much podcasting is out there.
I find it interesting that since I’ve started this class I have asked lots of people if they listen to podcasts and almost uniformly they say no. Yet all of the statistics show that podcasting is gaining in popularity. Hmmmm? Perhaps it’s the people I know?
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