Podcasting as a News Medium
I now don’t listen to the TV for news or even read newspapers. I subscribe to news podcasts that keep me up to date, and find it much more time efficient. In Red Herring magazine there were some interesting statistics in how people are reading their news
8% of MP3 owners listened to news podcasts on their players in 2006
6% of cell phone owners got news on their cell phones in 2006
18.5% of PDA owners got news on their PDA’s IN 2006
It surprised me that the podcast one was so low however the above shows the continued trend to receiving news on the run. Time is such a scarce resource that any way that we can find to use time more efficiently the better. Again I feel that it is important that we sell the benefit of podcasting more than the tool itself. For instance we should ask more about “Is time management an issue for you? What if you could receive information on the move or while you are exercising, traveling etc? ” We can then point our colleagues, friends etc to podcasting. The benefit is time shifting not the podcast in itself.
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 am
But did the survey say how many of those owners of MP3 player listened to other podcasts? I’d bet that if they surveyed people who were regular podcast listeners, they’d find that a lot of them listened to news podcasts at least occasionally. But the percentage of iPod (and other MP3 player) owners who listen to any podcasts at all is pretty small.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Sallie
Good point, not sure I will go and see if there is more info on that. I also suppose it depends (as Shel would say!)on what people define as news. I consider many podcasts not in the news category as news content?
Anna