What do Tony Leon, Jo’burg rockabilly band the Slashdogs and Pastor Mark Taylor from Zimbabwe have in common? The answer is all three have embraced the new digital fad that is podcasting.
A podcast is an audio file that can be downloaded by multiple users and listened to on a portable music player or a computer.
Most podcasts take the form of a broadcast, with new episodes available for download at regular intervals. These broadcasts often contain interviews, music and commentary that cover a niche topic.
Tony Leon’s podcast is all about the Democratic Alliance, Slashdogs Radio promotes local bands and Taylor has a podcast that deliberates on the current state of Zimbabwe.
South Africa’s high broadband cost has had a serious impact on the take-up of new broadcasting technology, such as podcasting, but this has not stopped a number of locally produced podcasts from springing up.
Already South Africa has two podcast directories in www.podfarm.co.za and www.podcast.co.za, which aim to draw attention to locally produced podcasts.
Taylor, who has a background in radio, started the latter more than a year ago to promote his podcast and other Southern African content.
“I came across podcasting by accident and having a radio background, was interested in different ways to spread audio content,” says Taylor.
“To me right now, podcasting resembles the radio we used to get in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties; very raw, very rough and telling it like it is,” says Taylor. “It’s a reaction to commercialised packaged radio, the Guttenberg Press of radio.”
“Podcasting is an extension of blogging, a creatively free way of mouthing off about something, talking about something or documenting something,” says Richard Rumney, who is involved in creating a regular podcast named Seedcast (www.seedcast.com), which looks at the electronic music scene in South Africa.
“It’s a lot less restrictive than radio, where there are fixed rules and advertisers to deal with,” says Rumney.
Simon Dingel and Rebecca Khan, his co-hosts on Seedcast, agree. Both became involved in podcasting owing to their frustration with commercial South African radio.
“We were sick of kak South African radio and joked about starting a pirate radio station. Then we realised we didn’t have to, we could podcast,” says Khan. “We called it Seedcast — plant a seed and see where it goes,” says Dingel.
Entertainment journalist Daniel Friedman says he started listening to podcasts to save himself from listening to mainstream radio.
“Maybe the podcast will force a change in mainstream radio’s approach. If people can download a specialised show with no adverts that caters directly for their taste, it kind of takes away the motivation to listen to the radio,” says Friedman.
Dingel says there are more podcasts on the horizon from the Seedcast team, including one that covers South African rock and another that covers local comedy.
Jean Barker, entertainment editor at M-Web, says that between 400 and 1 500 users subscribe to its podcasts every week.
“It’s the Web’s self-publishing ethic extended into the realm of radio and it feels really exciting,” says Barker. “Overseas, the BBC had a couple of trial podcasts one week. Next thing you know, they’ve got a whole section and half their radio content is available this way.”