Everything Old is New Again: Podcasting as Radio's Revival

摘要

The seven articles comprising this symposium shed light on what makes pod-casting successful, but they also point towards additional questions to be answered. Notably, systematic research on podcast listening is absent, save for one small survey by Berry. While many of these articles discuss podcast audiences, particularly with regards to how they interact on social media, as a whole podcasting scholarship seems to have ceded listening studies to industry groups such as Edison Media Research, with only a few exceptions (c.f. Johnson, 2007; McClung & Johnson, 2010; Ritter & Cho, 2009). Given that these articles clearly show how critical audience interaction is to the success of independent podcasts, it would be useful for researchers to investigate what draws people to different types of podcasts, how they listen, and perhaps start to explain why some podcasts go viral, and why others do not. The lack of research on podcast listening is particularly critical in light of the rise of smartphone apps and the ways that these apps may shape listening habits. If popular podcasting apps provide recommendations biased towards a "top ten" mentality, will that serve to further consolidate listening trends to podcasts produced by major media outlets or the larger podcasting networks? Further examinations of podcast listening might also help us understand how much of podcasting's success is about time-shifting, and how much might be a revived interest in audio as platform for entertainment and information.