Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Rebirth of radio



Not net radio, but podcasting. As the cell phones leans more and more towards becoming the ubiquitous device for the person on the go and memory chips get smaller and smaller, the radio will be reborn in the form of podcasts.

People like to hear people talk. Personally, there are a few podcasts that I listen to almost daily. They allow me to not read the newspapers as much, and give me the information I require in a short 15-20 minute segment during my travel to and from work. I download the podcast onto my smartphone, plug it in and go. Here's what I listen to (almost exclusively ESPN, because I haven't had the time to search out others).

-Baseball Today - ESPN: Above and beyond the best podcast series I've ever heard (I think I've heard 5). Alan Schwarz does a fantastic job of recapping the previous nights events, has great knowledgeable guests, and talks about baseball. Been listening to these guys since they started last year, and have tremendously enjoyed the whole time. Sure some of the sound bites are gimmicky, but whatever. Great job.

-Daily Dish - ESPN: Chad Ford does a bang up job of talking hoops. Hard to get into NBA for me because Raptors are out, but that is not their fault.

-Fantasy Focus -ESPN: After Baseball today, listening to this makes my ears hurt. They've got intrusive songs with this high pitched beep that goes off every few seconds and the commentators speak in forceful AM radio tones (e.g. "do not pick up Mark Hendrickson on the Dodgers. I will jump out of your computer and stop you from picking up Mark Hendrickson" who ended up pitching 6 shutout innings of 3 hit ball with 7 strikeouts that evening). I guess if you don't follow baseball it might make sense to have these guys advise some moves, but all in all, asides from the injury specific news on players, there isn't much they add. They could cut the podcast down to 5 minutes and simply discuss injuries, transactions, and implications. I don't need to know to hold on to Pujols because he's probably going to hit 15 homeruns in June (my prediction, not theirs).

-Sports Guy - ESPN: Well, he's had one episode so far. Lets hope it turns out better than that cartoon based on him ESPN was putting on for a while.

-Off Wing Opinion: Eric McErlain and Joe Tasca did some podcasts that I listened to last year. Good stuff there about the NHL and mostly the Washington Capitals.

Well, that's all for now, a short summary for sure. Here are some posts about Net radio, which, from what I understand, is different from podcasting.

The Death and Rebirth of Web Radio

The Death of Internet Radio