The typical KPFA subscriber is probably a 60 year old white guy with a college education and an income of over $70,000 per year. That’s roughly the same as a reader of The Economist, but on the other end of the political spectrum. It’s an elite group, and it sounds like it.

I get the impression that public radio is mostly for old folks. When they really push for the foot-in-the-grave demographic, they do better and better. My theory is simple: the audience for public radio is people who were around 30 in 1975, started listening to NPR, and never stopped. It sounds like it.

NPR is the fucking Classic Rock Radio of the educated middle class. Rock on dudes! Pour another glass of syrah for your homies.

Even the youthful shows, like This American Life, which I like, sounds like it’s done mostly by 28 year old middle-class college grads who don’t like hip hop or metal.

No wonder the youth of today are saying “fuck” on podcasts.

What I learned there is that it only takes around five shows for someone to sound reasonably good. If you get a dozen motivated people together, you’ll find the talent. The activist/amateur shows spun out a few folks who are now regulars on the air. They made some interesting programming, putting a lot of “first and only ____ show in Southern California” shows on.

I also learned that it’s tough to do a group program that sounds compelling. Not everyone is cut out for radio. It’s hard to find your audience in a tough timeslot, and it’s hard to do something different and get people to pay for it.

One other thing they did was smart. They also opened the doors to people going out into the city using mini-discs to record lectures and events, and pulled stuff off the internet, and selected the best from the cornucopia. This produced so many hours of compelling radio, it was obvious people are, pretty soon, going to produce so much great programming that Hi-Fi musicologists like Hill better watch out for their beloved timeslots.

Evil Genius, deconstructs the ‘public will never go for amateur stuff’ argument that broadcasters (even public or community broadcasters) always trot out in response to citizen-originating media. The post responds to a guest piece by Stephen Hill in …

One thing they don’t play is music by spoiled white brats who were picked on as children and want to get back at the world by screaming into a microphone and playing guitar with so much distorion that it covers up the fact that they can’t play. There is enough guitar, drums and bass garage bands int he world and I would be perfectly happy to never hear another one in my life.

keep it up

Paul

the thing is you and hill are both right!

glad to hear you are making it work.. and making so much great audio!!

you are an inspiration

Average content in podcasting is not very good. But commercial/public radio isn’t competing with “average” podcasts, they’re competing with the best podcasts. And the best podcasts could fill up more than 24 hours in an individual’s day.

My letter to Stephen Hill and Steve Gillmor can be found here:

http://wordpress.echovar.com/?p=8

They asked that it be entered into the public dialogue.

I think the key for Pubcasting is that as Podcasting searches for an appropriate business model — Pubcasting needs to follow the same path to ensure its future viability.

That said, I LOVED Blair Witch Project…

#1 it shouldn’t suck
#2 I need to be interested in it
#3 It shouldn’t seem like every student film I ever saw
#4 If it sucks after I’ve waited for it to play, watched dumbass kiddie titles and rips off cheesy music, I’ll hold a serious grudge.
I don’t care what you put on your blog but if you trick me into thinking I should watch it and then it sucks, then your blog is like a billion other worthless piles of shit that I won’t visit ever again.

And obviously, there doesn’t need to be revenue in the first place. People who are used to being a part in a big operation for a living seem to have a hard time imagining that something similar to what they do could be an individual’s hobby, but we keep seeing that it indeed can be.

Every time I hear someone say “well, anyone can do _that_”, I know there’s something brewing. The corollary to it is that as you point out, almost without exception, the people saying this have a dog in the fight.

As examples that I have watched first-hand, I offer: punk, (white media’s view of) rap, desktop publishing, open-source/GPL, photoshop, blogs and now – podcasting.

I completely agree, and specifically thought of your podcast when he went off about having to have expensive and extensive production facitilies. Love your podcast, keep up the good work!

How many times have you flipped through a half dozen radio stations to find something you accept? How many times have you flipped through a hundred or more tv stations before settling on something that you have already seen? There is already tons of slickly produced crap in the old media venues. Slick production does not equal good.