Tomorrow evening, there’s a Radio Academy event taking place in London looking at podcasting. As I’ve written previously, you always feel that podcasting is the perennial bridesmaid and never the bride in the digital media, and digital audio world.

I suppose I’ve been thinking a little more about it recently because one of my favourite podcasts has stopped production. The Guardian recently ceased its regular weekly Media Talk podcast, for reasons never quite specified. One can imagine that it was financial though, with the podcast taking some time, and perhaps more importantly some production money to make each week. And in return, they were probably seeing little direct financial benefit. Sadly it does sometimes feel that the only people who truly believe in podcast advertising over time have been Audbible, and latterly Squarespace. And those deals are almost certainly all direct response.

As my past piece said, there are some fundamental issues with making money from podcasting, and I can only think that these are partially the reason why the Guardian made its decision.

Media podcasts interlude

As for Media Talk? Well it’s reappeared in an entirely unrelated guise as The Media Podcast. But there’s a difference – Matt Hill who produces it, and previously produced the Guardian’s podcast, has decided that crowdfunding is the way forward. He’s duly launched a Kickstarter to make a year’s supply of programmes. That’s actually a pretty modest £9,000 that he’s trying to raise. Nobody is getting rich off the back of this, but it costs money to host audio and find studio space.

Anyway, at time of writing they’re at about a third of the money needed, with just sixteen days to go. So get over there and give it some love. While we all enjoy The Media Show on Radio 4, they’re much drier, and sometimes spend just a bit too much time on certain subjects (Yes – I’m talking about a replacement for the PCC. Honestly, thinking of news media as just the press is so outdated. Never mind what happens if The Sun prints something untrue, what about if Buzzfeed gets it wrong?). And obviously, the programme was certainly “inspired” by hearing the Guardian’s podcast.

Anyway, let’s have some choice. (And yes, I know there’s the Media Focus podcast too!)

What next?

Given the need for advertisers to have some kind of proof of delivery – regardless of whether or not those digital ads they are buying are actually delivered – and The Ad Contrarian is well worth a read on this – it does seem leave the idea of ad-supported podcasting in something of a flux, with its lack of proof-of-delivery. Indeed it’s sometimes a worry that a new release of iTunes might actually push podcasting down in their hieracrchy. For an example of this look how iTunes Radio has become “Radio”, while actual broadcast radio services became “Internet Radio”.

Assuming that it costs me to make a podcast, and ideally I’d like to at least cover my costs, employ talent and production people to make it properly, and invest in kit to deliver a decent audio quality, and pay for my hosting, even a modest means of making money would be great.

So what’s to be done?

Well I suspect that podcasting will never be completely mainstream, but it can be super-niche. And that doesn’t mean that those super-niche audiences shouldn’t be considered very valuable. They can be very valuable indeed. A year or two ago, I was producing a session for the Radio Festival and that session’s speaker was Google’s Matt Britten, VP for Northern and Central Europe. It turned out that he listened to Media Talk – a valuable listener indeed.

And it was interesting to hear Emily Bell in the final edition of the Guardian’s podcast suggest that there’s been something of a resurgence in the form in the US. Incidently, the much suggested Slate Money podcast with Felix Salmon is an excellent addition to my listening. Slate is obviously ad-funded, but they also have a listener subscription scheme to remove the ads and for some of their podcasts, add additional segments.

Slate’s subscriptions are voluntary, but another option is that taken by Velocast, a cycling podcast I’ve listened to in the past. They offer a selection of cycling podcasts based on a monthly fee. It seems to be a successful plan, although I must admit that I currently only hear the free daily news edition they put out.

Rumour has it that Apple is trying to help boost its podcast section of iTunes. They could provide some generic information about how much people actually listen to the podcasts, and other metrics that they almost certainly have from their iOS device usage stats. While that would only be part of the overall podcast audience – ignoring usage on other operating systems such as Android, and usage in apps outside of iTunes (e.g. Stitcher) – it would still be very indicative, and might help podcasters monetise their productions.

So is the future for podcasting bright or not?

I don’t know.

Looking beyond the regular ad-supported model does feel to be the way to go right now. And perhaps in a world where every part of the internet is trying to support itself with advertising, that’s right.

Overall, I’m modestly upbeat.