While written word has strengths in being a well constructed stream of consciousness laid out in a pre-planned format. However, the spoken word in a podcast “speaks” to the person that is far more personally engaging.

In response to Mr. Harris’s post, I agree that podcasting channels need to emerge that better align podcasts into more thematic and well focused websites than simply an all encompassing directory like Odeo, etc.

My concept is called PodcastBuffet.com and is a network of affiliated websites that are each dedicated to a very specific niches such as yogapodcasts.com, indiefilmpodcasts.com, etc. The reasoning is that the advertisers will in essence have a “one-stop-shop” for all of their podcast ad insertion needs. They will have access to specific podcasts relevant to their target audience as well as the websites themselves which will offer traditional banner ads, product intros, etc.

I have explored some of these concepts in a column I write for called, “Podcast Predictions” at VitalPodcasts.com. Check out “Podcast Advertising Models”, “Business Applications” and “College Lectures” where I basically break down how podcast lectures will emerge as a ned digital content category and could be a huge windfall for all major universities (and the professors/lecturers)and will be one of the hottest topics in the world of podcasting in 2007.

In response to

The comment by Derick harris is right on

However, until and unless podcasting as a medium has the ability to “separate” itself (to use the third party attribution in the Havens item) from other media, in particular radio and television broadcasting — Podbranding as an integral part of the media mix will find it difficult to find audiences on a regular and systematic basis.

The reason for this is because Podcasting to this day has no “overall” content organizing apparatus in place, where listeners and viewers, especially in connection with brand-related content, can in effect “tune in” to this or that podcast “aggregation” of thematically organized content, as is the case with radio and television.

It is true, of course, that certain “podcasting” entities on the public Internet intend for their own brands to become focal points for podcasts in the general sense. But, such entities nonetheless do not constitute an overall organizing apparatus, (or way to find different podcasts regardless of the website that lists them).

For radio, the organizing equivalent is frequency assigned stations that focus on this or that content “format”; and, for television vertical channels, all of them on cable.

Ironically, Podcasting as a “medium” actually does have the ability in the technical sense to organize all podcasts, in so-called master channels to which brand names are assigned in the form of, for example, .

Hundreds of such product and service “brand channels” are available to podcasters on a network of product and service-specific master channels – that are actually called “pods”, and which were laid across the public Internet, for exactly that purpose, brand name specificity in content thematic channels, beginning as far back 1998-99.

The problem (for podcasting and podcasters) is that (apparently) nobody in the podcasting community seems to realize that the equivalent of thematically consistent radio and television networks is available to anyone who requests access to an appropriate “pod” to which the name of the brand-related podcast is attached as in, for example, , , and so on and so forth across almost the entire spectrum of everyday common consumer products and services.

Derick Harris
Cyber ID
Volcano, Hawaii