Although the actual number of available podcasts for download is relatively small, the content being made available for listeners to download is proving to be a major success.
“Podcasting as a new media platform emerged about four years ago. In 2006, Primedia Broadcasting introduced several podcasts for listeners to download, beginning with the comedy features broadcast during 94.7 Highveld Stereo's Rude Awakening breakfast show. Listeners love this content on-air, so it's not surprising that demand for these podcasts has rocketed over the past two years,” explains Ryan Till, Primedia Broadcasting COO.
Below are the statistics for downloads of the three most popular podcasts, for the first seven months of 2008:
Primedia Broadcasting first introduced podcasting to its Johannesburg stations, beginning with 94.7 Highveld Stereo two years ago. In 2007 the group began offering listeners of its Cape Town stations, 94.5 Kfm and 567 CapeTalk, podcast features. These have been rolled out slowly in the Cape - as they were initially in Joburg - and the uptake has been on par with that of Joburg listeners in 2006.
“These figures show huge growth - it really is phenomenal,” added Till. “Some features, like Whackhead's Window on the World, for example, have recorded more downloads in the first six months of this year alone than they have collectively in the past two years. And these are just the figures for the actual downloads. Our research shows that many of these podcasts are passed on to friends - a number we can't even quantify at this point.”
Aside from this pass-on factor, a number of podcasts have also found their way on to third party sites such as YouTube.
“It would be great to quantify just how many people have enjoyed this content worldwide. But unfortunately the nature of Web 2.0 content sites and social networks makes this impossible. We've observed statistics as high as 800 000 for one of Whackhead's clips on YouTube alone, and don't claim these in our official figures,” he added.
Till said it was interesting to note how well the new digital platforms were working alongside radio as a medium.
“The initial fears that these platforms would threaten radio have not materialised. Instead, they are offering us great ways to interact with our listeners. These statistics bear testimony to the quality of the content we're offering. We've worked hard to ensure that we don't limit ourselves to podcasting per se, but to downloads of files on the web, and most importantly, to the mobile phone. We use the term ‘podcast' to refer to these collectively,” concluded Till.
Primedia Broadcasting's full list of podcasts
