I came across this blog post via Podcasting News:
I’ve been following some podcasts on and off for the past six months or so, and have begun to question whether it’s an efficient use of my time. The content of the shows I listen to are generally very high. […]
But, it begins to seem to me that this is an inefficient means of receiving information. In the time I can listen to an average podcast, I could have caught up on my 50 favorite blogs, or read a chapter in a book, or read the latest issue of Red Herring magazine. I do read super fast. It’s a habit I learned as a grad student. You learn to read fast in grad school, or you get crap for grades. Podcasts deliver information slowly. [petertdavis]
This raises a good question. There’s a large part of me that understands and agrees with what he is saying, but this is an age old argument being rehashed over a “new” medium.
For instance, why watch TV news when you can get in depth new coverage from a newspaper? TV is more timely while you have to wait for tomorrow’s edition to be printed. Well, why read a newspaper when you have the web? The news is timely and published by the same people pumping out info that shows up on the pages of your favorite newspaper. This argument has gone on for nearly a hundred years in various forms.
It’s all about preference. If you want timely info, then maybe podcasting isn’t for you. I doubt that there are people out there that love the news so much that they set their DVR to record the news every night so they can get dated information later. Radio can cover those gaps if need be, right?
By the way, radio broadcasting turns 100 years old this year.