Season One - What's the Deal with Video Podcasts?
October 01, 2021
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Podcasts are everywhere these days! There’s countless podcasts representing countless subjects and providing something to serve countless interests. And with this ubiquity of podcasting, there is also an unspoken assumption that we all know what podcasts are and how we consume them—that is, we all know that podcasts are things we listen to, right?
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be like this! Audio podcasts just happen to be the most popular form of the medium, but there are other possible formats as well. In fact, in the mid- to late-2000s there was the possibility that the “future of podcasting” would arrive in the form of video podcasts. Apple promoted video podcast capabilities on their newly video capable iPods, the new iPhone, and as the natural extension of their recently revamped iTunes Music Store – now just the iTunes Store.
But video podcasts never really took off. Though we have an astounding amount of video content available in today’s internet, podcasting remains wholly separate. Why is that? What were video podcasts? What could they have become? And why did they ultimately fail? Over the next few episodes—most audio, but some video, and maybe even some in other experimental formats—I’ll dig into those questions, and more. I’ll look through promotional materials from the time to see how video podcasts were described. And then I’ll try and recreate the experience of mid-2000s video podcasts with what I’m calling a “technological reenactment.”
December 13, 2021
In this final episode of Season One, I try to wrap up my discussion of the video podcasts and talk a bit about the future of podcasts more broadly. Despite my best efforts to keep us exploring the area besidethe rabbit hole and not go too deep into it, it seems like we inadvertently ended up there anyway. So in this last episode I try to walk us back up to the surface by talking back over my experience of producing a video podcast and finally by considering Spotify’s recently announced video feature.
Read More...December 11, 2021
This episode continues my exploration of why it is that the video podcast has generally failed to take off in popularity. Even as technology has improved, podcasts remain a distinctly audio phenomenon. Perhaps this is because of some fundamental characteristic of podcast that makes them better suited for audio. I call this characteristic the “podcast-iness” of podcasts.
Read More...November 27, 2021
This episode continues my exploration of why it is that the video podcast has generally failed to take off in popularity. Even as technology has improved, podcasts remain a distinctly audio phenomenon. Perhaps this is because of some fundamental characteristic of podcast that makes them better suited for audio. I call this characteristic the “podcast-iness” of podcasts.
Read More...November 1, 2021
Podcasts are everywhere these days! There’s countless podcasts representing countless subjects and providing something to serve countless interests. And with this ubiquity of podcasting, there is also an unspoken assumption that we all know what podcasts are and how we consume them—that is, we all know that podcasts are things we listen to, right? Well, not necessarily...
Read More...October 29, 2021
Podcasts are everywhere these days! There’s countless podcasts representing countless subjects and providing something to serve countless interests. And with this ubiquity of podcasting, there is also an unspoken assumption that we all know what podcasts are and how we consume them—that is, we all know that podcasts are things we listen to, right? Well, not necessarily...
Read More...
