The Podcast for This American Life
The podcast for This American Life allows listeners to download the the shows and listen to them at their discretion. The This American Life team contracts with a site called audible.com to distribute the shows to listeners who want to hear them. Despite calling their offering a podcast, however, it is not, at least in the normal sense of the word. A podcast refers to an online setup with an RSS feed that is regularily updated, can be subscribed to, and provides links to sound or video files that can be downloaded and watched by the subscriber. Audible.com and This American Life do not offer that. Instead, the show's team allows audible.com to receive money for allowing listeners to download the sound files to the computer from audible.com's web site. The only RSS file involved is one specific to the user which allows that user access to the shows they are interested in. Even odder than charging for a supposed podcast, the sound files downloaded are tied to the specific user who downloads them. Unlike the vast majority of podcasts, which allow the files to be distributed and redistributed as the end user wishes, without placing limitations on such, the This American Life podcast restricts the file to a single user.
The podcast for This American Life misses the point of what a podcast is intended to be, the free distribution of information. The This American Life team is exploiting the term podcasting, and the credibility and hipness that is associated with the term in order to boost their own popularity.
On the other hand, the podcast
for This American Life may be
where the rest of the industry is
headed. Although the technology
was first adopted by independent
media groups that enjoyed it
because of the low cost of
distribution and the close
possible ties to end users, that
may change when podcasting becomes
a wider phenomenon. If podcasting
is adopted by more mainstream,
corporate entities, the face of
podcasting is likely to change to
one where a profit plan is
required.
Audible.com's plan of forcing
users to subscribe and pay for the
feeds they want may be the way the
corporate world decides to latch
on to and use podcasting. The
advantage of podcasting, direct
distribution of the media files to
the user's home computer quickly
and easily, is not lost if the
system moves to one revolving
around profit.
Regretfully, the podcast for This American Life is probably an example of what podcasting will be in a few years. As much as locked media files that restrict distribution may be repugnant to many of the free information activists that curently dominate podcasting, there is little to stop those who want to use the system to make a profit from doing so.
