Podcast numbers cut through hype

[Laurens]

BBC News writes:

People downloading to podcasts are still in a minority, despite the hype surrounding them, research suggests.

The number of US households listening to podcasts will increase to just 12 million by 2010, a Forrester Research report has found.

Tech savvy, young males are most likely to listen to take away audio it said.

Hype, meet Reality.

Personally, my honeymoon with podcasts is definitely over. I still listen to The World Technology and Science Friday occassionally, but most podcasts I've forgotten about already. Listening takes too much time and I don't commute much either. (My new job will require me to come to the office only once a week, while the remaining days I work from home.)

[Chaos]

I listened to a podcast. Once.

And seriously, it wasn't that interesting to me. I like listening to music, and reading my news. As I said before, I can generally read and understand at a much faster pace than someone can talk, with still being generally coherent. Add that to the fact that I don't want to hear 5 minutes of 'news' on some things, which is generally unavoidable with podcasts (not very easily avoidable, anyway), but with written news I can read the headline, and if I don't like it, just skip it.

Even though I have to 'commute' to school (funny word for it ), I don't feel like listening to much. At most, some nice music. I tend to read my news when I get a break near a computer, in the early morning as I have breakfast/coffee/etc. before leaving, or after I get home, when I catch up on the day's news (as I'm doing now).

So I can definitely see why podcasts just aren't sticking.