Three quick radio tidbits…

Fresh Air with Terry Gross is now podcasting full episodes. Actually happened in late January. One less show to record manually.

Fair Game is a new show that has found its way onto my podcast subscription list. Distributed by PRI and aiming at the Daily Show demographic. I find myself fast forwarding a fair amount, but that’s the beauty of podcasts.

This American Life has posted a trailer for the upcoming TV series. The show will premiere on Showtime on March 22. Ira and his posse are also going on tour. Corin and I are going to see them do a live show on Feb. 27 in Boston.

Just noticed that Public Radio International will start distributing WireTap on January 5th.  No info on how many US public radio stations will pick it up.

PRI announcement page. 

Yesterday I found out that The Be Good Tanyas newest album, “Hello Love”, was going to be reviewed on NPR’s, “All Things Considered” (link to review).  A few minutes before the review aired (4:47 pm to be precise), I headed over to Amazon.com to see the Amazon Sales Rank for the album.  It was #244.

This morning, I checked at 8:33 and the sales rank is now #23.

Big name Public Radio podcasts are starting to come out at a steady pace.  American Public Media announced in a press release today that they will be offering additional Podcasts of their programming including:

• Marketplace
• Marketplace Money
• Word for Word
• American RadioWorks documentaries
• The Splendid Table (available in Podcast form in November)

You can get the feeds to the above and there other podcasts on the American Public Media Podcast page.

Chicago Public radio just released a Press Release announcing they are going to offer This American Life via a regular old RSS Podcast feed for free.

Starting Monday, October 16, each show will be available to podcast subscribers on the Monday following its national broadcast. After seven days, the shows migrate to the program’s online archives.

Bravo.

Update: Here’s the RSS Podcast Feed.

Even though it is still technically possible to download non-DRM’d MP3’s from This American Life’s website, they are making things better on the Audible/iTunes Music store side of things. According to the weekly update from TAL, they are lowering the price of a single DRM’d episode from $3.95-$5.95 down to $0.95:

…we’ve dropped prices for downloads of archived shows to $.95 at Audible.com; prices at the Apple Music Store should drop to $.95 soon. We’ll be announcing some other new audio developments in the coming weeks — watch this list for details.

I received a request from CBC Radio to remove the wiretap episodes. My fingers were crossed that they would make the episodes available in some form on the Wiretap website before sending a take down request. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. They still need to work out rights issues. Note, they do have a Real Audio stream of an episode on the site, however, I believe the same episode has been there a while.  So I don’t think they are posting new episodes after they air.
If you want to catch the show you’ll have to tune in via the radio or live Internet stream.

Wiretap - Get With It (11 MB MP3) From 2006-07-01 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Much to his dismay, Jonathan Goldstein discovers an unsettling connection between his mother and his friend Howard; and some radical advice from a marketing specialist on how to take the WireTap brand global.

Subscribe to the Wiretap Podcast.

Wiretap - 10,000 Kilograms of Radio (11 MB MP3) From 2006-06-23 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Subscribe to the Wiretap Podcast.

I have decided to remove the Unofficial This American Life podcast at the request of TAL’s webmaster Elizabeth Meister. Contrary to posts on Boing Boing and elsewhere, Jon Udell and I did not recieve a “nastygram” or formal ceast and desist letter. Rather we received friendly emails from Ms. Meister, This American Life’s webmaster, making a request to take down the hyperlinks and RSS feeds, or she’d regrettably have to get lawyers involved.

While Ms. Meister did miss the mark by accusing us of copyright infringement without a clear understanding of what we were actually doing, or what copyright law allows, she was trying to be polite and friendly which I appreciate.

To be clear, I was not storing or making any copies of their work, I was simply providing links to publicly accessible MP3’s hosted on This American Life’s own servers. It is my position that hyperlinking to publicly accessible MP3’s is perfectly legal (see Ticketmaster v. Tickets.com) and fundamental to the existence of the web.

While I am confident that I am breaking no law, I am respecting TAL wishes by taking down the podcast and archive page which points to their MP3’s. This American Life has decided to take the bizarre approach to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) by asking nicely… which I suppose is better than using some Windows only Microsoft Media Player DRM or Sony Rootkit DRM.

The real issue, I believe, is of course money. This American Life has chosen to distribute DRM encumbered episodes for downloading/timeshifting via Audible at 4 dollars a pop. TAL’s rational is that their contract with contributors states they must pay the contributors for each download. This excuse is a little strange considering This American Life writes the contract. Altering future contracts, and making the episodes freely available for downloading/timeshifting is feasable (NPR has done it.) Doing so would increase listenership. An increased listenership would mean TAL gets more money from advertisers underwriters, which can then be used to compensate story contributors. Everyone wins. If you are skeptical that making the MP3’s freely available would increase listenership, just look at recent examples that underscore the power of the Internets:

- Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday” digital short gets put on the web and suddenly people remember that SNL still exists.

- According to Wired.com in regards to Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire, “Three times as many people saw Stewart’s appearance online as on CNN itself”

- Today, ABC announced that in their ONE month trial of putting shows on-line for free with commercials that they were viewed 11 million times. In NINE months, they’ve only sold 6 million commercial free episodes for $2 each.

The new demographic that This American Life and public radio so desperately need to capture aren’t listening to FM, they aren’t buying content from Audible, they aren’t listening to content when you tell them to. Either offer the content without barriers, or prepare to be replaced by someone else.

If you’ve made it this far, I encourage you to write to This American Life to let them know how you feel: web AT thislife DOT org. Be polite. Ms. Meister and the rest of the TAL staff are people trying to tell you great stories while being able to fulfill their daily nutritional requirement. Also if you listen to TAL regularly, send them a few bucks. If you donate here, the funds are used for covering bandwidth costs for TAL.

Wiretap - This One’s for the Children (11 MB MP3) From 2006-06-09 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Subscribe to the Wiretap Podcast.

Wiretap - Goody Two Shoes (11 MB MP3) From 2006-06-02 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Subscribe to the Wiretap Podcast.

Wiretap - A Bottle of Seltzer (11 MB MP3) From 2006-05-19 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Subscribe to the Wiretap Podcast.

Wiretap - The Lothario (11 MB MP3) From 2006-05-12 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap - Mr. Helpful (11 MB MP3) From 2006-05-05 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Update: I originally set up the link to use Coral Cache to reduce bandwidth consumption. Someone reported the link didn’t work for them. Another said it was cut short. So I’ve updated the link. Try again if you had any trouble. -jared

The CBC today expanded their podcast line up.  Unfortunately, Wiretap is not included.  Several of their other podcasts are also “best of” which I’ve never understood.  Podcasting is for people who like the show, but want to time-shift. Just give the listener the original show.  Maybe a “best of” in addition to the full show.  WNYC does this with Studio 360, and it is often so boiled down that it is unlistenable.

Wiretap - Gentleman’s Guide to Grooming (11 MB MP3) From 2006-04-21 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

The fine folks at the controls of This American Life have finally ditched Real Audio in favor of MP3’s. Unfortunately, they aren’t yet providing a Podcast feed. So I’ve thrown together a simple feed. You can subscribe here.

This is simply an RSS feed which points to their publicly accessible MP3’s. I’m not hosting anything. (I am linking to the MP3 using coral cache to reduce their bandwidth consumption.)

The feed only contains the 20 most recent episodes. For a full archive with links to the MP3’s you can use my (currently bare bones) archive page.

Wiretap - Samson and Delilah (11 MB MP3) From 2006-04-14 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Wiretap - The Call-in Show (11 MB MP3) From 2006-04-07 with host Jonathan Goldstein.