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The Podcast for This American Life
The podcast for This American Life allows listeners todownload the the shows and listen to them at theirdiscretion. The This American Life team contracts witha site called audible.com to distribute the shows tolisteners who want to hear them. Despite calling theiroffering a podcast, however, it is not, at least in thenormal sense of the word. A podcast refers to an onlinesetup with an RSS feed that is regularily updated, canbe subscribed to, and provides links to sound or videofiles that can be downloaded and watched by thesubscriber. Audible.com and This American Life do notoffer that. Instead, the show's team allows audible.comto receive money for allowing listeners to download thesound files to the computer from audible.com's website. The only RSS file involved is one specific to theuser which allows that user access to the shows they areinterested in. Even odder than charging for a supposedpodcast, the sound files downloaded are tied to thespecific user who downloads them. Unlike the vastmajority of podcasts, which allow the files to bedistributed and redistributed as the end user wishes,without placing limitations on such, the This AmericanLife podcast restricts the file to a single user.
The podcast for This American Life misses the point ofwhat a podcast is intended to be, the free distribution ofinformation. The This American Life team is exploitingthe term podcasting, and the credibility and hipness thatis associated with the term in order to boost their ownpopularity.
On the other hand, the podcast for This American Lifemay be where the rest of the industry is headed.Although the technology was first adopted byindependent media groups that enjoyed it because of thelow cost of distribution and the close possible ties toend users, that may change when podcasting becomes awider phenomenon. If podcasting is adopted by moremainstream, corporate entities, the face of podcasting islikely to change to one where a profit plan is required.Audible.com's plan of forcing users to subscribe andpay for the feeds they want may be the way thecorporate world decides to latch on to and usepodcasting. The advantage of podcasting, directdistribution of the media files to the user's homecomputer quickly and easily, is not lost if the systemmoves to one revolving around profit.
Regretfully, the podcast for This American Life isprobably an example of what podcasting will be in afew years. As much as locked media files that restrictdistribution may be repugnant to many of the freeinformation activists that curently dominate podcasting,there is little to stop those who want to use the systemto make a profit from doing so.
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Alexander Hotz is a freelance multimedia journalist and public radio junkie based in New York City. Currently he teaches digital media at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Follow Alex on Twitter at @hotzington . With another long hot…
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