Ich hab mal was kommentieren müssen dazu, Comment kam (noch) nicht an und damit das nicht verlorengeht, kommentiere ich mal vorübergehend hier:
I'd like to chime in with some observations from old Europe (I'm located in Germany) and from the listener side. While I am definitely from the long tail, I doubt that for Europe your observations will come true in the next years. Of yourse, IT-oriented people, educated people and many young people who grew up with computers will move to podcasting as a perfect means to listen to what they want when and where they want but this won't be a mass phenomenon in the next, say, 5-10 years in Europe. Since this is only a comment I won't go into details but there are some facts that support my position.
First, while there are private broadcast companies in Europe (and for radio, they are "slim") there are still huge public broadcasting companies both for TV and radio with multi-billion-Euro strong budgets. They do not face an Innovator's Dilemma because they are (forced) funded by the people. Basically every household (who owns a radio or a TV set) has to pay fees for the public TV and radio - about 20 dollars per month in Germany (It doesn't matter if you listen and see only private radio/TV. It's the ability to receive public radio/TV that matters).
And still public broadcast companies are allowed - to a limited extent - to do commercials and have sponsored shows and all that. So, there's no need to downsize and nearly nobody tries to stop this system.
The reason many european countries do have this system is for the "felt" need to have a public, neutral, basic set of radio and TV channels that have to follow a public mandate for information, entertainment and culture. About 90% of the airtime of public radio and TV does not differ from private radio and TV - movies, game shows, talk shows, soap operas on TV, pop muzak on the radio. The sad fact is that probably the reminding 10% of public airtime, ambitious radio and TV programs like SWR2 or Arte will face a loss of listeners and viewers because exactly their target audience is most likely to switch to podcast shows.
Second, the majority of radio listeners doesn't actually ever change their listening habits. They listen to "their" broadcast station, be it public like SWR3 or private like Radio Antenne. Both private and public mass market radios do basically the same thing, they build communities, tangle on-the-air and internet presence, found "clubs" and whatever. And people listen to these stations for convenience - simply switch on the radio and you're done and because they broadcast that modern format radio with less than 100 hits in heavy rotation plus 3-minute news every hour plus easily listened to 3-minute spoken bits. Being in the office, on the commute, in the factories you don't see people listening to the iPod. That does start for people riding trains or during flights but this is niche and no mass market.
That said, I feel that Brendan is right: The mass market goes for the brand and the convenience - radio and over-the-air broadcasting. But the sophisticated people go for content, podcasting, time-shift media-consumption. Funnily, there once was a commercial claim that hits the nail on the head "Thirst is everything, image is nothing" (Sprite, a lemon soda like 7up).
A last thing: Radio in Europe, being well fed, heavily strikes back. The excellent show about the BBC radio on ITC was one further proof of that.
Es gehört zu den erfreulicheren Eigenschaften unserer Regierung, daß sie im Auswärtigen Amt am Werderschen Markt in Berlin nicht nur ein nettes kleines Café a la Starbucks installiert hat, sondern daß es im Bereich der - leider etwas zugigen - Vorhalle kostenloses WLAN gibt. Einziger Wermutstropfen: VPN-Einwahl klappt nicht so recht und es ist etwas hakelig, bis mal mal "drin" ist (im Netz, nicht im AA).
Insofern: feine Sache, Joschka. Weiter so.
Interessantes Posting zum Tod von Alem Techale, der Verlobten des neuen 10.000m Weltmeisters Bekele.
Januar 2005, falls der Link nicht klappt...
Einer meiner absoluten favourites auf ITC: Reinventing radio
Das macht wieder richtig Lust, BBC zu hören!
Once again there's lots of stuff on IT Conversations worth listening to:
Tim O'Reilly at the MySQLConference - great talk about open source, very entertaining. About companies unterstanding how addressing people works and which not
Roger McNamee at Software 2005 - the New Normal. Software trends after the big bubbles of the 90's. Very enlightening.
While there are definitely many podcasts that don't seem to be focused enough, too long or too technical there are always some real listening pearls. Actually, people like Mark Cuban are very entertaining. A general idea many current speeches rephrase in various ways is about addressing certain communities or turning customers into communities. The more customers can participate in any kind of development the more they tend to stay with a supplier or product.