Charlene Li over at Forrester
Research has blogged about the firm's newest report on podcasting. She says that only 1% of households listen
to podcasts and a substantial percentage of those only listen to mainstream media content republished as podcasts for
time-shifting purposes. Lee and others say this is a real downer for podcasting, but I've got to say - if
one our of every hundred households are listening to podcasts that seems like a pretty good start to me!
I live in a town of 200,000 people , so presuming there are an average of 3 people per household that's
63,000 households. 630 households in my town listen to podcasts? Probably 800 people? It's hard to get 800
people to do anything. I'm not sure what to think of those numbers. Does that mean a Dawn and Drew party in our little town would draw 100 people? That there are 20
other people here who listen to the Gilmor Gang? I don't know.
Obviously I'm not a scientist, but I don't know that podcasting is ready to be declared dead yet. It's obviously
not a mass market media format yet either, but is how many of its practitioners are aiming for that?
If 1% listen to podcasts, that sounds like a good start to me
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Fair enough Eszter. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic. Thanks for pointing that out.
Posted at 9:37PM on Apr 8th 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick
3. Podcasting is slow, but it will grow as content evolves.
Posted at 9:41AM on Apr 10th 2006 by Ron Wilson
1. You misquoted/misrepresented the report. The finding, according to the blog post, is this: "1% of online households in North America download and listen to podcasts". Online housholds is by far not the same thing as all households.
Posted at 4:58PM on Apr 8th 2006 by eszter