Awhile back I read an article titled Five Things Podcasters Can Learn From Radio. The author’s name was Ethan. It seems it is nowhere to be found now, but at the time it did generate a lot of pushback, mostly from OG podcasters. In the article, the author made the following statement:
I think many podcasters often forget that without broadcast radio their entire medium might not exist.
I’m going to chime in here, mostly because of the “without radio” bit. Before I do, I want to say that this is in no way intended to offend or disparage the author. This isn’t about Ethan or the article. It’s about the general state of the medium that has given me great concern.
Look, I think the five points are generally sound, common sense tips that can be applied to any kind of presentation, whether it’s a recorded event or a live one. But there’s no secret sauce here. it’s rote. The principles behind these lessons are basic rules about public presentation that go back even beyond radio and were merely adapted for the medium.
“I think many podcasters often forget that without broadcast radio their entire medium might not exist.” This is an arrogant statement, but expected considering that at the time the article was written, the author had 5 years experience in radio. The question is, how long had he been a podcaster? I have a little experience in both broadcasting and podcasting myself, and I can say this statement is absolutely not true. I will prove that in a moment. However, the statement reveals something that I think is cause for concern. It tells one how the radio industry really views podcasters and podcasting as ‘radio wannabees’ in what they may consider exclusively their professional domain.
From what I’ve seen, read and heard from both radio professionals and mainstream media outlets during the last couple of years, there seem to be radio folks out there who believe podcasting SHOULD belong to radio, while those grass roots podcasters are the “great unwashed” who want to “play radio”. This is a purely elitist view from an industry that first ignored the medium, then blew it off with smirks, and now that it is gaining acceptance by the masses and the potential for profitability, now wants to pwn it, re-write the history of the medium as a new invention of radio and otherwise make over podcasting into what they think it SHOULD be – theirs.
Would podcasting exist without radio? It is quite possible. In fact, not only is it a possibility, I would take it further and say it is statistically a very high probability. Why? Simply because it’s a recorded medium, not a broadcast medium. Consider this. Commercial radio (we’re talking about commercial stations, not military, ham, or utilitarian) has only been around for approximately one hundred years. Although the first station technically went on the air around 1909, it didn’t actually become a commercially licensed and monetized station until over decade later.
However, recorded media has been around since the late 1880’s. A prime example of this is the “spoken word” phonograph and cylinder recordings. In the beginning, songs and music weren’t the only performances recorded, distributed and played via cylinders and later, Victrolas. There were comedy routines, speeches, book readings and other entertainment. Yes, that’s right. The first audio books were recorded long before there was Audible.
First came recorded media, then commercial radio. Not the other way around. If not for commercial radio, considering the progress of the rest of technology, chances are podcasting would likely be the primary medium of audio content today.
If you really want to compare podcasting to any entertainment medium, it isn’t the radio. It’s the phonograph.