The Auricle

As major broadcasters like the BBC and CBC dip their toes tentatively into the podcast thing others are abandoning broadcast in favour of the podcast. The Webtalk Radio Show which was syndicated over a number of US FM Stations has jumped the broadcast ship and will now reach its audience only via podcasts or streaming servers. Freedom from regulatory interference was one reason cited for the jump. In their 5 March 2005 podcast, Webtalk highlight how Viacom, a global media empire, have downgraded their overall company value by USD 17 billion with 10 billion of that being their radio assets which they didn't think had the growth potential any more. The Webtalk message seems to be that terrestrial, non digital plain old radio is dying (ok changing) although topical local programming will continue to thrive with, for example, ultra low power FM stations casting to a highly defined part of a town or city. The bandwith so released could, however, be refocused to local or even national data services, e.g. existing local radio stations as ultra broadband distributors/suppliers?