My iTunes problems are nearly resolved. Actually, the root of the problem was a misconfiguration on Electric Sky and Just One More Book which confused iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes takes a long time to get unconfused. Anyway, things should be back to normal in the next day or so.

Thanks for your patience!

Congratulations to Sequentia and Caprica for conducting the incredibly successful Canadian Podcast Listeners Survey. It was the first independent survey in Canada to attract significant participation - 928 respondents! Congratulations are also in order for the authors’ transparency about the process they followed in conducting this survey.

Facts worth noting:

• This is the first survey I have seen that reported a higher percentage of female listeners (52%).
• A surprising 69% of Canadians continue to get their news from traditional media sources such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines.
• 46% of respondents prefer a weekly episode.
• 35% of respondents prefer a Podcast which is ten minutes or shorter.
• Advertising/sponsorship opportunities may not be attractive in Canada. Only 28% of respondents earn $60K or more per year, 48% earn less than $40K.
• Only 25% of respondents would not tolerate an advertisement in a Podcast.
• 60% of respondents are likely to buy a product or service recommended by a Podcast host that they trust.

And now, my concerns:

• The survey missed an opportunity to identify how respondents viewed sponsorship messages versus advertisements.
• The authors made an assumption that respondents have “little knowledge of video podcasts”. The questions from which this claim is made do not support this assumption.
• The section labelled Content is King presents confusing results which are derived from a question in which respondents provided their top three choices. The results presented suggest that 58% of respondents prefer re-purposed content and 69% prefer original content meaning that the bar chart breakdown exceeds 100% - something that requires a better explanation. The section labelled Canada’s Favourite Podcasts presents a similarly confusing summary.
• For consistency, I encourage the authors to focus on two chart styles - pie charts with percentages, and vertical bar charts with specific figures.

Despite my concerns (name a survey which didn’t result in some controversy), the authors did a phenomenal job. The information in this report is incredibly valuable, and the core structure should serve as the foundation of a similar effort next year to allow for a worthwhile comparison. I hope that the authors consider timing their next survey so that the release of its report can occur at PAB2007.

I need help!  Two of my Podcasts are no longer being updated in iTunes… Electric Sky and Just One More Book.  According to Feedburner, the errors reported in my RSS file won’t affect iTunes because it ignores the tags in question.  I haven’t received any fresh insight from the PodPress forum.  iTunes hasn’t responded to my support request.

Can anyone help??!!!

Sorry about the delay.  I took an extra couple of days to decompress from a vacation.  I will post part 1 of my editing series shortly.

I have received a number of emails about my editing style, largely due to Bruce Murray’s (Zedcast) presentation at PAB2006 in which he detailed his version of my technique - something he dubbed “Blevis-ian” editing. He wasn’t far off.

Beginning late next week, I will run a multi-part series on how I edit my Podcasts. The audio recording of Bruce’s presentation will be available from the Canadian Podcast Buffet on July 26.

Everyone loves a press, or media (with props to Tod), release. It is frequently the first tool that bloggers and Podcasters use in an attempt to create a local buzz for their online activities. The question is, do they really help?

Media organizations are flooded with news releases on a daily basis. Some releases are newsworthy, most are not. More importantly, a good percentage of these releases come from established businesses and organizations that have local interests.

Before you create your release, ask yourself if the release is of interest to the public or just of interest to you. If there is no story to latch on to in your media release it will be a pointless exercise.

“News release literally means that you should be releasing news, not just information, but real news.”, says Terry Fallis of the Inside PR Podcast.  Trade media will often pick up news releases about new blogs relevant to their audiences, but in most cases, it would be a very slow news day for the Globe and Mail to care.

If you become a media pest by repeatedly sending releases that have nothing to them, you can bet that you will be in the recycle bin when you have something worth reporting on.

Tricks of the Podcasting Masters (TotPM) is the latest book about Podcasting. This offering by Rob Walch (Podcast 411) and Mur Lafferty (Geek Fu Action Grip) was released at the beginning of June.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read any of the previous books (in their entirety) - probably because I didn’t think they had anything to offer that I didn’t already know. However, I have read sections of those books while hanging out at Chapters/Indigo.

TotPM offers information that I haven’t seen in any of the books I have skimmed through. Rob and Mur have done a great job summarizing genres and identifying their standouts from these genres in a case-study style. They offer great insight into the challenges of Podcasting and make strong suggestions on surviving the hobby. The authors also offer ideas for various types of organizations (e.g. mainstream media, NGOs, government agencies, educational institutions, etc..) that may be considering Podcasting as a tool. What they do especially well is present ways to promote your Podcast and they provide a very realistic view of revenue opportunities and how to evaluate them.

Discussions in the book that I have concerns about include the chapter “The Art of the Interview”, and some of the technical areas such as editing and production. Specifically, some of my ideas on conducting and editing interviews are very different than the authors’, and there is a noticeable absence of any worthwhile technical details, a fact that the authors acknowledge in the text. I also feel that the comparison of a newspaper being able to cheaply adopt Podcasting versus a radio station having to invest millions to get into printing was weak; a more accurate and level comparison would have the radio station launching an informative, text-based website.

Podcasting books have been serving up great introductions to the craft. This is the first book that takes Podcasting information to the next level and introduces solid suggestions, creative ideas and realistic data.

If it were up to me, the next book to be published for Podcasters would offer more specific details on editing and production techniques without a slant towards music production.

Edison Research has released the audio presentation and slides for a study that they did entitled The Podcast Consumer Revealed. There is a lot of golden information in this study that can help Podcasters devise ways to make money from their Podcast, and for companies to consider when exploring sponsorship and advertising opportunities in the Podcast space.

The speaking sessions and panels from the Corporate Podcasting Summit 2006 are being made available through the IT Conversations Podcasting Summit page. The content and audio quality is fantastic. Speakers and panelists include Audrey Reed-Granger, Michael Geoghegan, Dave Mansueto, Rob Walch, Paul Colligan, Mark Ramsey and yours truly (Mark Blevis).

If you are anxious to download the set, the Quickcast is available now for $24.99. Otherwise, I understand that the sessions will be trickled out in the near future.

Podscope and Podzinger are services that create searchable, full text compilations of audio and video content that is available on the Internet. This means that one can go to either of these sites, perform a keyword search, and be provided with an extensive list of farmed media files that include the requested keywords. Links to the exact spot in the media file are provided so that the site visitor can listen to the audio that resulted in the returned text. Obviously, there are phenomenal applications for this in the Podcast community.

So… do they work?

I submitted the RSS feed for Electric Sky to Podscope last summer, and several times in the last six months. I don’t recall ever submitting that same information to Podzinger. Today, I performed three searches on each site.

Search one: I submitted the keywords four officers on board, a phrase that appeared in the most recent episode of Electric Sky (Preserving Aviation History, released June 16). Podzinger had me at the top of a list sorted by relevance. Podscope found no results.

Search two: This search was for Ian Copeland who was mentioned in the first ever Electric Sky, and was the feature guest of the ninth episode of the show. Again, Podscope came up dry. Podzinger listed my first episode at the top of a results by relevance sort, and failed to pick up the feature show.

Search three: I searched for hello possums, the opening two words of my interview with Dame Edna. Neither Podscope nor Podzinger offerred any results.

A final thought, there are some issues with respect to speech-to-text accuracy. For example, in the transcription of my Preserving Aviation History episode, I read the following text on Podzinger:

“on this edition of portrait jim carrey takes ever played in the pacific — world war two”

Jim Carrey should be Jim Terry, and I’m not sure what the rest of the sentence means.