The original Podshow contracts will be coming up for renewal in the coming months. If the rumour mill is accurate, we should expect a mass exodus of podcasters from the network. This will light up the ‘glass is half-empty’ folks, giving them something else to point to as being a sign of the end of podcasting.

The rumoured exodus of podcasters from Podshow speaks to the management style of the network and not the state of the medium. Many of the originals are still podcasting and, if the rumour mill is to be believed, those who aren’t have stopped because of their experiences. I’d guess that those who have put their podcasts on hold have done so to ride out restrictive and unrewarding contracts.

Podshow had great ideas and a lot of money to spend on them. There’s been a lot of opportunity for the company to innovate not only for itself, but for the podcast community at large. They used some of that money to develop the podshow site (which looks eerily like the manic sites of the mainstream media networks that Podshow was trying to distinguish itself from). There are many ways the money could have been spent (hindsight is 20-20 and it’s easy to be a critic, right?). From where I sit, Podshow’s single greatest asset is the Podsafe Music Network; a good resource that stemmed from a great idea. A little more thought, energy and money could have made it amazing.

Don’t be alarmed as news of an exodus from Podshow unfolds. Many companies make mistakes (think Apple before the second coming of Steve Jobs); many industries take their lumps (think the bursting of the dot com bubble in the late 90’s). That doesn’t mean the companies and the industries won’t thrive in the end.

Photo: ‘Mass Exodus’ by CheGleRN on Flickr