Ministry of Intrigue

A recent article in Wired News discusses the difficulties podcasting is creating for NPR. With free podcasts finally becoming more common for NPR programming, more and more listeners are turning to them in order to listen to their shows whenever they want, and in some cases to avoid pledge drives. The latter is the real issue, because the NPR affiliate stations depend on donations in order to fund their programming.

“Unfortunately, in a typical market only 8 percent of the audience become members of their station, so if you erode that even to 7 percent or 6 percent because they’re not getting the shows through the terrestrial station, that’s not a good business model,” says Paul Marszalek, a radio industry expert who consults with dozens of public and private radio stations. “There is not a single person on the local affiliate level who has not expressed some level of trepidation.”

The cool thing is that NPR’s response is not to freak out and declare podcasting evil, but to change their business model. NPR is underwriting all their podcasts and is proposing to build a central directory for all affiliate stations and distributing funds to the producing stations, based off of ad revenue.

While all that may sound well and good, I’m pretty concerned about the idea of NPR becoming more intrinsically tied with commercial ad revenue. It seems to me that it would make more sense to run the pledge drives in the podcasts as well and use the directory as a centralized pledge site. Each pledge would be associated with a particular show (just like the affiliates do during fund raising), and those funds would then be distributed to the producing station. This can still cause problems for the smaller affiliate stations that can’t afford to produce as much content, and rely on purchasing programming from other stations. I don’t know what can be done about that.

It is great to see that NPR is working to adapt to this new medium, but I really hope that they don’t stray to far from a donation based system.

Read the story here.

Via Warren Ellis:

I am disturbed.

Charikot, Dolakha, March 29 - The birth of a bizarre-looking baby in Charikot, the headquarters of Dolakha district, on Wednesday, drew a huge number of onlookers to witness the astonishing sight. The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot. The Karki couple is a permanent resident of Dolakha’s Bhirkot VDC. The bizarre baby, however, died after half an hour of its birth, Suntali, the mother, informed. It was taken to the hospital after its death.

Link to original story.

Via Digg:

Keith and Chemda of the Keith and the Girl podcast recently received a copy of the Podshow contract via an anonymous listener before they entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the folks at Podshow. Upon reading the contract they were so shocked with what they found they had to share it.

In this episode they read through the contract on the air, and I have to say the shit that is in this agreement is just shocking. I know that it is modeled after the way record labels work, which must be to make the evil in it seem like it is legitimate and acceptable, which is a ridiculous notion. I mean, if I anally rape you the same way as a corporation that specializes in rape does it, it’s still me anally raping you.

If you can get past the religious comments at the very beginning, you should really listen to this episode if you are a podcaster. Admittedly, KATG interpret a few things incorrectly, but it is still pretty heinous.

Some highlights of the contract (although certainly not all inclusive):

• You have to move all of your stuff over to Podshow’s server and Podshow gains the exclusive distribution rights for ALL of your content (including logos) for the duration of the contract. This distribution is for all forms of publication/distribution both existing and yet to be invented.
  • Okay, so you risk sacrificing your personal brand for this, as you become a subsidiary of Podshow. The Internet is not like the music industry, website addresses and corporate identity mean a lot more. When your feed address changes, all your listeners/readers/viewers are affected.
  • Podcasting is not like traditional media, you don’t need some corporation to distribute your material. That’s the point.
  • Also, as Keith points out, at the rate the world of podcasting develops, who knows what kind of distribution rights you are giving up.
• You have to acknowledge that Podshow is making a significant investment in your show.
  • I smell bullshit.
• You retain creative control over your content, BUT Podshow reserves the right to refuse distribution of a particular piece of content if for whatever reason they deem it is a problem.
  • And since they are your exclusive distributor, that show essentially ceases to exist as you are not allowed to distribute it any other way.
  • Oh, and you can’t change the direction of your show. The premise of your show needs to stay the same as that is what Podshow is buying into.
• Podshow’s monetary reimbursement for these sacrifices (and all the others I’m not listing) are mostly speculative. You might make money on advertisement (that you don’t choose) or downloads. There is no clear promise of what that will be.
  • Also, any current agreements you have or are pending with advertisers must be turned over to to them. Any money you are receiving from old advertising agreements must be turned over to Podshow. KATG describe it well as: “Give to daddy. He’ll know what to do with it.”
• After your year agreement, Podshow can renew for up to two more years automatically.
  • You don’t have a choice if they decide to renew, and their rights to your work continue.
  • After the first year, Podshow can cancel your agreement for any reason whatsoever by just sending you an email. Sorry, but you’re done. Go elsewhere with no notice.

I’m sorry, but this is bullshit regardless of how common it is in traditional media. Podcasting is something new and the “additional promotion and distribution” you gain through Podshow is speculative and suspect at best. Other services are arising to connect podcasters with advertisers if you really need to monetize your show, (for example Podtrac) and podcasters would be well advised to go without the draconian restrictions imparted by Podshow. Promote your podcast independently, don’t let some other company take over your advertising and take your profits.

The beauty of New Media is that anyone can start creating and distributing material themselves over the Internet. It’s a wellspring of hope for independent artists who want to get their work out there, retain control of their work and make a living. Podshow, in its attempt to centralize, monetize (at least in focus) and simplify podcasting is in reality just the traditional “fuck the artists” media model mascareding that it is the friendly face of the New Media movement. It’s counter to the whole spirit of podcasting, and will eventually just result in more corporate podcasts as ad revenue begins to take precedence over content, which I feel will be inevitable.

I know these sentiments might draw fire from the Podfather’s sycophants, but I don’t care.

Fuck you, Podshow. We’re better off without you.

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UPDATE: I just found this little bit of news from February about why the Tartan podcast left Podshow. Read it here.

Also check out commentary from Eric Rice here.

Via Warren Ellis:

This is a sort of exciting development in the South Dakota abortion story. The president of the Oglala Sioux tribe of South Dakota, Cecilia Fire Thunder, is so upset that she has stated she intends to set up a Planned Parenthood clinic upon her personal land within the boudries of the reservation where South Dakota’s government has no jurisdiction. Pretty cool.

You can read the article here.

Via Digg:

You absolutely need to read this hilarious article about a drunken rumble-that-almost-was between employees of ATI and NVIDIA employees at the CeBIT conference. It appears to have started after the ATI folks showed up during an NVIDIA and started hitting on one of the female NVIDIA employees. The conflict went outside and was only saved from violence by their better judgement (or perhaps the intense fear of pain inherent in all geeks).

Brilliant. Here’s the link once more for luck.

I just read an article in Wired about a robot designed by the Virginia Military Institute that can troll around your yard recognize and collect ticks. The ticks are then placed inside the robots denim skirt, which ticks cling to naturally. The fabric of the skirt is soaked in permethrin, which means that little insect’s disease carrying days are over.

The robot goes all around the yard, recharging after every lap, while emitting carbon-dioxide to attract our little bloodsucking friends. It seems to be pretty effective. According to the article, students released 75 ticks into the test area. During an eight hour test the robot collected 72 of them. Super cool, eh?

Read about it here.