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More audio content is planned for Guardian.co.uk: this week saw the launch of The Business, a weekly finance and economics podcast. Next to follow will be regular video features off the back of the weekly football podcast, the Guardian’s head of audio, Matt Wells, told Journalism.co.uk.
Jeff Jarvis’ monthly Media Talk USA launched last week: “The idea was this: all the major developments in global media, from digital innovations like Google and YouTube, to the crisis in print journalism, started in the US before spreading here. It makes sense to chronicle those developments in the same fashion as we follow the UK media scene with Media Talk,” Matt Wells told Journalism.co.uk.
According to an announcement via the Radio Academy, the application process for producing Football Weekly and Football Weekly Extra for the 2008/9 season is now open.
“After two really successful seasons working with production companies that shared the Guardian.co.uk vision and helped establish the programmes as the UK’s leading football podcast brand, we’re looking to build on the great work already done. We want to increase the reach and profile of the shows, and continue to be the net’s number one destination for football podcasts,” said Matt Wells, the Guardian’s head of audio, in the statement.
The Guardian will soon introduce ad spots to its podcasts in the next few weeks, the title’s head of audio told an industry conference today.
Matt Wells, who announced the plans in January, said a range of bluechip advertisers were interested in the spots, though he did not elaborate on which podcasts would be the first to feature the advertising.
The argument for introducing podcast ads had been significantly boosted by the success of the Guardian’s advertising within its video content, Wells added.
The future of Channel 4’s digital radio prospect was on the table at today’s Radio Reborn conference, prompting some cagey answers from Natalie Schwarz, chair of the 4 Digital group over their ongoing discussions with Ofcom.
In the clip below Matt Wells, head of audio at the Guardian, challenges Schwarz’s comments:
Speaking from the audience, Ofcom’s director of radio and multimedia Peter Davies did concede that Channel 4 had not asked for an extension to the launch date of Channel 4 Digital.
Matt Wells, head of audio at the Guardian, says the new morning news podcast will offer listeners an alternative to the BBC, which currently dominates the breakfast market.
Last month Wells criticised the BBC’s own podcasts for attracting ‘unimpressive’ audience figures.
The latter produced the following exchange between Trevor Dann, director of the Radio Academy and first speaker in the clip, and Wells.
But as fellow panellist Nathalie Schwarz, director of radio at Channel 4, went on to point out: it doesn’t matter – the generation that are going be most in tune with podcasting won’t care what it’s called – adding weight to Wells’ suggestion that calling it radio is a hang-up of the traditional media.
Schwarz also levelled Wells’ views on the BBC’s podcast service: how you define success in podcasting, she suggested, should be related to what you are trying to achieve.
“The brave new world isn’t just about big numbers and mass reach – I think that’s the old style world of looking at RAJAR as a almost a trading currency to get commercial revenue.”
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