Handheld devices offer convenient ways to listen to popular podcasts.
Students who walk to class with their headphones in may not be listening to Kanye West’s new album, but to the suspenseful narrative on the murder of a young high school teen and the trial afterward.
Podcasts have become a new alternative for on-the-go listening that is continuing its upward trend thanks to digital media platforms such as iTunes, Pandora and Soundcloud.
“You see everyone walking around with their phones and with their headphones on. There's only so much music you're going to want to listen to — so many books on tape that you're going to want to listen to,” Allison Hunter, editor-in-chief of WOUB News, said. “It just makes sense that all forms of information delivered on this platform would grow in some way.”
Both WOUB and ACRN, student media groups at Ohio University, came out with podcasting shows this year — WOUB with their conversational news and information program, AbOUt, and ACRN’s most recent podcast show, The Rainbow Room, which discusses topics related to the LGBT community.
“It’s so funny. … When TV came along it was supposed to kill radio,” Hunter said. “Then digital came along and it was supposed to kill TV and radio. … It's just a matter of what that delivery system is.”
Unlike watching TV or surfing the web to read news, podcasts don’t require one’s undivided attention.
“That's the thing about podcasts: They're made for people with specific interests, so they cover specific topics that those groups enjoy,” Shem Krey, executive board member and fundraising and sales director for ACRN, said in an email.
Krey said ACRN is working to expand the network’s podcast productions. ACRN has not necessarily seen an increase or decrease in the number of people tuning in, but has consistent listeners thanks to the targeted focus each podcast offers.
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Courtney Cox, a sophomore studying communication sciences and disorders, recently heard from her friends about Serial, the popular murder mystery podcast series that is a spin-off of the NPR podcast, This American Life. This American Life aired in 1995 with public radio personality Ira Glass. It is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs on public radio stations across the United States.
“Walking to class, driving, doing laundry are basically the three main times (that I listen to Serial),” Cox said. “I feel like it just makes you think a little bit more (versus TV), especially this one since it’s a murder mystery. You have this lady giving you both sides of the story so it makes you have to think.”
According to the Pew Research Center, Serial became the fastest podcast to reach five million streams or downloads in iTunes history in the fall of 2014. The study also said podcasting as a whole has been steadily growing its audience over the past two years.
Glass also will be stopping by OU on Friday for “An Evening With Ira Glass.”
“When I first heard (Ira Glass) was happening I just got giddy,” Liam Niemeyer, a sophomore studying journalism and former Post reporter, said. “I was probably just pure enthusiasm for hours on end. I’m a podcast junky.”
A staff of 10 student reporters work to produce the culture and news radio show that airs once a week every Tuesday.
“I like to think we aspire to be like the NPR radio show This American Life but for the Athens and southeastern Ohio region,” Niemeyer, editor of the WOUB radio and podcast show, The OUtlet, said.
The OUtlet is one of five student-produced WOUB shows that incorporates podcasts in some form.
“(Podcasts are) still a little bit under the radar,” Niemeyer said. “I’d say podcasts have grown a lot from where they have been, but it’s still growing.”
Growing, that is, when there are many other ways a person could choose to engage with instead.
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It just might be that podcasting offers more to the senses than other forms of entertainment can deliver, Niemeyer added.
“For me, podcasting and audio journalism in general is, I think, unique from all other forms of journalism in the fact that with audio journalism it requires a lot of imagery,” Niemeyer said.
WOUB has recognized numerous students’ growing interest in audio journalism. The final six weeks of Spring Semester, WOUB will bring in Kim Fox, professor at The American University in Cairo, Egypt and an OU graduate, to instruct an “Audio Storytelling Boot Camp” that is open to anyone, not just media students.
“Many of her students have won awards and had their work heard on public radio. She covered the revolution in Egypt,” Hunter said. “So we’re excited that we have someone on campus who actively teaches this.”
Students can sign up for Fox’s boot camp in the WOUB newsroom on the third floor of the Radio-Television Building.
Niemeyer is happy to see the increase in interest of the podcasting and audio storytelling platform and hopes the momentum continues.
“You can find a podcast on almost any topic you are interested in," he said. "It’s a unique experience that I think everyone should give a shot.”
@saruhhhfranks
sf084814@ohio.edu
