Val Landi's Weblog, June 6
In May of 2000 I was CEO of Redband Broadcasting, a Sony-backed producer and distributor of "broadcast quality" audio programming for the media and entertainment industries. The missing link at the time was a centralized global distribution platform.
In a period of five short years, that global distribution system is now in place with Apple's iTunes. Apple has aggregated, packaged and centralized podcast availability, subscription, etc., in a easy-to-use form, made it work with the most popular music player around, the iPod. No skill required, just point and click, and it’s done.
By combining the time-shifting nature of an iPod with the inevitable growing professionalism of podcasts, and the current “quality” of commercial radio underscored by uniform mind-numbing mediocrity of a Clear Channel, I think we'll see the renaissance of what used to be the longtail of the golden age of radio.
It's inevitable that iTunes will be challenged by future services on the planning boards at Amazon and Microsoft, vastly increasing the distibution networks and opportunities for new advertising-supported content programming.
At Realtime, we're placing a major bet on the inevitability of this global platform and its predicted 22 billion users with our launch of WiredBerries Radio, The Woman's Network for Healthy Living, that encompasses weekly programs on notable women, music, fitness, food, nutrition, spirituality --all major topics of keen interest to today's wired woman.
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