Interesting article on iTunes & podcasting

…no honest! Come back!

Continuing the interesting trend of mashup, now podcasting articles that seem to get it spookily right Washington Post has an interesting one about iTunes and the commercialisation of podcasting.

I learnt of this article via Scott Fletcher over at Podcheck who has the great and very true pay-off line that although we can’t do ESPN (and I think we’d be silly to try), we can do a part of what ESPN does better than they can…yes the majors don’t get podcasting and it’s niche appeal – while the people who are trying to become big media shows like the BBC or ABC are kind of cute, they’ll get crushed or subsumed. It’s the nichecasting that will survive. Eventually the big guns will get bored, or the audience will get tired of the same-old in an only slightly new format…I mean Queer Eye on your iPod? Puuhhlease.

And in all of this where is our great lord and master? I’ve avoided mentioning the Great Haired One because, frankly, he gets too much press as it is. What Scott’s recent Podcheck made me wonder is did he know that iTunes was going to concentrate on the big 5 media casts – including eventually it seems to the detriment of Podshow whose shows largely seem to have dropped off the Podcasting page on iTunes? Was that an unfortunate side-effect? Was Adam our Karl Rove?

And why is there a picture of a penis on the Karl Rove page at Wikipedia?

I think both of these are something I’d really like to know…penis first!