It was announced today that effective immediately, the lineup that made up “Adam Curry’s Podshow” on Sirius Satellite Radio is no longer being broadcast. My feelings on it are clear, and I’d like to share those with you in this post.
For those of you that think this is a downer or a setback, think again. Radio is an old, tired model lost in a new media landscape. Which would you rather own.. Sirius or YouTube?
My audience is 99% podcast listeners, with hundreds of thousands of rock and metal fans spanning every continent. For those unaware of the process of getting the show on Sirius, it involved significantly lowering the quality of the audio in order to fit into their ancient technology platform. Editing, uploading, and notating 24 minute segments for Sirius added 40% more workload for that 1% of additional audience resulting from the work. Though it was a nice personal accomplishment, I’d much rather chalk this one up to experience and dedicate my resources to delivering fresher content to an exponentially growing podcast audience.
A telling sign for me was when I listened to an episode of Keith & The Girl where they were guests on the Jay Thomas show on Sirius. Jay didn’t have a CLUE as to what podcasting was, who Keith and the Girl were, or even the fact that Podshow podcasts were being featured daily on the same channel he was broadcasting on! To me, Jay Thomas is completely representative of traditional and satellite radio. Absolutely clueless as to the power of podcasting. Perhaps I should forward Jay some of the recent emails I have received from heavy metal fans in China, Australia, Brazil, Europe or South Africa. My guess is that neither Jay, nor his fellow Sirius dinosaurs have ever known the feeling of having a truly global audience like the one podcasting can bring. I love being a podcaster. I love introducing hard working independent artists to rabid fans of hard rock and metal. More and more you see traditional media trying to bail from their own media platforms and into podcasting. It’s all over the front of iTunes. Podcasting is where its at. Satellite radio is where it WAS.
Two guys that I really need to thank are P.W. Fenton and Brian Noe. They helped to make sure The Scene Zine kept pace every single weekend on Sirius. I very much enjoyed sharing the airwaves with fellow members of the Podshow Family.
Everyone at Podshow is great. They continually make my dreams come true. I enjoy being a Podshow success story and will continue doing so with every challenge and opportunity presented along the way.
Your loss Sirius. We loved you in your prime.
Marcus
