This could be the Talk Radio killer.
A large part of America now own an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad.
Up until now, “podcasts” have been stupidly complex and intimidating. In the iUniverse, that meant switching between two apps, one to request a download, another to listen. A “podcast” is different than a “download” in that a Podcast can automatically “push” new episodes to you as they are released.
Apple got tied up combining music and podcast together based on noticing that both are audio and both could be sold (with apple getting a portion of the fee), but other than that – they have nothing in common.
The new app is very simple. You select your podcast, select the episode and it plays. You can download the dates and descriptions only, or the audio as it becomes available.
So imagine some day, Lew Dickey decides to “save money” by ending John Batchelor’s show. John can move his show to podcast only – if he gets 10,000 people to pay $10 a month for his show without those 24 minutes an hour of commercials and PSAs, he probably winds up with $75k a month after paying Apple and for the bandwidth, enough to fund a pretty good production staff. No Home office telling him who to interview, no FCC rules, no Equal Time requirements, no worrying about offending sponsors. The only people who can tell him what to do are the listeners, voting with their dollars. (Note that John Batchelor already has a free podcast without commercials)
The one down side to podcasts are they are not “live”. John has never accepted phone calls, so that’s almost a non-issue.