Podcasting Uses

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system is increasingly used for other reasons, including:

• A way for people and organizations to avoid regulatory bodies, such as the British Ofcom, that would not allow a program to be broadcast in traditional media.
• A way for news organizations to distribute audio or video as an addition to their existing text (or mostly text) news products. For example, Wikinews began to podcast its News Briefs in 2005. Companies are also using podcasts as a way to distribute their multimedia news to journalists and consumers through companies like MultiVu.
• Education. In 2004 Musselburgh Grammar School pioneered podcast lessons with foreign language audio revision and homework, other pioneers include The Room 208 Podcast, Radio WillowWeb, and Room 613 Talk. In the second half of 2005, a Communication Studies course at the University of Western Australia (iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture) used student-created podcasts as the main assessment item.
• Politics. In the U.S., both major political parties have various podcasts, as do numerous politicians.
  Religion. Godcasting has been used by many religious groups. Many churches produce podcasts of talks and sermons. Disciples with Microphones provides podcasts relating to the Catholic church.
• Pornography. Porncasting and podnography are sometimes used to refer to pornography in podcasts.
• Unofficial audio tours of museums (musecast).
• Official cultural or historic audio tours of cities ([audisseyguides]).
• Communication from space. On 7 August 2005. American astronaut Steve Robinson claimed the first podcast from space during the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-114 - although there was no subscription feed, merely an audio file that required manual downloading. (transcript & audio).
• Television commentary. Battlestar Galactica writer and executive producer Ronald D. Moore creates commentary podcasts for each new episode of Battlestar Galactica (download audio commentary). Other television shows have since followed suit.
• Sports. In 2005, unofficial podcasts for major sports teams launched, providing fans both in and outside of the teams' direct broadcast areas with on-demand commentary. Pioneers include Cubscast. The Cubscast founders also formed the first city-specific sports podcast network, hosting one podcast for each major Chicago team at Chicagosportscasts.com.
• Conference and meeting alerts. Podcasts can be packaged to alert attendees to agendas, hosted roundtables and daily feedback.
• Advocacy. The 5,500 locked out staff (editors, journalists, technicians, hosts, etc.) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were podcasting news and other programming during August and September of 2005.
• Youth media. Podcasting has become a way for youth media organizations, such as Youth Radio (Youth Radio site), to bring youth perspectives to a wider audience.
• Newspapers. Newspapers use podcasts to brodcast audio content from print interviews and drive traffic to their websites. The San Franciso Chronicle is believed to be the first major daily newspaper to start podcasting using an external website, in Feb 2005. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was the first to use its own website and the first in Asia, having launched on April 19, 2005
• Academic journal digests: The Society of Critical Care Medicine has a podcast used to update clinicians with summaries of important articles, as well as interviews.
• Public libraries can podcast local publications free of Copyright, offering spoken word alternatives to the visually impaired.
• Law enforcement: The Chicago Police Department has a free video podcast of its half-hour weekly news magazine called "CrimeWatch," which airs on local TV. It documents community policing (CAPS) success stories.

This information is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia material "Podcasting".