Will podcasts kill the radio ads?

Advertisers fear their messages may get edited out by the growing band of iPod listeners, writes Paul Durman

PERSONAL video recorders, such as Sky+, are already scaring the living daylights out of television advertisers, fearful that viewers will quickly learn to fast-forward through the commercials. Now the podcasting phenomenon is posing a similar threat to commercial radio.

Podcasting can make radio broadcasts and other audio files available over the internet, allowing them to be downloaded and saved on an iPod or similar digital music player.

Since podcasting started to gain popularity last autumn, it has quickly been embraced by conventional radio companies, in addition to the many amateur broadcasters who were the first to adopt the technology. The BBC and Virgin Radio are both in the vanguard of those experimenting with podcasts.

It is easy to see the appeal. Podcasting breaks down the temporal and geographical limitations of radio. If you want to listen to the Today programme in Toronto at 10pm, you can.

Chris Kimber, head of radio interactive at the BBC, said feedback from listeners had been “overwhelmingly” positive. “The feedback is: ‘We absolutely love this. When are you going to start offering more of your programmes like this?’” The BBC trial includes the Chris Moyles show from Radio 1, as well as the main interview from the Today programme and Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Kimber said: “You can listen to it on a plane or on holiday in France. You can take it with you.”

He said the BBC was keen to ensure that radio remained relevant to a mobile generation growing up with the iPod.

The danger, at least for commercial broadcasters, is that the podcast generation will stop listening to the advertisements. It is almost as easy to skip ads with a digital music player as it is with a Sky+ box.

Roger Parry, the chairman of ClearChannel International, part of America’s biggest radio company, said: “You have exactly the same sort of issues that you have with a Sky+ box.

“The conventional, 30-second spot is threatened. The more power you have to listen to something under your control the less likely you are to sit through (an advertisement).”

Audiences could also fragment if podcasting takes off in a big way. That could have commercial implications. Our listener in Toronto is not very valuable to an advertiser offering tool hire in Tooting.

But there will also be new opportunities. James Cridland, head of new-media strategic development at Virgin Radio, said: “We believe we can reach new audiences for our advertisers that we otherwise couldn’t. It’s a great marketing tool.

“There are a lot of people who will be able to sample what our breakfast show is all about who perhaps would not have otherwise listened to Virgin Radio.”

Virgin’s Pete and Geoff breakfast show began daily podcasting in March, the first such move by a British radio station.

The podcast is stripped of the news, weather and travel information that would date it. More awkwardly, for copyright reasons Virgin also has to remove the music.

Cridland said: “What you end up with is the best of our breakfast show and what people tune in for — which apart from the music is the entertaining and wry observations on the world.”