NPR + Podcasts, Part II

A follow up on my NPR + Pod­casts post, it seems that NPR is indeed invest­ing in pod­cast­ing of its pro­grams. They’ve launched a Pod­cast Direc­tory, but it is inter­est­ing to note that they are not yet pro­vid­ing full-​length programs:

This ser­vice is our first step in pod­cast­ing and we are exper­i­ment­ing with a number of pro­gram formats… Pod­cast­ing full-​length pro­grams such as Morn­ing Edi­tion and All Things Con­sid­ered could be extremely expen­sive. Over the next sev­eral months, NPR and its public radio part­ners will be exper­i­ment­ing with a number of for­mats and offer­ings, and we invite your feedback.

And, a lot of the more worth­while Public Radio con­tent is actu­ally pro­duced at local sta­tions, and syn­di­cated nation­ally. For instance, WBUR in Boston pro­duces excel­lent pro­gram­ming, such as On Point, Only a Game, and Here and Now. But, they haven’t yet joined the band­wagon, again because of cost:

Legally we are not allowed to make avail­able for down­load via mp3 ANY broad­cast which con­tains un-​licensed copy­righted mate­r­ial (e.g. music heard through­out shows)… We are cur­rently work­ing on a pod­cast solu­tion for all of our pro­gram­ming con­tent. Please bear with us.

Sim­i­larly, WHYY in Philadel­phia pro­duces the highly pop­u­lar Fresh Air, but they don’t cur­rently offer a pod­cast of the program.

Still, it’s a step in the right direc­tion, and inter­est­ing to note that we likely have Apple iTunes to thank for push­ing pod­cast­ing into the mainstream.