Radio New Zealand has received accolades (and lots of visits) for their use of podcasts on their website. It’s certainly worth a look – all your favourite shows are on the site as downloadable podcasts for your MP3 or computer. There’s also plenty of options for listening ‘on demand’ (clicking on a link to hear audio). Visitors have listened to around 4,000 ‘on demand’ audio items.

Richard Hulse and Mark Cubey from RNZ tell me that they are building audiences by making content more accessible – content that listeners may not hear if their personal listening schedule does not coincide with programming timetables. Richard told me about a university student who said he wouldn’t be seen dead listening to the station, but who downloads podcasts and tells his friends about them.

Other initiatives on the website include a blog from Todd Niall at the Amercia’s cup. Over in Valencia, Todd writes content, records audio, takes photos and uploads material to the website. I also really like the photos on the website of kiwis enjoying their national radio station (like the one with this post). A simple way to involve users in the website as well as imparting a strong impression that RNZ is our radio station.

A collaboration with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra means that the APO’s concerts are available on the website too. (APO is responsible for some other interesting ideas that I’ll have to report on later – their ‘Happy Hour’ free concert series, for example, seems to be designed for harassed workers to unwind in an informal setting and to interact with performers). In the first month, their first concert was downloaded over 1000 times.

Putting cultural content like this online is not about replacing the event itself – it’s simply not the same experience – but it can hook new audiences.

TVNZ’s ‘tv on demand’ lets you catch up on what you’ve missed and check out old favourites. Old footage of Radio with Pictures got a laugh out of me. They’ve got a list of ‘what’s hot’ – the most popular shows – and I wonder if this is based on visits by website users. How about letting us vote on what’s hot (and then maybe rescreening these shows on TV)?

I asked Richard and Mark at RNZ if the popularity of particular podcasts feeds back into their programming decisions, and they say they are certainly learning about what works for their users. There are limits of course. As public broadcasters, both TVNZ and RNZ (as important vehicles for expressing our national identity) have responsibilities to meet their charters and present a balanced and comprehensive view of NZ culture.

A website that does let its users direct a good portion of its programming content is Current TV (founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt). Current TV is a global TV network where a third of the content is viewer-created and the schedule is chosen by the online community. The website provides structure in the form of assignments and training tools so that budding producers are encouraged to develop new content. Having uploaded your video, it gets voted on by the community for appearance on TV. The idea is more topics, more points of view, and a global conversation. Perhaps some ideas here that we can adopt in time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Culture online, New in the sector, Technology, Your stories, Building audiences, National identity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.