Andy Grace has a technology spot on The Cage breakfast show on Triple M in Sydney. As an aside, clever marketing kudos to the network who run The Cage in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide with one lineup, but have a totally different lineup for The Cage in Brisbane

Andy Grace wrote and interesting piece on Podcasting – meet your new business model, go read the whole item for perspective of someone making a living in Main Stream Media.

The bit I want to comment on is (I don’t think his system supports trackbacks or pingbacks):

Remember as always content is king, so what about all that pretty ordinary amateur podcast content out there right now? It will be quickly overtaken by high quality, big name talent from major broadcasters, just like tons of community radio is out there but largely ignored by the general public. That’s where Sirius, XM and other smart broadcast companies and personalities fit in.

Sure, content is king.

While community and special interest radio (& TV!) is largely ignored by the masses, that is why it we need it. Where else can alternative, progressive or minority music/ideas have a voice?

Some will cross over to become popular – remember when grunge or Seattle sound was “alternative”.

Podcasting is similar but easier to implement for the podcaster. It is still a marketer’s medium – you can produce great content but if nobody finds it you’re just struggling alone.

Brand name content and aggregators like radio stations and personalities should include podcasting if only to deny market share to start up competitors.

Howard Stern (or The Cage) want ears listening to them. Radio stations want advertising revenue. Advertisers want access to demographics. Podcasting is just a delivery mechanism for them. But audiences are fragmenting. Cable TV is showing us that: the same number of people are watching TV; they’re just watching more channels.

Now some kid working in her bedroom is creating compelling content and will find an audience. If that audience grows large enough we’ll hear about her. That is the most exciting future of podcasting for me.