Podcasts can be the most wonderful tool for a radio to spread its content. But how do you get people to be interested ?
Well, Her Majesty The BBC had an idea : what if you could zap between podcasts ?
They started from a very simple fact : to choose the next radio you’re gonna be listening to, you zap. And when you zap, you “fall” in the middle of programs, in the middle of songs, etc. And falling in the middle gives you an immediate sense of “yes, that one is for me, I want more” of “no, thanks, let’s keep on searching.”
Until now, choosing podcasts was a very unnatural thing to do : to sample a show, you would have to choose it from a list, download it, play it from the beginning, etc. Not only that it was kind of reserved to the tech-savvy, but also it was not na-tu-ral ! The natural behavior of a radio consumer is to zap between programs.
So, this is what BBC invented ! A “tuner” that allows you to sample podcasts, straight at a random point, just like when you used to tune your old radio ! And if you like what you hear, press SPACEBAR : that “rewinds” the show and plays it from the beginning !
It happens here : http://thewireless.deepcobalt.com/
To play with it, you need Google Chrome or Safari.
In case you were wondering, that’s just another evidence that amazing ideas can come from Public Radio !
