ABCNews Joins the PodCasting Fray

[Brad Isaac]

Thanks to Boston Pocket PC, we find out that ABC News is now sending out headline news via Podcast on their website. The Afternote is the service that lets you download these MP3 files to your Pocket PC or iPOD.
ABC News has just started making their news available as MP3 files that can be added to your podcasting retreival program or RSS feed. Is this really podcasting or recasting? They really aren't creating new content directly for Podcasting or on-demand listening, but it is just a rebroadcasting of some of their current news casts and shows, this is still very good especially for those that just want to listen. There is no advertising (yet...), but this starts to mark the arrival of new technology (until they can find an appropriate business model) and makes you think what the future of podcasting will be.
Do you like Podcasts on your Pocket PC? If so, will you add The Afternote?

[GSmith]

Absolutely! I have already subscribed to ABCNews Nightline podcast and AfterNote podcast in FeederReader. I hope that these programs continue to be up-to-the-minute national information sources for those using a mobile podcatcher.
This is a great trend! It makes applications like FeederReader even more of a radio replacement because one of the major "holes" in podcasting is timely news sources. I expect other major networks to continue to move from podcasting tests to podcasting as normal procedure.
ABCNews has a great tradeoff of quality vs. file size. They've encoded at 11025KHz Mono compressed to 24kbit/s which yields 180Kbytes per minute. For talk, it sounds very similar to AM radio.
Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - The Pocket PC RSS text, videos, audio, podcasts
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road