LRH Enterprises

This is the first part of an article about some problems that you as a POD Caster should be aware of when trying to provide compatiblity for ‘automation’ of POD grabbing (downloading) your programs for broadcast by other stations.

At WUMD, we use PODGrabber to collect the podcasts which we air. With this tool you set a schedule and it goes and downloads the podcast, usually an mp3. It grabs any new files, and then calls an external program which inserts the new cut into the OMT On Air database, ready to be played as determined by the scheduled log.

When the podcast is listed correctly in the podcaster’s RSS file, this works great! The problem arises when there is more than one available file listed in the RSS. By this I mean, different products or versions of the same product.

For example, the “Making Contact” podcaster seems to be challenged, but more so recently. They publish both on audioport and on the radioproject.

The audioport feed, for some reason, is the promo product. They post both their main product and a promo into their series, but only the second one, the promo, gets listed in the feed. This makes it impossible for automatic downloading, because the main product is inaccessable. (I’ve reported this to them, but they don’t seem to care.) This should be created as two different series, and two different feeds to be automation friendly.

In their feed at radioproject, they have begun a new practice of  including both the “station” and I suppose the “public” version of the podcast. To a podgrabber, it looks like two new files and two new programs to air. (This bad practice started in March.) This also makes it impossible for a podgrabber to know what to do! It’ll grab both, since they are new, and post both, creating a “duplicate” to be aired. Even if PODgrabber is set to only grab the most recent posting, it happens in this case to be the “public” version and not the one meant for stations to re-air. Again, this should be set up as two separate feeds.

It’s bad practice like this that cause stations like WUMD to drop programs from podcasters. It’s a simple task for the podcaster to keep a single product in a single feed to be automation friendly. The “Making Contact” feed cannot be automated. I have to go in every week and delete the duplicate, and rename the main cut properly so it can air, or I can turn off the podgrabber for this feed and go get it manually. The system needs to work without the need to fix up messes that can be avoided. This is why I’ve recommended to WUMD management that “Making Contact” be dropped from our line up.

See part two for another problem created by podcasters.