LRH Enterprises

Producing podcasts for audio distribution is common in the broadcast world. These podcasts are used by many stations, especially ‘small’ stations with limited manpower, to fill in their content. It’s an important symbiotic relationship that helps everyone involved, and works very nicely.

Well, most of the time. Occasionally a content producer or distributor will unknowingly (or maybe negligently) create problems for broadcasters. Such is the case with some recent product created by Women’s International News Gathering Service (WINGS) and distributed on AudioPort.

In this case study, it seems that both parties have some hand in the situation. WINGS created a multiple part podcast, nicely in two segments, but under one “program” or “podcast” on AudioPort. The way AudioPort handles it in the rss feed causes it to serve the second segment only, ignoring the first segment.

Any station using a pod grabber might not even know there was an issue. The pod grabber we use at WUMD will send an alert message if there is no retrieved audio file in any week. In this case, what happens is in the first week, the second segment is downloaded, and presumably broadcast. The following week, the pod grabber does not find any new file and the alert is sent. A manual intervention is required, and the intervenor will discover the first segment was not delivered. If manually downloaded, it would be broadcast out of order, not good for the station or the producer.

When problems created by producers or distributors cause problems for the broadcaster, no one wins. It may seem convenient for the producer to put everything in one big group, but for the automated broadcaster, it just doesn’t work. The producer may be making their job easier, but at the expense of many broadcasters. I usually strongly suggest to management to drop such producers, and they cost us time and energy (and money), especially when there are other producers who are doing it correctly.

A little further back in time, the same kind of issue arose with a three-part production. The AudioPort RSS feed only delivered the third segment. A big mess for the broadcaster.

Of course it seems natural for the producer to create a multiple part production when it will cover required output for multiple weeks. A three part production gives two weeks off. It’s a good practice that encourages listeners to tune in the following week for the next part. It should and will save time for the producer, as long as it’s distributed properly, one segment per week. (You can see more about this in PODcast for Automation.)

As discussed in other articles on this site concerning pod casting for broadcasting, the segments need to be posted in a timely manner, or at the very least, all the segments need to be listed in the RSS feed. The weekly distribution should be accommodated by scheduling or other means. Listing two weeks worth of product in one week might raise an alert the second week, when nothing arrives.

The “better scenario” shown might be all that AudioPort can accomplish on it’s own. To achieve the “best scenario”, the producers need to split out the segments and release them each week. Perhaps AudioPort will provide (if it doesn’t already) the designation of a “release date” for each clip, giving the producer the power it needs to get the distribution just right.

For us, and I’m sure others, using the automatic podgrabber makes for generally trouble-free and hands-off handling of the many podcast programs we grab and broadcast each week. It’s important that producers and distributors do nothing to endanger the smooth operations of the broadcaster.