Rubenerd Blog

Afterword: After posting this entry thinking nobody would really read it, I received comments from five fantastic people who have all made me rethink this issue from the ground up… not to mention make me wish I had spent more time on this post in the first place!

You can read my gigantic reponse along with these comments (surprisingly!) in the comments section. Thank everyone for your help and feedback, you’ve all really helped a lot.

Isn’t the internet an amazing place? All this open dialogue with people from around the world, I’m loving it!

It seems there’s a growing number of people who aren’t impressed with the term podcast for one reason or another. From what I’ve been able to gather, these are the most common reasons why (feel free to post a comment below to add to the list):

Techy reasons

• It implies you need an Apple iPod to listen to them
• They’re not "casting" because XML is a client pull system, not a server push system!
• You can’t immedietly figure out what it is when hearing the term the first time
• It’s a techy, short sighted term with no longevity

The "don’t want to be associated with these" reasons

• It describes horrible shows like Dawn and Drew
• Podcasts have become too commercial
• Antonym to above: podcasts are amateur and silly, nobody takes them seriously and therefore they have no business potential
• The whole field is dominated by a few large egos

For what it’s worth, I really don’t agree with some of these points, and I’m honestly apathetic with regards to most of the others, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.

Someone looks jealous!

In response to this, a veratable splattering of adhoc words combined to create podcast-free alternative names have been created:

• Frank Edward Nora coined the term New Time Radio even before podcasting took off and he continues to use it as an alternative
• Jimbob Kloss from Whole Wheat Radio refers to them as audio magazines, very catchy!
• Leo Laporte infamously decided to refer to them as netcasts, which other than the iPod mixup really doen’t solve any of the tech issues at all!

I’m sure a quick Google search would reveal even more such terms.

Which brings me to the Rubenerd Show. I’ve decided I’m going to distance myself from this issue once and for all by calling these shows exactly what they are:

That said, I’ll probably keep using the term podcast interchangably with it though, it’s the accepted term that everyone seems to have settled on and agreed to, and I’m fed up with explaining other new terms to people. Perhaps with time the accepted term will change, in which case I’ll change too. After all, language is an evolving beast that changes as we do, right?