50 December-January 2014
T
HE runaway success of ‘Serial’,
the podcast from ‘This American
Life’ producer Sarah Koenig docu-
menting a 15-year-old murder case, has
energised scrutiny of the format as a way
for news outlets to attract audiences.
‘Serial’ is simply the most successful
of a number of professionally produced
podcasts, and it is no surprise that it
comes from a public-radio background.
Its parent show, ‘This American Life’, has
already established itself as a podcasting
hit, as have many other shows from the
National Public Radio (NPR) stable, such
as ‘99% Invisible’ and ‘Snap Judgment’.
On the face of it, there would seem to
be fewer prospects for Irish news outlets
hoping to get into podcasting.
Despite a high-power campaign
MEDIA
Also in this section:
Media ownership 52
Brendan O’Connor 54
The oddness
of pod
Quality podcasting is
cheap, lucrative and
effective.
By Gerard Cunningham
December-January 2014 51
beforehand, the first ‘Flannery Files’
attracted an appropriately embarrassing
response, with barely 600 downloads in
the first week. A softball blueshirt-on-
blueshirt interview was always unlikely
to ignite the popular imagination in
2014, despite the compere being soc-
cer’s Bill O’Herlihy.
Podcasting has long moved from the
amateur-enthusiast stage in the US.
‘99% Invisible’, for example, began as
a ‘garage’ podcast, and is now broad-
cast. But it is still in its low-key infancy
in Ireland. RTÉ places some of its con-
tent online, but although for example
the ‘Documentary On One’ app contains
the world’s largest archive of documen-
taries, the RTÉ Player app can be clunky
to use. Most newspapers have barely
engaged with podcasting. An exception
is the Irish Times, which has put a major
effort into several shows, covering poli-
tics, business, arts and culture.
One show however stands out from
the crowd. ‘Second Captains’, from the
team who presented ‘Off The Ball’ on
Newstalk, before they were dismissed
for having the temerity to ask for greater
resources, regularly pulls audiences of
20-30,000 listeners for its unique gloss
on sport. This compares to figures for the
other Irish Times podcasts of roughly
between one tenth and one fifth of that
figure. Although numbers for down-
loads from iTunes and Stitcher are not
available, they show a similar pattern,
with ‘Second Captains’ outperform-
ing all the other podcasts combined. To
put those numbers in context, propor-
tionate to population it means ‘Second
Captains’ is doing as well in Irish mar-
kets as ‘Serial’ is in the US – a remarkable
achievement.
The quirky humour of ‘Second
Captains’ led by the likes of former
Village writer, polymath Ken Early, has
always made it stand out of from the
crowd. The show also benefits from hav-
ing an established legacy audience from
its time as a broadcast programme on
Newstalk. Indeed it now offers a TV ver-
sion on RTÉ 2. By contrast the other Irish
Times offerings sound like radio as usual,
comprising panel discussions and one-
on-one interviews.
The newly released Irish Times app,
which allows listeners to hear podcasts
directly on smartphones, is likely to
build this audience even more. Exploited
properly, by offering options such as
‘Most Listened’ or ‘Editor’s Picks’, this
could introduce audiences to other new
shows. However, it would require shows
that offer something scintillating or at
least unusual.
Packages taking a different approach to
reporting could build on the same audi-
ence desire for something different that
‘Second Captains’ has so successfully
exploited. Given the number of independ-
ent producers and freelance journalists
experimenting with audio, an imagina-
tive Irish Times could do worse than set
aside a budget to incubate and develop
such new ideas.
For now, funding for such projects is
reliant on advertising, sponsorship and
listener subscriptions, using models such
as crowdfunding, donation requests or
paywalls. And while the Broadcasting
Authority of Ireland (BAI) does fund inde-
pendent production, the Sound+Vision
fund steers away from news/current
affairs to focus on documentary and fic-
tion, and is limited by the Broadcasting
Act to works transmitted over the air.
This seems unlikely to change anytime
soon, with reforms on television licens-
ing now long-fingered. The upside of an
absence of this funding however, is that
podcasters are freed from the restrictions
imposed by BAI regulation, on broadcast-
ers, although they remain subject to the
Press Council code of practice.
Lyra McKee, a Belfast-based free-
lance journalist recently crowdfunded
a book on the murder of UPP MP Robert
Bradford. Her pitch, publishing one chap-
ter of the book online at a time as her
investigation progressed, both mirrored
and predated the ‘Serial’ model.
“With the Bradford book, I was
researching and writing a distinctly
Northern Irish story yet it attracted read-
ers from all over the world, as far away as
South Africa”, says McKee.
“I think we need to stop thinking in
terms of geographical markets when it
comes to media content. Podcasting in
many ways is just another way of telling
a story and if you’re good at telling sto-
ries, borders become irrelevant because
the Internet is a borderless territory. The
Irish – North and South – also have the
advantage of having a huge diaspora
who want to find ways to connect with
‘home’”.
She’s a persuasive advocate for the
genre.
“Advertising and sponsorship is cer-
tainly one revenue stream; I think we’ll
also see reader-funding/pledges becom-
ing much more popular too.
You don’t need a huge market to make it
work, you just need a core group of really
passionate fans. You may have only 300
fans who absolutely love what you do but
if they love it so much they’re willing to
donate €10 a month, say, then you have a
means of making a living. The problem to
date hasn’t been that people won’t pay for
this stuff; it’s that we haven’t given them
anything worth paying for.
Take the example of ‘Serial’ – they’re
asking for donations this week. Am I
going to donate? Absolutely. Each epi-
sode of the podcast has left me on the
edge of my seat. They’ve given me an
experience worth paying for.
They’ve turned me into an evangelist -
I’ve been telling everyone I know to listen
to it - by creating something really good.
It’s a fundamental principle underpin-
ning the ‘How do we get people to pay for
content?’ debate yet it gets overlooked
because everyone’s looking for a holy
grail”. Sometimes these new media are
simpler than it seems. •
The problem
to date hasn’t
been that
people won’t
pay for this
stuff; it’s that
we haven’t
given them
anything worth
paying for
“
unspeakable
now podcasting weekly

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