An introduction to podcasts

The LA Times discovers podcasts. These blog-based homemade radio shows are the biggest thing most people haven't heard of yet.

First came pirate radio, then Internet radio. But in the past month, a new way of circumventing the big, bad broadcast corporations has emerged: podcasts.

Tune in to these blog-based homemade radio shows and you'll hear any number of things: a weekly hourlong program about board games; a daily amateur photography show hosted by an Australian computer programmer; regular people, unschooled in the ways of radio, talking about anything and everything the way real people talk -- clumsily, with curses, dead air and all. ...

A sort of TiVo for amateur online audio, podcasts are radio-style audio files posted inside blogs as MP3s that can be downloaded to an iPod or other portable player. And they represent the next wave of peer-to-peer content sharing -- unlimited by available FM/AM spectrum, untouched by FCC regulation, portable and full of possibility. ...

A month ago, the only podcast was ''Trade Secrets,'' a daily news-and-technology talk show co-hosted by podcasting's pioneers: former MTV VJ Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer. ...

In the four weeks since ''Trade Secrets'' was born, the number of podcasts has jumped to at least six dozen. Following the lead of ''Trade Secrets,'' in mid-September a handful of Canadian college students launched ''Blogosphere Radio,'' a weekly talk show about what bloggers are blogging about. Late September saw the launch of ''Esc From the World!,'' a tech-support podcast started by New Jersey eighth-grader Matthew Bischoff; ''Northwest Noise,'' an Oregon-based music-and-talk show that's been keeping its eye on Mount St. Helens; and ''GeekSpeak,'' a weekly program about board games coming out of Dallas.

''We could never do this show on radio, because who's going to want to give an hour to board gaming?'' says Scott Alden, owner of 1,000-plus games and co-host of ''GeekSpeak,'' a podcast that's been downloaded at least 5,200 times since its debut two weeks ago.

Commercial radio broadcasters would never touch such a niche program, especially one that drew just a few thousand listeners. They would never air an unedited, error-prone show hosted by self-described ''geeks'' or amateurs.

But podcasts don't follow a traditional broadcast model. They follow in the footsteps of blogs, from which podcasts were born. In the blogging world, success isn't measured in market share and ad dollars. It's measured in the personal satisfaction of creative expression and the organic growth of a relatively small audience via word of mouth.

I'm glad that two of my friends — Doc Searls and Dave Winer — are at the epicenter of this fledgling new form of participatory media. Podcasting is in good hands.