I disputed a college professor once, who said that broadcast media is all about distributing content. It never has been. It has always been about advertising, and the content exists just to get enough eyeballs or eardrums assembled together to justify the high ad rates.

In the broadcast industry there has always been a distinction and separation between content and advertising, between content producers and advertisers. Podcasting, at least insofar as a valid business model goes, is quite different. Podcasting has been able to successfully fuse the two. Content creators are now their own advertisers.

Professionals and brands are regularly creating valuable content aimed specifically at their target markets, and using that content as the “bait” to introduce them to their product or service. The content-as-advertising model is not new, and certainly has existed in broadcast media as well over the years. But podcasting represents the first time that smaller businesses and individuals have been able to access a wide distribution platform to deliver their targeted messaging.

What’s working:

• Tutorials that highlight specific needs and introduce specific solutions
• Interviews with highly regarded industry leaders
• Q&A shows based on frequently asked questions from existing customers
• Idea Casts – Practical inspirations aimed at your customer’s most urgent and felt needs
• Shows that build a like-minded community through a blog or forum
• Shows that link to good information regularly

What’s not working:

• Sponsored shows – Using revenue sharing ad platforms or ad insertion services
• Shows that are too broadly focused, such as news coverage of multiple industries
• Unprofessional production values AND commercially over-produced shows
• Blatant Podcast-as-Commercial tactics
• Shows with little relevant or valuable information
• Shows with little organizational thought or direction

The Most Important Part
If you are thinking about beginning a podcast to promote your product or service, be sure you are able to commit the time to generating regular content. Blogging takes time. Podcasting takes MORE time, even with the help of a creative services or production company.

If you have a lot to say, have a friendly manner, a pleasant voice and aren’t afraid to speak or be recorded, then podcasting represents an excellent way to reach people with your expertise and provide value to them on a regular basis.

Most of the time, having a show that delivers solid information from your area of expertise, coupled with a well-designed and directed blog and/or forum, all linked back to your business site and web presence, is all that is required to benefit from using podcasting as a way to build your brand, qualify better prospects, and cement your place among the experts in your market.

A rock-solid clock is impossible to find in your typical NLE, which, in the typical work environment, is nothing close to real-time sync, what with all the rendering going on on the fly. Even when it looks pretty solid, it’s not. In a pinch, I have been known to throw a CD into a portable player, and use the time readout and play/pause controls to good effect. That is until I have a sequence with a total time of 00:07:53:00 and a CD with song times not exceeding 4 minutes. Stuck again. I’m a musician with decent rhythm, so I’ve even tried tapping seconds out with my hand, but try doing that while reading a script in a normal cadence, and you’ll understand why asylums were built.

Anyway, I Googled the term “online stopwatch”, and what do you know! Here’s the one that I have fallen in love with, for it’s simplicity, and the fact that it can operate both as a stopwatch and a countdown clock.

Accessible as an online version and as a downloadable Flash .exe, I find myself using it for a whole lot more than video work. (meeting clocks, get-up-and-stretch reminders, etc.)

It’s a freebie worth grabbing!

Harkins Creative produced a site intro video for Planet2025.tv. 18 months later, it is still being used on the home page of their site, and today we received notice that it had just been announced as a Panda Awards finalist in the Wildscreen Film Festival! Final judging will take place in October.

Below is the video entered into the New Media category:

Perhaps the most genteel new feature is the simplest one: the ability to preview mp3 compression settings before rendering a whole file. How considerate of Adobe! And what a time-saver, especially in the typical web production workflow we employ around here.

Other, more revolutionary features of note:

• Multitrack!
• Batch track volume matching
• Beat Detection technology (pretty accurate, too!)
• Improved volume and pan drawing controls in the waveform mode
• Audio extraction from imported video files (works with an impressive slew of codecs)
• Audio “Snapshots” in the history state, similar to Photoshop

While a good number of these features aren’t truly inventive (programs like Cakewalk’s SONAR have been doing some of these things for years), their addition to Soundbooth raises the level of usefulness of this particular production workhorse a good deal. With the multitrack functionality, I might be inclined to reach for this app over Audition for a lot of projects.

Go Adobe!

But this time around, I wanted to try out one of the cute little furry, fuzzy variety of windscreens, because I have heard that they are equally effective at reducing noise, but are more durable and, most importantly, cause less HF cut.

We purchased one called The Wind Cutter and, looks aside (like a small black guinea pig was impaled above the lens of the camera) it functions incredibly well. On a particularly gusty spring day in Nashville, I took the camera out and did some test recordings. The results were exactly what I have expected in windscreens costing three times as much.

The fabric weave is really quite open, which concerned me at first, but the length and density of the “fur” is perfect for effectively stopping brief 15+ mile-an-hour gusts without so much as a rumble reaching the mic. At first, while watching the meters, I could see levels rising when the wind blew. I was prepared to be disappointed. But when I listened back to the tape in the studio under optimal conditions, I realized that the rise in levels was actually due to the microphone picking up the sound of the wind in the trees across the street!

In short, I am pleased. A simple, well made product at a reasonable price is something of a holy grail in video production work.

So just what can I do with the most amazing audio tools money can buy, and all the talents and skills money could never buy? You’re going to think I’m lying, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because it’s just so cool.

Have you ever looked at a photograph or a graphic image, and wondered what it sounds like? Ever thought about sticking the latest collection of Christmas photos into your CD player, and listening to them? See, I told you you’d think I was crazy or something.

But that’s just what I’ve been doing. It’s the most innovative idea I’ve seen come along in quite some time. The visual world has been creeping into audio tools for a long time, with some amazing spectral analysis, phase alignment and waveform editing tools, and there have even been some impressive visual interfaces for effects processors. But to use Photoshop to tweak an image, then import it right across to Audition and listen to it, well, it’s all that and a bag of fries.

Granted, it took a little playing around to understand just what is happening, and a little more time to put together some playable, useful (musical, even) images, but at last I feel like I’m on to a new way of sound-smithing that promises to finally be intuitive.

This isn’t a how-to post. I just wanted to show off, so, without further comment and for your listening pleasure, I give you a nice little pad, and the image that created it. Feel free to download the CD-quality .WAV file and use it, if you have a use for it. Just shoot me an email, and let me know how it was used.