Gravity Medium

Bravo to Todd Mundt on both “cutting the cord” from his cable company and writing in-depth about the process and experience of consuming media — up to and including HD video — without cable (or satellite) TV service.

The mix of technologies required today are a bit daunting to anyone that wants just a plain old “boob tube” experience, but for any moderately inclined hobbyist, this is pretty accessible.

Furthermore — and this is the kicker — there’s more content out there on the ‘Net than on PBS, as lots of sources distribute directly and PBS (for various reasons, many of them good) chooses not to carry the stuff.

Read all about it here.

(For the record, Todd reports that he still uses the cable company for Internet access, just not for TV. My own experience is that my local cableco won’t sell me high speed service without a TV bundle, so I can’t fully follow his example. However, I have stopped watching BSG on TV and instead watch exclusively via hulu and DVD).

Oh, and be sure to follow Todd on Twitter, if you aren’t already.

I know, it’s probably already in your RSS reader, right? But if not, be sure to check out the new (2008) podcasting study by Edison Media Research. This year shows a solid bump upward in consumer adoption of podcasting and it’s always great to get new charts for wallpapering the office and showing your pals how quickly these newfangled media things are catching on.

Check out the intro and download the report PDF here.

I remain amazed at how misunderstood the notion of “podcasting” is. It’s been nearly 4 years since it arrived on the scene yet folks in public media remain baffled — along with the general public.

Perhaps Leo Laporte was right a couple years ago when he suggested that the “pod” in podcasting be eliminated and replaced with “net” to make “netcasting” the word. Of course, that might have confused things with various forms of streaming.

In any case, here’s yet another Common Craft video you can share with your public media clients to explain podcasting a bit. You can even contact Common Craft to get the video branded with your own company name.

I would also recommend Apple’s introduction to podcasting, which is iTunes-specific, but iTunes is a really great choice for most listeners due to the integration of their podcasting directory / subscription system.

This Week in Tech (TWiT) is a great little tech-oriented podcast with a broad international following (somwhere north of 200,000 weekly listeners). But on the March 31 show they went off the tech industry track and tackled issues related to news, newspapers, news radio, NPR, podcasts, blogs, Twitter, reporting and more.

Public media folks may be interested to hear how folks that work in media — but outside our industry niche — talk about what we’re doing and the major trends affecting everyone publishing everything.

You can listen to and/or download this week’s episode here.

Dennis Haarsager, new interim CEO at National Public Radio (NPR), appeared on the NewsGang podcast this past Friday. He spoke fairly openly about the unusual CEO transition and about how NPR may change as it deals with an audience that’s moving to new media distribution channels and interaction platforms.

In addition to Haarsager, the guest list included Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space, Steve Gillmor (the host), and Doc Searls, who also appeared on a panel at the recent Integrated Media Association conference along with Haarsager and others.

UPDATE: Highly Recommended Listening. Haarsager and friends go into depth talking about new media economics and public media’s entanglements — or lack thereof — with new platforms. Money quote from Stephen Hill: “Show the stations how you’re gonna keep them in business and they’ll be very happy to cooperate with [NPR].”

Running time of the MP3 file is about 1 hour, 25 minutes.

The link to the NewsGang podcast has also been added to my (still growing) list of Ken Stern articles.