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NEWS
As podcasts evolve, so do their stories
KARRIGANMONK
Editor-in-Chief
kmonk@unca.edu
Adnan Syed was barely a legal
adult when a Maryland judge sen
tenced him to life in prison, plus
an additional 30 years, for brutal
ly murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae
Min Lee.
The problem is, he may not have
actually killed her.
Syed’s story and case are profiled
in Serial, a podcast hosted by Sar
ah Koenig and developed by This
American Life.
Jamie Gilbert, associate director
of student media advising at NC
State University, said Serial was the
beginning of a new age of media.
“They just found a fascinating
topic and had true, in-depth, enter
taining reporting and good produc
tion quality,” Gilbert said. “It was
marketed so well that people were
hooked, just like a serial television
program where you have to come
back week after week after week.”
Though podcasting originated
in 2004, it was not until a decade
later that Serial was downloaded
more than 5 million times. Today,
more than four years after its debut,
the podcast still ranks 16th on the
iTunes Podcast Chart.
“It was just a super fascinating
topic,” Gilbert said. “They chose
a young man who was incarcerat
ed in Baltimore for murdering his
girlfriend, but there’s so many holes
in the story. It’s just a really fasci
nating story. He can’t account for
his time accurately and he can’t ful
ly remember everything that hap
pened. He claims he’s innocent but
it’s really not clear.”
Though Serial certainly was not
the first podcast, Koenig’s inves
tigation started a new era of pod
casting and left audiences wanting
more, according to Gilbert.
Podcasts created from musical
beginnings
Ten years before Serial, an MTV
DJ was looking for an easier way to
get music for his weekly sets.
Gilbert said the DJ, Adam Curry,
would have to transfer music from
SERIAL
LOGO PROVIDED BY SERIAL
Serial, cited as being the post
popular podcast of all time, was
one of the first to bring podcasting
into mainstream culture.
the internet to his computer to his
iPod before he could use any of it.
“He researched and researched
and he found out there wasn’t a
better way and so he made one
himself,” Gilbert said. “He made
something called a podcast which
previous to that did not exist.”
To create podcasts, Curry first
had to create a podcatcher program,
similar to today’s iTunes, and then
develop special Really Simple Syn
dication Code in order to feed the
files into the podcatcher.
With Curry’s new creation, he
could now write RSS codes, tag
them and have his audience sub
scribe to the feed. Once subscribed,
the newest upload would be down
loaded directly to the subscriber’s
machine so they could listen to it
immediately or take it with them to
listen later.
Nearly 15 year later, Curry’s orig
inal idea has transformed into a way
to get content even easier than he
could have imagined.
“It’s a lot easier to get podcasts
on the go where previously you
would listen to it on your computer
or your iPod,” Gilbert said. “Now
you can listen to it on your phone,
on your wrist.”
This portability of podcasts is yet
another innovation to come from
Curry’s frustration.
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— Bursts O’Goodness
Before, having a wide catalog
of content to listen to meant either
having a portable device with an
extreme amount of storage - which
could get pricey - or staying con
nected to a desktop to download the
content and listen there.
According to polls conducted
by Edison Research, 81 percent of
monthly podcast subscribers listen
on some type of portable device
such as a smartphone or tablet.
Gilbert pointed to this increase
in technology as a factor of Serial’s
success.
“You want to come back week
after week,” Gilbert said. “That’s
why you subscribe to it and when
the new episode came out you
would automatically have it down
loaded to your device. It’s just a lot
of things coming together.”
Stepping away from radio
Bursts O’Goodness, one of the
minds behind The Final Straw Ra
dio, a weekly anarchist radio show
based in Asheville, worked in radio
since the late 1990s.
O’Goodness said when he
moved to Asheville from California
to work with AshevilleFM, his col
lege radio experience allowed him
to be comfortable behind a micro
phone and podcasting was a natural
next step.
“I moved here from the Bay Area
where anarchist events and engage
ments are a constant and wanted a
higher level of engagement with
ideas and activities,” O’Goodness
said. “I was already doing a weekly
radio show with a couple of friends
and having a reading group format
and airing the discussions was our
idea. But the show stayed a mostly
music-format show so I split.”
After leaving this first show,
O’Goodness developed The Final
Straw Radio. The first episode was
simple: The host talked to a few
LGBTQ+ people who had been the
victims of recent beatings. O’Good
ness said he was happy to use his
talents to give those people voices.
“Those things drove me,”
O’Goodness said. “A desire to
share conversations about struggles
people engage in and ideas that ex
cite me.”
What makes The Final Straw Ra
dio different from other podcasts,
though, is that it originally airs as a
radio show and is then re-edited for
syndication.
Still, unlike traditional live ra
dio, much of O’Goodness’ show
is pre-recorded and edited, leaving
only small points to be added in
during the live broadcast, leaving
The Final Straw Radio somewhere
between radio and podcast.
O’Goodness said he started pod
casting so other radio stations could
pick up his shows for free, leaving
them in the in-between area.
For O’Goodness, the concepts
between radio and podcasts are
similar.
“Like good radio, it’s audio that
makes the listener stop and focus,”
O’Goodness said. “To take away
insights and affinity they wouldn’t
have had before.”
According to the FCC, radio sta
tions must obtain licenses in order
to broadcast. Podcasts, however,
are not required to do so.
O’Goodness said he will typ
ically spend up to an hour-and-a
-half editing a single hour of audio
just cutting out pauses in speech
and any words or phrases that are
against FCC guidelines.
Other podcasts, such as Serial,
are free from these limitations be
cause they do not operate under an
FCC mandated radio license.
These license-free podcasts are
on the rise. Edison Research reports
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