Potential Political Podcasting?

After posting about vlogging the other day a remarkable insight struck me, if you can blog with video, then you could also blog with audio. So I did a little research and was reminded that I am perpetually 5 years behind the times when it comes to technology and came across Podcasting. Here's the link to the wikipedia definition, it is quite thorough. Basically, podcasting combines audio files with an RSS feed (downloadable here) to allow listeners to automatically download whatever shows they have signed up for. With the further implementation of iPodder software (download it here), a user can sync it with an iPod or any other computer audio player. It is like TiVo for internet audio files! Here's a good article from the Christian Science Monitor (one of the best newspapers in the country).

"Why are you telling me this?"

Good question! I mention it because it is taking off on a grassroots level. Podcasting allows anybody with a microphone on their computer to be their own radio host. Just as with a blog, a good, interesting, regularly broadcast, amateur radio show can eventually draw quite a large audience. Also, it is a great way for large candidates, office holders and even political parties to get their message out. Who can't picture Howard Dean giving a weekly podcast? Or the White House could put out the President's weekly radio address on podcast (is the radio address even put out on the radio? I've never heard it...). Certainly a weekly podcast during a large election would get a certain amount of listeners, and if you revealed the occasional tidbit of information in it, the media might even start reporting on it (that is if there are no celebrity trials going on).

I think it would be hard for local candidates to really get people to listen to a podcast for their races, but you can never tell, and it certainly couldn't hurt to have a weekly issues audio segment on the website that people could subscribe to. Why not throw your campaign radio spots on as well, and any interviews you do that are recorded? Testimonials from supporters? You could even put announcements for campaign events. Users will automatically download them and listen to a 20 second spot for where the next campaign event is. You could solicit donations as well, although you would want to be careful about overdoing it, but you could separate these into different 'shows' that people could subscribe to. If somebody wanted to hear any issue announcements, but didn't care to volunteer, they could subscribe to the issues feed, but not the event feed.

Who knows if the technology has legs in the long term, but enterprising candidates don't have much to lose by trying it out.