Thursday, September 22, 2016

Almost Live

Tony Kornheiser gave up his show on a Washington, DC radio station just before Independence Day.  He dumped it in favor of a podcast.  Kornheiser admits he left a lot of money on the table at the radio station, WTEM, but he wanted to own and control his product.

I get that.

The podcast made its debut the day after Labor Day.  I've listened most days.

Kornheiser and company give you a little more than an hour of content.  The old radio show was two hours.  But, if you factor in a smaller commercial load and no sports news updates, you are getting just about the same amount of program time.

Kornheiser hasn't fallen in to the trap of a lot of podcasters.  No FCC restrictions, so he can say anything he wants.  The content is still PG rated.  He hasn't gone dirty, and that's always nice.  The show has the same cast of characters, the same contributors.  They haven't missed a beat.

Having said all that, there's something missing.  It's not live.  I'm old school.  A podcast is audio, not radio.  Entertaining?  Yes.  Special?  No.  Not really.

A former coworker tried to get me interested in the myriad of podcasts out there.  I'm sure there's some great stuff.  I passed.

Yes, I'll still download Kornheiser's show when I get the chance, which is quite often.  And, I'll still spend a lot of my time listening to real radio.