What are podcast aggregators' prospects?

Housekeeping: This blog, begun last week, will now have its own homepage and has been named “Shash On Pod.”

In the first entry, I considered what the prospects are for podcasters or radio broadcasters planning to add video or virtual components to their offerings, as technology improvements make this more possible and less expensive to accomplish.

The more I thought about this development, the more it seemed that it goes hand in hand with what the business model for a podcast, satellite radio service or video entertainment service may be. Paid programs like Howard Stern on Sirius or Anthony Cumia’s independent video podcast, discussed last week, attract more resources to develop video content.

This week, let’s look at another aspect of podcasting – aggregation and networks. While even the most successful podcasts are often free, relying on a sponsorship model and including live reads of commercial copy in their episodes, the most popular ones, especially those in the comedy genre, only keep the most recent 25 or 50 episodes available for free and put older ones behind a paywall.

What are some of the most notable aggregations? One is Howl, a podcast “network” created by Midroll Media, a podcast advertising network owned by the E.W. Scripps media company. Howl’s foundation is a collection of “mini-series,” archives and recent episodes of Scott Aukerman’s Earwolf brand podcasts, its own “Wolfpop” podcasts, a library of comedy albums and extra premium content from Marc Maron, its most recently acquired member, and other popular podcasts. Howl charges $4.99 a month – a cost close to that of CBS All Access, the online offering of CBS television shows, to place it in a broader perspective of online media.

Is a paid podcast network viable? Last week, I critiqued Anthony Cumia’s offering on the basis that it was only one show for the subscription fee, so you really have to be a die-hard fan of him to want it. Howl offers numerous shows – all audio, of course – and that may save one the tedium of picking them out and managing all of the downloads manually through iTunes. One has to decide if that’s worth $4.99 a month – and whether throwing in about 80 comedy albums, some by performers with podcasts on the service, sweetens the deal enough, if easy access to all those podcasts hasn’t sold you on it.

The answer may be that a network like Howl has to start somewhere. If one could drill down into the numbers – comparing the proceeds based on the number of subscribers Howl has, with the overhead the service has to run its operations – it’s unlikely right now that the profits are large enough for it to be massively profitable.

Howl’s chances would be strengthened by two things – first, adding a lot more content. Howl has been called the “Netflix of podcasting,” but the size of its offering, compared to all available podcasts out there, is a very small fraction, if you compare it to the size of Netflix’s library as a portion of all available movies and video content. Secondly, growing the subscriber numbers exponentially. Addressing the first issue – content – could go far toward addressing the second issue.