Radio News America Podcasts

Radio News America is off to great start, after a long haul of getting through some technical obstacles and a couple of personnel problems. We’ve gotten beyond the streaming audio idea for the time being, since bandwidth is an expensive proposition for a radio broadcast, and we have plunged head-first into podcasting using iPodder software as receiver software. Funny thing about podcasting is that you don’t just offer an .mp3 file for download, there’s much more to it than that. You can’t really call yourself a podcaster if all you offer is an .mp3 file. Podcasting also involves having a steady url that listeners can subscribe to and automatically grab your programs from, and this is generally accomplished with an .xml file with enclosures. Right now, we have three podcasts available for subscription:

1. News for a Change : RNA’s regular evening news broadcast, which is updated 2-3 times per week.
2. Not in Our Name : RNA’s weekend music broadcast, updated just prior to every weekend.
3. Falling From the Edge of Reason : KyndCulture’s weekly Audio blog tracking the insane antics of the far right wing in America.

We anticipate adding more programs as time and talent permits. Feel free to add our podcast urls to any podcast directories you might know of (we can’t possibly know them all!). All of this is in addition to our daily updated blog and community forums. So far, we’re seeing some excellent statistics with regard to site traffic (5,000 unique visitors per week and we haven’t even been online for 6 months yet) and the numbers are also looking pretty good for podcast subscriptions and downloads.

We’re currently experimenting with various ad models and testing their returns, but we anticipate incorporating our own ad server in the very near future which will permit you or your organization to buy ad space on the site (text or graphic ads), track your statistics, and make things much easier all the way around. We also offer on-the-air ads, so if that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to let us know. Radio News America is a grassroots effort and any monies generated will go towards expenses incurred in keeping the site and the podcasts online.