WJMA Podcasts -- It's a start

Just starting a podcast? Read on.

Friday I outlined a few things that WJMA could do to improve their nascent news podcasts. And it looks like they took some of that advice, so I want to give credit for the changes they made. The basics were pretty simple:

Here is the information this podcast should have to make it useful to anyone downloading it. All of these fields should be filled in.

• Name: WJMA Central Virginia News for 3/24/09
• Artist: Phil Goodwin
• Year: 2009
• Composer: Piedmont Communications, Inc.
• Genre: Podcast
• Artwork - an image of the station's logo with some additional element that says "news."

Looks like someone was busy over the weekend. When I opened up the podcast feed this morning, there was information in place! Specifically:

• Name: WJMA News 3-30-09 (different name than I suggested, but no quibbles - it works)
• Year: 2009
• Album: WJMA News (Yes, we know -- it's in the name field. But what's the dial position?)
• Genre: Podcast

It's a good start, but I'm puzzled as to why they stopped there. We still have no context. Where's the station? Who's talking? Who's putting out this podcast, anyway?

IMHO, you should think of a podcast episode like a business card. It should have all the information about the product to be useful, to strengthen the brand, as well as the relevant metadata to help the listener sort the episode in their library.

If I'm searching through my MP3 library by cover art -- there's none. I don't know what this is. Ditto if I try to sort by artist. These are pretty basic things -- and the absence of them has me convinced that the powers that be still don't "get" podcasting. And most likely don't listen to them at all.

It's a simple fix, fellas. Album art, artist name, something to give a location. You could even get ambitious and add an email address in there. Every blank field represents a missed opportunity. It doesn't cost anything to fill in the other metadata fields. Really.

Let's see where WJMA stands next Monday. That should be more than enough time to create and attach artwork, and fill in the missing fields. Are these podcasts half-baked, or just half-done? I'm still optimistic.

- Ralph