This is the perfect market for Apple to begin a subscription model. What better form to subscribe to than one that changes on a daily or weekly basis. This would allow for the podcasters to earn a wage for their work within a structure that makes it easy for all involved.
You already have an iTunes account, so it just bills your account every month for your subscriptions. Say you pay $1 or $2 a month for a subscription to your favorite PodCast, that's probably two hours (one 30 minute podcast a week at least) of listening for the cost of just a track or two from the store. Or they could even have a subscription Podcast area where you pay per month to listen to any of the podcasts included.
Yet another way that Apple could take an existing idea and make it look like they invented it, all the while making a little profit!!

It would be a subcription service in the same sense as a magazine subscription. You'll still "own" the podcast and be able to upload it to your ipod or burn it to a CD.

Also - extend that idea to certain types of movies. Not cinema movies, but webcast from CNN, ESPN, ABCnews, etc;. You wake up in the morning, and your smart playlist has all of your recent news clips organzied. Press play, and you instantly get CNN giving you headline news, your local weather, and last night's baseball scores. This information is then uploaded into your iPod as text data (assuming the iPod doesn't play video.)

The biggest argument against a video iPod is lack of content and user experience (who wants to watch a 2 hour movie on a 2 inch screen???). BUT I think a lot of people wouldn't mind catching up on last nights news, today's weather, or sports highlights while riding the bus or on a break at work.

The advantage here is being able to customize your content. You can find this information on the web and obviously TV, but it would be the convienance of the service. Role out of bed, grab your iPod, and read (or in the future, watch) the information you wanted at your convienance.

If the content can match the user needs (as opposed to the user adjusting to the content), it will suceed.

It amazes me that people get paid to come up with such shocking revelations. A major company endorsing a new thing will cause that new thing to become more prominent! WOWSER!

We have been calling / begging Apple to get involved in Podcasting since the Fall of 2004 when Podcasting started. The biggest issue with Podcasting has been the fact it is not easy for the user to subscribe to a podcast.

We consider this past Sunday's announcement the point where Podcasting moves from the Early Adopter phase into the Growth phase.

Also with iTunes support of podcasting - it does not mean all podcasts or even most will be on a pay per basis. Most will remain free.

We at www.podCast411.com welcome this announcement and are very excited about what iTunes will look like in 55 days.

Another interesting stat - About 25% of podcasters of the 5000 plus podcasters are using a Mac. (Stats are based on hits to my site that teaches how to podcast for free and interviews with podcasters I have conducted)

"Listen Different"

Rob @ podCast411

www.podcast411.com

Now, if they make it easy to use GarageBand to enhance podcasts - music in the background, voice overs, etc., maybe more people will begin using Macs.

In any event, the whole thing needs to be automated. Plug in your iPod overnight, and in the morning, it has your subscribed content loaded onto your iPod. (There should be a parameter that lets you set this to happen, overwriting previous podcasts if you're out of space.) Then you take your iPod and it's just there to listen to.

So the question is: Has podcasting crossed the chasm?

Quote

Guest wrote:
In any event, the whole thing needs to be automated. Plug in your iPod overnight, and in the morning, it has your subscribed content loaded onto your iPod. (There should be a parameter that lets you set this to happen, overwriting previous podcasts if you're out of space.) Then you take your iPod and it's just there to listen to.

If you want to do that, you already can. Check iPodderX.

http://ipodderx.com/

It allows you to subscribe to podcasts and automatically download them once, twice, or more times/day. (It just downloads the podcasts added since the last download.) It automatically imports them into iTunes. You can choose what playlist to put them in. (By default, it builds a playlist with the name of the podcast.) You can also choose to convert them to AAC (they're nearly always .mp3), and make them bookmarkable. (All that entails is changing the OS X file type.) iPodderX will also download images and video and put those into iPhoto or iTunes 4.8+.

I don't see what iTunes will add to this, other than putting the capability into one application.