I’d like to thank Julio Ojeda-Zapata and Leslie Brooks Suzukamo for the PodcastMN article in the Saturday Pioneer Press.

The article is right, a key challenge is to lure advertisers. I’m actually not confident the advertiser-publisher relationship we’re accustomed to in radio, televison, and newspapers will effectively migrate to podcasting.

As PBCliberal mentions in his recent ‘Finding my Niche’ show, the strength of podcasting is how effectively it can speak to a very small audience. The same is true of weblogs and websites as a whole.

The barrier to entry is so low with podcasting and the audience so niche, then there’s the fact that a show could be listeneded to the first time months after it was originally published. The traditional mass media ad models won’t work. Honestly, if the products of services the advertisers are hawking are actually compelling – then they should have their own podcast.

On the other hand, following the public radio model makes far more sense – I think ITConversations is setting an excellent example of how to offset the costs by bringing in donors and underwriters. Doug spells out the ITConversation business model here.

By the way, PodcastMN – the Sound of Minnesota is officially up. 14 podcasts, in a single site.