A “perfect storm” of technology is conspiring to create the greatest media opportunity for the average person since the cable revolution over 30 years ago. It was a technological “disruption” that enabled Turner & Murdoch’s fortunes, and today it’s deja vu all over again.

The watershed moment of the television media revolution was back in 1976 when Ted Turner figured out that he could take his little, low powered Atlanta UHF station signal (WTCG-TV-Channel 17 — later WTBS), and, by beaming it to a satellite, could broadcast his signal (and sell advertising) nationwide to homes and businesses all across the U.S.

In 1975, when I was in grade school, if you would have asked me to name a TV network I would have answered you “ABC, NBC, CBS.” If you asked me the same question a few years later when I was in high school, my answer would have changed a little bit. I would have said something like “ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, MTV, HBO and Prism (those from Philly will understand)…” including the newly created cable networks that I then found myself watching a lot of.

3 years from now, if you were to ask any high school student to name a media network, they’re going to answer you “ABC.com, HBO.com, AmericanIdol.com, RapMusik.net and Gamers.tv.”

Here’s why…

In the 70’s most tv’s received their signals from antennas that picked up the over the air broadcast signals. Today very few people get their TV signals directly from broadcast, instead their signal comes from either coaxial cable (i.e. Comcast), satellite dish (i.e. DirecTV) or fiber-optic cable (i.e. Verizon FiOS).

In 2009 there will be televisions, like this one from GE, on the market (not in a lab but actually on store shelves) that come “Internet Ready.” These TV’s will be able to access video from any website in the world, without needing to go through middlemen like Comcast, DirecTV or Verizon (though you will still need an Internet service provider.) This is a similar kind of technological leap forward as in the 1980’s when new televisions enabled consumers to “cut the cord” from their rabbit ears, antenas and set top boxes and started coming “cable ready.” This Internet Ready development means that soon anyone with a video camera, Internet connection and something to say can have their content broadcast to TV’s worldwide, virtually for free.

While today the TV market is closed to the average person (since you have virtually zero chance of getting your channel picked up by Comcast or DirecTV), that’s all about to change. You won’t need Comcast or DirecTV because you’ll be able to take your channel directly to the people. Anyone with an Internet Ready TV (or today has a set top box device like Apple TV or SlingBox) will be able to access and watch your slate of programming on any TV in their home or office. (Not to mention computers, iPhones, Blackberry Storm’s etc.)

No longer will network carriage be the barrier between tomorrows TV programmers (called podcasters and video bloggers today) and their media mogul aspirations.

That barrier will now shift to marketing. Because unless you can effectively market your channel to drive viewership, you’ll be no better off than you were without the distribution in the first place. This is where the critical mass that is coalescing behind The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network (disclosure - I’m the CEO) gets so interesting. Here you have a media network that was started on a shoestring, and is comprised of thousands and thousands of “little guys” (small and medium sized bloggers and podcasters) who, by working together, can own their own media network and have it massively promoted, without it costing them one plum nickle. If you do the math, when The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network reaches 100,000 members (of the over 112 Million bloggers and podcasters worldwide and growing by 172,000 daily according to Technorati) it will have an audience that far exceeds every U.S. cable channel, and will be neck and neck with the biggest broadcast networks - CBS, ABC, NBC, and old school media conglomerates like The New York Times.

No longer do you need tens of millions of dollars to be a “broadcaster.” Those that have the ability to put together appealing content, and market it ,will find themselves in the enviable position of being the Turner’s and Murdoch’s of the upcoming “post-cable” generation.

* You agree to record your reading of one story from the magazine and send us the mp3 file;
* You can jazz it up any way you’d like;
* We’ll allow you to plug your own podcast or service;
* If selected you’ll also get 1/4 page ad in Blogger & Podcaster to be used as you see fit.

If you’re interested in recording an article for us please send me an email (lgenkin [at] larstan dot net) with no more than 1 paragraph as to why you should be selected and how quickly you can turn around the recording. We’ll let you know if you made it and then give you the details, including which story to produce.

~ Larry Genkin
Publisher
lgenkin [at] larstan dot net
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine
www.bloggerandpodcaster.com

The hottest topic, other than the release of WordPress 2.5, coming out of WordCamp Dallas this past weekend was Woopra.

Woopra developer John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog, originally intended only to offer a demo and give away a few invitations to this real-time Web analytic program. Attendees knew within a few minutes that this was a program that would literally change the face, content, and interaction of their blogs.

Currently in beta testing, Woopra offers real-time statistics on your blog’s traffic and activity. It tells you what is happening on your blog right now, this very second. John asked those in the audience with laptops or iPhones to go to his blog. Displayed live on the two large screens before us, we watched the numbers in Woopra jump from 48 down to 36, and then soar up to 68 then into the 90s as participants brought up his blog.

Woopra is not a Web application, though it does monitor Web site traffic and activity. It installs directly on your computer and then accesses the blog through a Javascript within the blog code. There is a Woopra plugin for WordPress users that helps with the Javascript insertion, and the program features an extensive API for building future apps.

As visitors arrive on a blog, Woopra displays basic information within its stats panels on the visitor such as their geographic location, computer type, browser type, and basic statistics. If a visitor has commented or is registered on the blog, the anonymous name is replaced with the name they provided, as long as the user hasn’t cleared his or her cookies.

A powerful feature of the program is a map displaying radiating radar points of where the visitor lives geographically. Hover over a blinking dot and a balloon tip pops up with the place name. The radiating dots grew dramatically over Dallas as more and more participants landed on his blog. It looked like an animation of a nuclear strike over the heart of Texas.

As I logged into his blog, John explained about the most exciting feature of Woopra, interaction with visitors. On the overhead displays, the audience saw me “arrive”, with my name on the screen, showing that I was in Dallas. Then he initiated a conversation with me through the interface, which I accepted from my computer. We “chatted” live via Woopra’s built-in chat feature. I did not have Woopra installed on my machine. Woopra chat does not require that both parties have the software installed, breaking a barrier that prevents many online communications tools from working.

The WordCamp participants went nuts. This breaks all the standards of blog participation. Imagine watching someone dig around your blog looking for specific information, tracking the keywords that brought them to the site and the pages they are viewing in real time. Bloggers can create a filter trigger that will pop up an announcement on their computer screen if someone visits the page that matches that filter’s keywords and criteria. For example, you could choose to get a notice announcing visitors from a specific country, using a certain language, or hunting for a specific subject. Why not offer to help them directly live by initiating a chat window and asking, “May I help you?” Think of what this will mean for businesses to help them directly serve their customers. The potential is endless.

Cali and Neal of GeekBrief.TV videoed Woopra in action, then blogged about it with glee featuring an in-depth interview with John. TechCrunch jumped on this new blog stats toy immediately, as did Mashable, bringing a storm of sign ups and demands for access. Woopra developers are working overtime to try to meet the demand the best they can, but this is still in the testing stages.

Here are some more exciting features of Woopra, with more coming as it continues to grow and develop:

• Graphics: Woopra offers clear, easy-to-read, and colorful animated graphics for viewing the various data sets such as maps, charts, graphs, and more.
• Data Explored Thoroughly: The analytic package in Woopra offers a wide variety of ways to view your blog’s various data sets, from the broadest details to the finite, with charts and graphics, by the numbers and popularity. With the dynamic API, there are myriad ways the data could be manipulated for sorting and reporting for various needs.
• Ability to Export Data: Your blog’s data isn’t locked within Woopra. There is an export feature to CVS, so you can move your data into a spreadsheet or database for more concentrated analysis and reporting.
• Logs Historical and Current Data: When you install Woopra on your computer and connect it with your blog, it picks up historical data from the server files as well as current, so your statistics aren’t limited to when you start using Woopra. It looks back into the past to help you understand how your blog traffic and visitors work, and what isn’t working.
• Visitor Tagging: The ability to “tag” your visitors through filters and tags improves tracking and identification of your regular readers, turning the numbers into people.
• Instant Messaging: The chat feature is a great way to connect directly with readers. The recipient can deny the request, but it’s a great way to give personal support and communicate directly with your readers, breaking the comment box barriers.
• Information Now - Real Time: Some statistics and analytics programs update hourly or once a day. Woopra gives you real-time information on what is happening on your blog right now, allowing you to respond to the statistics and events on your blog in the moment, not later after the numbers come in.
• Notifications: The notification area is an “on-demand” component that provides popup announcements of events, actions, and matches visitor criteria, which improves visitor tracking, but also helps make the data actionable, helping you respond to the needs when they happen.
• Developer Tools: Woopra offers a full featured API and plugin hook system for plugins and add-ons to encourage further data analysis and features.

This program could revolutionize the way we gather information about our visitors and interact with them. Imagine being able to communicate with your visitors without any extra software or hardware. Imagine getting information you need in a way you can really use it to focus your blog’s content to better server your readership. The possibilities are endless.

It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Once you site up with a Woopra account, the admin panels allow you to add your sites and download an optional WordPress plugin to make the process of adding the Javascript to your blog easier from the Administration panels. If you cannot add a plugin to your blog, or want to add the Javascript manually in a text widget or in some other fashion, you can choose the manual installation method.

Woopra is in beta testing, restricted to invites only and first come first serve registration. To get an invitation to try Woopra, sign up and register your blog, even if you are on WordPress.com. They will send you an invitation when they can. They are working with Layered Technologies and 3Tera, which has graciously offered 100 servers to accommodate this unexpected interest and enthusiasm.

Matt Mullenweg and his Automattic team of WordPress developers were seriously impressed by Woopra, and there is some discussion going on about including it within the WordPress Community. There is a post on the WordPress.com Forum requesting access to Woopra for WordPress.com bloggers.

Back in December Blogger & Podcaster Magazine teamed up with USA TODAY to launch The Blogger & Podcaster Guide (think TV Guide for blogs/podcasts to a mainstream audience). The motivation was for us both to make some money ($49.95 per month) while helping bloggers/podcasters to build their audiences by tapping into the 10,000,000+ mainstream consumer readers of USA TODAY.

After 2 months it became clear that while we had hundreds of paying customers, our $49.95 price point (a bargain by traditional USA TODAY standards) was too high for most of our industry to be able to participate.

What happened next has truly amazed me.

USA TODAY has figuratively “torn up” our original agreement and has voluntarily agreed to do the following for us:

1) Given us permission to reduce the price of from $49.95 per month to just $5 per month. They told me that they hope that this new price point will make The Blogger & Podcaster Guide accessible for everyone, no matter how niche or new to the industry. (If you’re already a customer of the guide no worries, the new pricing will happen automatically at your next billing cycle. You don’t need to do anything.)

2) Their going to help drive even more traffic into the Blogger & Podcaster Guide (beyond the franchise spot on the home page of USA TODAY.com they’ve already given us) by giving us 2,000,000 premium placed advertisements (leader boards, skyscrapers etc.) each month. That equates to just shy of 67,000 ads per day. We’re going to be all over USATODAY.com.

3) Perhaps most significantly and selfless of all, USA TODAY has given us permission to work with other media partners beyond themselves. Our agreement was originally an exclusive arrangement for them. This generous act has allowed me to already work out partnerships with 15 additional magazines/publishers with a combined audience of many more millions of pageviews per month. So now if you get a listing in the Blogger & Podcaster Guide you get The USA TODAY and ALL of the new publications for that same $5 per month rate.

I’m having conversations many other publishers and expect to add new ones to our network every month. You’ll be able to keep tabs on the complete list to date at www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/register.

When the mainstream media does something right, I think it’s important to acknowledge. Thank you USA TODAY, you’re helping the little guys, and we appreciate it.

- Larry
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster

1) USA Today- Blogger & Podcaster Guide. There’s been a big development with USA Today. Thanks to their support of our industry we can now offer inclusion in the USA Today Blogger & Podcaster Guide (think TV Guide for blogs and podcasts to a mainstream audience) for just $5 per month…it was $49.95 monthly. In addition, beyond the position on the homepage of usatoday.com they have also committed to 2,000,000 premium placed ads each month, driving even more traffic to the guide. Perhaps most importantly, they’ve given us their permission to include other media partners in the Blogger & Podcaster Guide. Later today we’ll be announcing 15 new media partners beyond USA Today, making the $5 per month value proposition even stronger. Based on initial interest I anticipate having deals with over 100 media partners within the next few months. This will, for the first time, allow bloggers and podcasters to promote their content to a significant mainstream audience cost effectively. All current members will automatically be switched to the new pricing, you don’t need to do anything. If you are intersted in being included you can register at www.bloggerandpodcater.com/register (the page may not be live until later today, so check back if it’s not up when you go there.)

2) Eligibility. All bloggers and podcasters are eligible to join The Blogger & Podcaster Network. We make no requirements as to subscriber count, unique visitors or any other such restrictions. And, we don’t require exclusivity. You can be part of The Blogger & Podcaster Network at the same time you’re a member of another network, if that’s what makes sense for your business.

3) Healthcare. We are working hard on a group healthcare plan. We know healthcare (especially in the US) is a big issue for those looking to leave their “day jobs” and blog/podcast full time, so we are actively working on a group plan solution that will eliminate this obstacle. As you might imagine, this is a complicated endeavor, however I’m confident that we’re going to be able to work this out.

4) Earning You Money. This summer we will be rolling out the advertising portion of our program. We’ll provide members with the option of including useful content widgets (that can be simply installed on your web page) such as: polls of the day, video players (on topics of interest to your audience), news feeds, etc. The content widgets will have advertising embedded in them and we will share revenues from these ads with you. We prefer this approach, in contrast to a program like Google AdSense, where you schlock up your site by having ads stacked on each on top of each other. When all is said and done between this advertising and our affiliate program bloggers & podcasters will be able to earn a living from being a full-time blogger/podcaster.

There’s even more exciting news still to come, but I’m going to try and keep those details under wraps for now. Hopefully Scoble, Jason Kottke, Michael Arrington or some other intrepid journalist won’t scoop us when the time comes.

- Larry
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is, as you sports fans know, the all-time leading NBA scorer, and the creator of the skyhook. His pro career spanned 20 years and two teams, the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. He now writes a daily blog for the Los Angeles Times.

If you’re not a sports fan, resist the temptation to skip Kareem’s blog. This is not simply a jock’s recollections of past glory, or his thoughts on the sport he loves. At the Kareem blog, you’ll find stories about the b-ball legend’s interactions with famous friends like Grammy winner Herbie Hancock, his role in the recent “Yes I Can!” music video produced by will.i.am for Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign, and profiles of unsung African-Americans, just in time for Black History Month. Oh, and you can learn how to shoot a skyhook after age 50.

My interview with Kareem will focus on his decision to begin blogging, how he approaches his new blog, and his interest in new media in general. If you have questions for Kareem, please post them in the comments to this entry, and I’ll choose several of the best ones. You’ve got until 9 AM PT/noon ET tomorrow to add your suggestions.

Look for excerpts of the interview in text and podcast form very soon, and the full version in our next issue.

Just one billion?

Wizzard Media announced today that the company’s podcast hosting units had delivered 1 billion downloads in 2007. That’s a whole lot of episodes, but what does it mean for the future of podcasters and podcast networks, and who gets the credit for moving all those bits?

Wizzard’s Libsyn and Switchpod subsidiaries are podcast hosting companies. They began by selling hosting services to podcasters, and that is still a large part of their business/. Libsyn, in particular, provides an inexpensive, easy-to-use service that’s almost always recommended to podcast newbies, and those faced with sudden spikes in subscribership. That’s because Libsyn charges based on how much storage you use, not for bandwidth. Wizard/Libsyn hosts some of the most popular shows around, but for $5 a month, it can host your grandmother’s podcast, too.

In 2007, the company began inking deals with ad brokers and content providers in a very public way: it had launched a business-focused podcasting service in 2006. suddenly, their press releases started to resemble those of companies who marketed themselves primarily as podcast aggregators or networks.

I think it’s fair to say that credit for the sheer number of podcast downloads delivered by Wizzard companies in 2007 (I personally accounted for several thousand of them) goes to their hosting customers. The Libsyn service, which has been plagued by intermittent service outages and other growing pains, has been a boon to anyone wanting to publish a podcast without worrying about how a popularity spike would affect their personal bandwidth costs. And the company’s participation in the podcasting community, and its DIY spirit, have kept many users loyal, even in the face of hiccups.

It’s also an encouraging sign for podcasting that Wizzard’s announcement was picked up by ReadWriteWeb, then by TechMeme. Podcasting companies and happenings don’t tend to get the attention of the big tech blogs. The 1 billion number may be more of a mile marker than a real turning point in the industry, but so what?

Right before the mingle, at 6 PM, Adam Christianson of The Maccast will host a Mac podcaster meetup, featuring some leading Mac talkers. Both events happen at Jillian’s Restaurant, just across from the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. If you can make it the the Mac Mingle and Mac Podcaster Meetup, please say hello. ‘ll be the one in the stylin’ Blogger & Podcaster shirt.

If you know of an important blogger and podcasting event that will occur in calendar year 2008, please let us know. You can add your event to the comments for this post, or drop us an email at feedback at bloggerandpodcaster dott comm.