PODCASTING: Battle over — and Apple won
and Apple won — Can we officially declare the end of the podcasting boom? Sure, internet users will continue to subscribe to audio files, the experience will become ever more like interactive radio, and existing broadcasters will supply their programs in chunks — just like the visionaries predicted.
Context & Ripple Effects
Valleywag's verdict lands mid-argument rather than after it: the piece concedes podcasting worked exactly as its advocates predicted — subscribers pulling audio files — but insists the win belongs to Apple's machinery, with the format settling into interactive-radio-like programming supplied by existing broadcasters in chunks. The call drew immediate pushback from inside the format's own camp; Scripting News answered the same day with a curt "Oh Valleywag," signaling that advocates did not accept the boom as finished.
The timing fits Apple's broader spring 2007 offensive: the $300 Apple TV box had just reached the market, and the company had cut a deal with EMI to sell DRM-free tracks — both extensions of the same iTunes-catalog logic that makes ownership of the default directory the real prize once a media format matures.
First-order effects
- Discovery and subscriptions route through Apple's iTunes catalog, so placement there becomes the choke point between podcasters and their audiences.
- Established broadcasters supplying chunked programs validate the format while crowding the field the hobbyist originators built.
Second-order effects
- Directory and tool makers competing with Apple now optimize for visibility inside Apple's client rather than building an independent audience path.
- Video-capable feeds slot naturally into the freshly launched Apple TV's living-room pitch, tying podcasting's next chapter to Apple's hardware cycle alongside the iPhone buzz that has already overshadowed the box.
Third-order effects
- The episode sketches a recurring structure: open, subscriber-driven formats get absorbed by whichever company operates the default client and directory, moving leverage from creators to the platform gatekeeper.
- Whether podcasting remains a grassroots medium or becomes the interactive radio Valleywag describes hinges on portable devices making subscribed audio a daily habit — the outcome the piece declares settled and its critics plainly do not.
The trend: Media formats born on the open web tend to consolidate under whichever company runs the default store and directory — here, Apple's iTunes.