Wired Looks at the Podfading Trend

Posted on February 8, 2006

A Wired article suggests that podfading is becoming more common as more podcasters either lose interest or quit over concern they don't have enough time to produce a quality podcast. Wired says the word podfading was coined by Scott Fletcher in 2005.

Fletcher says, "I liken it to losing interest in a hobby and then coming up with the reasons you don't have time anymore."

Note: Scott Fletcher has a post about the Wired article on his Podcheck Review blog. Podfading even happens to popular podcasts like Ryan and Jen Ozawa's Lost podcast which had 15,000 listeners. The article says that podcasts, unlike blogs, are not easy to produce and take a much greater time investment. Rob Walch, who runs Podcast411, told Wired that 1/5 of podcasters quit before their tenth show.

Brian Reid the former host of Sex Talk, tells Wired, "There was no money in it and it did nothing to push my career forward. I've got a lot of other things in my life, paying work being one and my family is another. It's not like blogging, where you can do it for 15 minutes at a time and get away with it."

The article also says that Z100, a New York City radio station that was one of the earliest podcasters, has not produced a new podcast since December. What does the future hold for podcasts? There should definitely be a market for quality podcasts but podcasters do have the rapidly developing online video medium to compete with.