Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"It's a sign of the times, a sign of things to come. And it should, I'm sure, strike terror into the hearts of all the radio networks, who are trying to hang on to their listenership." - Charles Hazelwood.
The Culture Show's Zina Saro-Wiwa investigates the latest trend in digital culture - podcasting. Podcasting is the name given to do-it-yourself radio, whereby people record shows and upload them to the internet as MP3 files, for subscribers to download and listen to at their discretion.
Zina heads to Flanders in Belgium, to meet podcast pioneer Adam Curry, a man who has been dubbed "the podfather." Adam is the host of The Daily Source Code - a podcast that has garnered 50,000 subscribers in the space of just three months. Adam gives and overview of how podcasting works, and lists some of his favourite examples. He believes that podcasting is here to stay, and that - with the proliferation of ipods and other MP3 already on the market, coupled with a potentially vast amount of MP3 enabled mobile phones in the near future - its audience is only going to get bigger.
Much of the appeal of podcasting lies in its amateur status, it's a scrappy underdog tailoring to niche interests with shows that often exude a chaotic, unpolished charm. With podcasting growing in popularity though, radio's big players are already starting to test the waters of the nascent medium - is there a danger that podcasting becomes consumed by the mainstream? For the commercial stations, there is an obvious drawback - if you rely on advertisements for your revenue, how do you stop listeners from just skipping past them? Media consultant David Docherty believes that podcasting represents as much of an existential threat to broadcast radio as peer-to-peer file sharing did to the record industry.
Clip taken from The Culture Show, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 25 November, 2004.
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"It's a sign of the times, a sign of things to come. And it should, I'm sure, strike terror into the hearts of all the radio networks, who are trying to hang on to their listenership." - Charles Hazelwood.
The Culture Show's Zina Saro-Wiwa investigates the latest trend in digital culture - podcasting. Podcasting is the name given to do-it-yourself radio, whereby people record shows and upload them to the internet as MP3 files, for subscribers to download and listen to at their discretion.
Zina heads to Flanders in Belgium, to meet podcast pioneer Adam Curry, a man who has been dubbed "the podfather." Adam is the host of The Daily Source Code - a podcast that has garnered 50,000 subscribers in the space of just three months. Adam gives and overview of how podcasting works, and lists some of his favourite examples. He believes that podcasting is here to stay, and that - with the proliferation of ipods and other MP3 already on the market, coupled with a potentially vast amount of MP3 enabled mobile phones in the near future - its audience is only going to get bigger.
Much of the appeal of podcasting lies in its amateur status, it's a scrappy underdog tailoring to niche interests with shows that often exude a chaotic, unpolished charm. With podcasting growing in popularity though, radio's big players are already starting to test the waters of the nascent medium - is there a danger that podcasting becomes consumed by the mainstream? For the commercial stations, there is an obvious drawback - if you rely on advertisements for your revenue, how do you stop listeners from just skipping past them? Media consultant David Docherty believes that podcasting represents as much of an existential threat to broadcast radio as peer-to-peer file sharing did to the record industry.
Clip taken from The Culture Show, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 25 November, 2004.
You have now entered the BBC Archive, a time machine that will transport you back to the golden age of TV to educate, entertain and enlighten you with classic clips from the BBC vaults.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss a single stop on our amazing journey through the BBC Archive - youtube.com/c/BBCArchive?sub_confirmation=1
You can also dive into plenty more BBC Archive on our website - bbc.co.uk/archive
