As you may know from reading earlier posts here, I stopped listening to anything Clear Channel owned over 1 year ago. That’s when they pulled Stern from the air. At that time I thought Satellite would be a possibility for him to move to, so I thought I would buy some stock. But which one should I choose. The choice for me was pretty simple since Clear Channel is an investor in XM. Sirius would be it then. It has not let me down – yet.

I have assumed I would add Sirius to my car some time before January 2006, just before Howard goes on the air there. That is still “probably” what I will do, but I have been getting hooked more and more on a thing called PodCasting. Don’t let the name fool you, PodCasting does not mean you have to own an iPod. The “Pod” piece of PodCasting could be pretty much any mp3 player. People, just like you and I, record their own shows and post them on the web. From there you can listen to them or have them download to your mp3 player. I won’t get in to all the technical particulars on how to do it, but I’ll add a few links at the end of this for those that want to learn more.

The first PodCast I ever listened to was called the Daily Source Code, by Adam Curry. Remember him? He was a VJ on MTV. He does one of the more polished shows I listen to, but there are pieces of it I really don’t care for. I like more of a Talk Show feel to it, but he adds MashUps (which I really don’t care for) and does a Hit Test, which I care for even less. Remember the old Name That Tune game show? I didn’t care much for it either. But I do like everything else he has done. My favorite one right now is probably the Dawn and Drew Show. It is just fun to listen to and it lacks that redeeming social value that you know I really don’t care for.

How does this affect my decision to subscribe to Sirius radio? Well, right now all of these PodCasts are free. Sirius is a monthly subscription service. I can pull down any number of shows on various topics every day and build my own radio station of things that I want to hear. The only thing that would be missing for me would be the Stern piece. I would, however, be willing to pay a small fee for his shows that I wanted to hear.

If you are already in to this you realize the amazing transformation that is about to happen. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you owe it to yourself to read up on it a little. Here are a few links to get you started.

http://www.ipodder.org/ http://www.podcast.net/ http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/ http://www.podshow.com/