This American Life Podcasts. They start on Monday.

It sounds like a pretty good solution. The broadcasts will be available for a week after airing as a podcast. After that, the listener has three immediate options — free stream, paying $13 for a CD or buying the episode for 95¢ from Audible or the iTunes Store.

I’m sure some may gripe, but it sounds like a pretty decent deal accommodating whatever WBEZ needs to do and what the people who were making the “unofficial” podcasts wanted. It will definitely get me listening again (like you, I prefer time-shifting some of my radio listening).

I have nothing against WAMU per se, but there are some inadequacies in the radio format. For example, as I said in the original post, TAL is on at 3PM on Saturdays. This is not my normal commute time and to put the radio on this is usually not feasible.

I could listen to TAL on XMPR (OK, so it’s on XM, but aside from the broadcast method, they’re essentially the same, technologically) during my daily commutes, but it still falls short in relationship to a netcast. My commute is usually much less than an hour (depending on the whims of I66 and the Beltway). With a netcast, the show picks right up where I left it when I get back. With the broadcast, it’s gone. For shows like TAL, I’d hate missing part of the show.

For the few TAL parts that I really don’t like (honestly, I can’t think of any stories that I’ve ever done this with, but I could), I can just fast-forward through the netcast to the next one. You can’t do this with the broadcast.

It’s just time-shifting, but it’s a big plus. My media consumption is now on my schedule, not some anonymous program director’s.

Still, for me at least, daily shows and local/national/international news don’t translate well to netcast format. Whenever I don’t have a netcast to listen to on my commute, I’m almost always on WAMU for ME and ATC (or whatever else is playing).

So, for the time being at least, it’s money to both TAL and WAMU, but that might change in the future and that’s, in my opinion, the crux of the problem for most NPR stations. (Maybe with commercial radio too, but with their different funding model, I suspect that it’s less susceptible to these changes. Honestly, though, I listen to so little commercial radio, I’ve rarely thought about it.)

As you might imagine, there’s lots of talk in the pubradio community right now about these issues — do we make things available? If so, which things and how often? What quality do we offer? Do we charge for it? Who is allowed to ask for a monetary donation?

In the “old days” (still playing out today), the local pubradio station “owned” the relationship with the listeners and could mine those listeners for dollars. Like TAL? Great — send us money or we’ll cancel it! Okay, it’s not THAT blatant, but the idea is there — without your dollars the local pubradio station will disappear, and so will all your favorite shows.

In an increasingly disintermediated world, what’s the value of the local station? Well, producers at NPR, PRI, APM and other major national producing stations have to consider their existing financial relationships with the local stations. The fact that you gave real money to the producers of TAL would stick in the craw of fundraisers at WAMU, I would suspect. Same as any station.

The future’s gonna be a lot more complicated because of all these new distribution models and how/where the money will flow. That’s why you still can’t get Morning Edition or All Things Considered (from NPR) as a podcast or download.

NPR freely broadcasts TAL in my area, but the time is inconvenient. They make it freely available for listening on their website, but having to listen to it while at my laptop is not good for me either. By capturing the MP3 stream and playing it on my car stereo, I’m time and location shifting the show. Sure, I have to wait a week to get it, but I consider that reasonable. I’m not skipping anything, even their little ads at the end.

I don’t think they have anything to complain about. I’m using what they offer and not taking anything away from them that they were otherwise giving. If I choose to listen to the stream over the PupuPlayer, then I’m still downloading one MP3 stream, just like I’m doing now. Heck, doing it my way (assuming they don’t change anything for this next show) will even save them a little in their bandwidth as I’m not also downloading the player. (OK, so it’s not much, but it’s something.) Heck, I think I’d be doing them a favor if these shows were put on P2P networks (if they’re not already there), assuming that their drive for funds is only to cover bandwidth costs.

As you said, though, I doubt it is all about bandwidth. I think it’s also about recouping costs and if selling their show through Audible helps some, so be it. I have no problem with supporting them. Heck, I even posted two links to a TAL / CPR site for donations and said that people who like TAL should donate. I have no problem with monetarily supporting a show I like. I just don’t want to support TAL by giving a chunk to Audible and indirectly supporting DRM.

I’ve heard about TAL’s “solution” and some of the concern about it. I doubt bandwidth costs are the biggest factor in play here. I think making sure there’s enough money to cover production costs is the more vital element. Any show with original, quality content costs a pretty penny especially with contributors the likes of David Sedaris.

I don’t know for sure. It’s a tough balance — they obviously want to provide a free, a la carte version for online users, but would like users to pay for an easy, albeit DRM’d download solution. At the same time, they probably have to consider concerns about gutting the audiences of stations airing the show in local markets.

Annual program fees for a show like “A Prairie Home Companion” can range from $4,395 to $48,776 depending on a station’s market size (I can’t find fee info regarding TAL). Are Internet users ready to step in and pay up that much money?

Of course, this is all a tough balance especially as pushing audio and video over the Internet becomes easier and more convenient.