If you're going to do an audio news podcast, don't use TV talk

I was listening to one of the MP3s off of WLS-TV ABC7 Chicago's hybrid mixed media news podcast, and while I appreciated the initiative of getting involved with new media, I can't say I was that impressed. It was an audio version of the televised show, which didn't make for seamless translation. Phrases the anchors used like "The imagery you see here...", and "As you can see..." referencing visualizations obviously don't work for a medium where you can only listen. Any audience would see the lethargy in production quality of this service.

My intent isn't to rip on a fellow news affiliate, much less one in a market much larger and significant than my own (Guam). Rather my point is to bring to light a growing problem from newspapers and broadcast stations that are adopting new media like podcasts, blogging, wikis, etc. If you're going to do something, do it right - and don't try and force square pegs to fit, because they never do. Either produce a new show catering to a specific medium, or write scripts in more platform-agnostic fashion.

My station has TV newscasts, which we stream (and soon will be vidcasting/vodcasting as part of my brodcast strategy) and then we also produce audio podcast versions, which are written more radio friendly to avoid such awkward translation mistakes. It's a lot more work, and has caused us to bend and flex in directions we didn't initially intend - but isn't that the point? Tech will do that to you.

ESPN.com combines the best of both worlds - producing original audio content for its podcasts, as well as time-shifting ESPN Radio programming like "The Dan Patrick Show" and audio tracks to TV segments like "Cold Pizza's 1st and 10".

Overall, I really enjoyed WLS-TV's work and remain subscribed to their RSS feed. It's just little things like this get to me.