Podcasting Numbers Disputed

In a post at Geek News (Geek News Central Revealing Technical News and useful links) new research numbers from Forrester Research are called 'invalid' by Todd Cochrane. He backs up his claim with oodles of numbers from podcast listener tracking they've done.

Essentially, the new(disputed) report, according to Charlene Li, says that "survey showed that only 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts."

But the podcast world looks to disagree, saying the numbers are way too low.

Over the past year, there have been a number of well-publicized reports with wildly disparate numbers on the podcast audience.

Hell, it's the damn internet. You can track anything. Why is figuring out the number of regular podcast listeners a problem?

Maybe it's the term 'regular' that's throwing everyone.

Besides, we all know that when it comes to surveys, we Americans have been trained to fib a little. Hell, I remember Chicago columnist Mike Royko always urged his readers to lie to pollsters just to skew the results.

Nothing wrong with a little subversion.

I think I got off track on this post. Late at night; that's what I'll blame!