The Edinburgh Fringe Podcast – An Experiment In New Media Reporting
You know how I tend to have about a million ideas a year, and only about one in ten of them are any good? I’m still trying to decide if the big August project is one of the one ten, or one of the other nine. One of things I missed about Edinburgh when I was living in London was the buzz of the Edinburgh Fringe. You’d expect there to be an independent blog or something with all the news. Last year I couldn’t find a good blog to cover the Fringe – I’m not counting newspapers coverage (like The Scotsman).
And while running an Edinburgh Fringe Blog would be a mad idea, and really fun to do, that’s not enough for me. Oh no. The Blog has that other great buzz-word of 2005. How does “The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Podcast” sound? I’m already pretty happy with The Rock Show and The Movies Show over at The Podcast Network (TPN), and the benefits of TPN in terms of expertise, brand name, facilities and backup (oh and traffic) speak for themselves.
So it was a natural place to try something as mad as a podcast of The Edinburgh Fringe. Going daily next week is a punishing schedule, but it should be highly entertaining, great fun, and I await with interest just how popular the podcast will be online, and in the mainstream media. After all, you can’t pair up with a bigger Festival than the Edinburgh Fringe. Most people around the world know it’s on, so I’m pretty confident that I’ll have the biggest Fringe Show in Hawaii… or Japan… or the Antartic.
Here’s the plan. The first show (posted today) is a taster of what’s to come. Next Monday sees it switch over to a daily routine (and the workload I can see, from gathering interviews, editing, show notes, post production, and making each show live) is daunting, but possible. Just. What is going to be key is preparation. A lot of work has already been done through July, setting up interviews and review slots for the show – and they’re all really really promising. About 2/3rds of the shows are mapped out, leaving me a fair bit of airtime to react on the ground. A small team of reviewers will join me for written reviews on the site, and I shall probably have a caffine dependancy come September.
“It’s a ride…”
Local Content Delivery Via Mobile
Ewan’s cracked the nut of one big problem that plagues a lot of podcasts (just like it does blogs): boring content. Producing a tightly targeted show like this around an event is a great idea, particularly when it can act as a resource for people participating in the festival. But getting it right to mobiles would be even better.
Link: Mobhappy and Carlo Longino