Scott Loftesness wonders about the podcasting phenomenon and suggests, “I can see IT professionals deciding its worthwhile for them to listen to his podcasts at work — not at home, not in the car or the airplane but in the office.”
My sense (anecdotally) is that more IT Conversations fans listen during their commutes or while exercising than at work. I should probably add this to my survey questions.
As for who’s going to become the Arbitron of podcasting, I’d say that so far it’s the blogosphere and through analysis of links first by Google, then Technorati.
As with radio, podcatching (listening) is anonymous. But unlike radio, it’s not cost effective to penetrate the anonymity of the listenership through sampling. The podcast audience is miles wide but very thin. By virtue of the scarcity of spectrum, the radio and TV listener pools are smaller and deeper, making them more economical to sample using Arbitron-like methods.