CBS Radio News now provides many programs to its affiliates for podcasting or station website use. CBSNews.com currently features audio from CBS Radio News' "Harry Smith Reporting", and tech guru Larry Magid. CBS radio stations will access the podcast material via an affiliate website. Programming will include regularly scheduled programs and features, as well special in-depth series. Podcasting programs include "The CBS Weekend Roundup;" "What's in the News;" "Wired Magazine;" "Entertainment Report with People magazine's Lisa Karlin;" and "Larry Magid's Tech Report," among others. ABC Radio Networks' "Hannity Insider" the monthly subscription service available at www.Hannity.com offers listeners daily podcasts that can be downloaded directly to an MP3 player or iPod.

---

Fisher's News KOMO-AM Seattle has set up an RSS feed that can be set up to be checked by iTunes, which will download the clips and load them onto the iPod with the next sync.

Probably the biggest radio station podcasting success story so far lies with KCRW. Ruth Seymour, KCRW-FM LA GM, tells us she launched the station's podcast in March and within three weeks the daily podcast downloads were up to 25,000. By mid June the number was 100,000. After Apple's update to its iTunes music software to handle podcasting, Seymour said it all but crashed their servers with demand. SoCal Lexus Dealers is the exclusive sponsor of the station's podcasting lineup. Audio ads air on the podcast itself.

How did that deal get done? "When we were first looking for an underwriter, we were positioning it as 'You'll get in at the very bottom. We'll make an attractive deal for you because it's new. If you want to position yourself to appeal to a certain group of people-early adapters-this is a great medium to do it. And you'll have a lock on it, we'll give you an exclusive deal for six months'," explained Seymour.

The Lexus deal is reportedly worth six figures, and although the deal is structured on a CPM model like typical Internet media buys in which the advertiser pays for the actual number of downloads, Lexus gets more for its money. It includes promoting the sponsorship in a print campaign; Lexus logos and links on KCRW.com and on the podcast player; mentions on the air during daily regular programming; and mentions at the beginning of all 22 podcasts.

"Podcasting is a way to reach a fresh audience, a niche audience," claimed Bill Flitter, Founder of RSS, podcasting ad network "Pheedo" in an interview. Flitter said that for popular radio shows that get, say, 30,000 downloads a month, the sponsor would pay 10,000 dollars or so. "It depends how they value that podcast," Flitter told AdAge recently. Flitter says he has 8,000 RSS publishers in the Pheedo network, including 30 podcasters.

Stations need to be careful with sponsorships of podcasts. It's a good idea to restrict the number of downloads. To battle bandwidth costs associated with podcasting, some stations may decide to offer a special online subscription level which includes podcasting. Explains Seymour: "Remember, everything is free. At a certain point, it's going to become too expensive to provide free podcasts because the bandwidth is going to cost too much money. A station like KCRW has been able to do amazing things online because we have partners that host the service. But if we had to buy the bandwidth that we use for webcasting and podcasting efforts it would be close to one million dollars a year. Apple knows that if it didn't host the KCRW programs on its iTunes service, we wouldn't be able to accommodate it, because they have a user base that is so enormous it would overwhelm us."

On the satellite side, Sirius launched a show that features a daily selection of podcasted programs. The four hour weekday program, Adam Curry's PodShow, debuted 5/13. Curry is the former MTV personality who helped create the technological tools that allow podcasting to work. The show airs on Channel 148.