Notes on The Echo Chamber

Just listened to the latest entry from Barry A Dobyn’s Nothing To Declare, one of the podcasts I listen to. In this one Barry raises the provocative topic of how podcasters seems to have fallen into a sort of mutual admiration tailspin, and one of the examples he cites is the fact that CFR was mentioned on both Adam Curry’s and Dave Slusher’s podcasts (he forgot to mention Dawn & Drew, whose link has netted me scores of hits as well). His post also links to both CFR and 3canal, which I find kind of nice and ironic and very post-modern. But what Barry said got me a-thinking about all sorts of things, and I was compelled to post this comment, which you should probably come back and read after you’ve listened to his podcast:

Hi Barry:

Catching up on my podcast-listening for the week so only now getting around to listening to your latest. Thanks for the mention and for running the promo–unfortunately I didn’t hear it before doing my last show, in which I thanked a couple of people for recent mentions.

You’re absolutely right about the tail-chasing that’s going on in the podcasting community. This seems to me to be such an ingrained feature of the media in general (ie podcasting, broadcast media, print media etc), however, that one wonders how it could ever be fixed. The majority of consumers seem content to be told what they should listen to/watch/read by the dominant forces, rather than go looking for potentially interesting new and mind-expanding products. I guess that in the podcasting context, being championed by people like Adam Curry, Dawn & Drew and Dave Slusher might be considered the equivalent of having your film picked up by Warner Bros, your book published by Time/Warner etc. (without the money part, of course).

Coming from country that’s a pinprick (okay, two pinpricks) on the world map, however, what I find interesting in my particular case is the fact that a podcast which would normally be considered a niche product or at least not mainstream, has been able to receive the kind of attention it has (which, let it be said, is still not Daily Source Code-level). This, one has to admit, is not something that would have ever been possible in any of the traditional media, for all sorts of reasons: but, thanks to podcasting, here I am, and here is 3canal, Sheldon Blackman, Asheba, Beethova Obas and a host of other relatively unknown Caribbean artists.

So yes, we podcasters have in a sense settled into a mutual admiration society of sorts, but at least we have *the option* of also admiring things not made in our own image. Whether we choose to exercise that option is, as you say, completely up to us.

Thanks again for your always provocative commentary. For somebody with “Nothing To Declare” you certainly have a lot to say.

Best wishes,
GEORGIA
Caribbean Free Radio
“original audio from the antilles”
(almost live from Trinidad & Tobago)

Technorati Tags: caribbeanfreeradio, podcast, caribbean, broadcastradio, nothigntodeclare, barryadobyns, globalvoices, media, mediaaccess

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