Everyone knew that John Dvorak was eventually going to have to do an about face on podcasting. His first podcasting piece published in October of 2004, Podcasting: Not Ready For Prime Time was the typical nay saying prevalent in the early days of podcasting. Today was the day for Dvorak to come around, Podcasting: The Next Big Thing. While I don’t know that John Dvorak’s take on podcasting is particularly important for those of us involved in it – I do appreciate that he has “joined the party”. To that I say welcome John. However, I did find this quote interesting:
An executive at Disney will be in a meeting and ask the staff how many people knew this was going on, and three geeks in the back will raise their hands. Then slowly two-thirds of the room will raise their hands. None of these people will have known that everyone already knew. It’s about then that podcasting will suddenly become the rage. It’ll be a Time magazine cover. That will be by the middle of next year. Then the money will start flying around like crazy.
I think he is wrong again, at least as far as Disney is concerned. As someone who has interviewed both Michael Eisner (CEO) and Bob Iger (President and CEO Elect) of the Walt Disney Corporation, I can tell you that executives at Disney are at the forefront of companies getting involved in podcasting. We featured Michael Eisner talking about podcasting on the Disneyland Podcast we did in early May of this year – that was long before even John Dvorak came around.
He had to come around sooner or later as he is a popular member (some ppl love to hate him) of probably the most popular or downloaded podcast around at the moment. It would be hard for a member of TWIT to say podcasting is never going to take off, especially as Leo has just posted they have had over 1 million downloads.
I don’t agree with everything Dvorak writes, soetimes seems hard to believe he does either, but he gets NO SPAM…
Boo Yah! Not to impugn Dvorak’s reputation or anything, but he’s wrong about lots of things unfortunately. I’m just glad he’s not a political commentator;-}
Mike,
I hope some of the other Internet news outlets pick up on this little bit of info. You’ve been helping Disney out, and so without a doubt have a better insight into their organziation than poor old John Dvorak sitting in his office trying like the devil to get his story written before the deadline. Keep up the good work!
I too found it interesting that Dvorak specifically called out Disney in his article. For someone who is now such a big supporter of Podcasting, he would’ve taken the time to listen to the best corporate sponsored podcasts out there.
I too was surprised to see Dvorak call out Disney in hi article. You would think he would’ve done proper research for this article and listen to your Disneyland podcasts. Beside, if he’s now the podcasting wagon, why wouldn’t he want to check some of the best podcasts that have been produced?
OK, OK – noone around the blogosphere seems to ever want to say this, so I’ll be the bold one – Dvorak is a fool who rarely gets his facts, much less his interpretations correct.
It amazes me that as bad of a researcher and thinker as this guy is, he continues to be employed. In all honesty, every single thing I’ve read from him is on par with a high school computer student, not a guy who’s been around the industry for this long.
Listening to the TWIT podcast the day they talked about the GTA Hot Coffee thing was painful – they certainly stood up to their name…
OK, there. I said it. I feel better now. 🙂
Michael,
I’m not sure I understand the relevance of someone at Disney talking about producing podcasts and Dvorak’s comments. Eisner and the like are commenting on the importance of being out there and having a product and realizing the value of repurposing content. Dvorak on the other hand is commenting on the social aspect of adoption of technology. What he is talking about is that although a mass of people are listening to podcasts, the same podcasts, people are just beginging to see that it is part of a shared experience. In the same way that there was a point on a friday morning at work in the late 80’s early 90’s you would go to work and talk about something on Sienfeld and everyone knew what you were talking about because they all shared it the night before. Yes someone at the New york times eventually realizes this and writes a story about the shared experience and eventually Time writes a story and Sienfeld pulls the plug on the show. I think that is all Dvorak is saying.