The Infinite Dial

Some interesting comments this afternoon from "Sports Guy" Bill Simmons, the star of ESPN.com. In the course of a long pre-Super Bowl chat, Simmons is asked why he's been doing more podcasts and writing fewer columns in recent weeks. His response, in part:

"I love doing the podcasts and feel like I'm on the ground floor of a medium that is really starting to take off. It's like radio on demand and I think it's going to kill satellite radio in two years. I really do. It's also a huge threat to real radio in my opinion, especially when people can get Internet in their cars and can just cue podcasts up within three clicks.

"It's astonishing to me that nobody has written a long piece about podcasts yet. This is exactly the same as what happened with sportswriting in the late-'90s where nobody was taking the Internet seriously and suddenly within seven years there were a million sports blogs, mainstream sites were crushing newspapers and newspapers were hemorrhaging money. We are headed that way with podcasts.

"I just think radio is going to become much more niche-oriented over these next 10 years -- people don't see it yet. Christian Slater in 'Pump Up The Volume' is going to look like a genius."

Okay, that might not be what all those new ESPN Radio affiliates we've read so much about lately want to hear. Then again, if they were smart, those stations would be playing Simmons' podcast.

Meanwhile, Edison's Tom Webster has written a lot about Podcasts in these pages. See our most recent report here, and click here to see everything about podcasts on The Infinite Dial.