WHY PODCAST

Unitarian Universalist Podcasters

WHY PODCAST

Research from The Diffusion Group projects a growth of podcast listener in the US alone to around 57 million with the next few years. www.PodSpider.com

Podcasting is a rapidly growing way to reach listeners around the world. With small cost of entry, hundreds of thousands of new "broadcasters" are hitting the podcast "airwaves" daily. Millions of listeners around the globe are finding new, fun, interesting, entertaining, enlightening, and informative content that they want to hear.

UU Congregations podcasting their services and messages server their own members such as the Sunday School Teachers who can't participate in the service, members who are traveling, members who are ill, members who live at a distance and others. In addition, podcasts reach into the community so that prospective members who may have found UU through a web search, can sample the services. Podcasts also reach listeners in many other parts of the country bringing the Liberal Religious message to those who do not have a local UU congregation.

Podcasting serves social justice and other missions of the congregation by providing a message that can be spread through email links to like minded churches, community organizations, associations, and individuals who may be enlisted to support the congregations work.

Do people listen? Yes. A smaller congregation in the Chicago area who
began podcasting in January of 06 reports that podcast listeners add an additional 50 or so listeners a week and that over time many other find and listen to archived podcasts.

Why podcast? The reasons are many, and all good, why a congregation might want to seriously consider implementing a podcasting program. We're here to help you get going so read on.....

The word about podcasting rapidly spread through the already-popular weblogs of Curry, Winer and other early podcasters and podcast-listeners. Fellow blogger and technology columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many "hits" Google found for the word "podcasts" on September 28, 2004. On that day, the result was 24 hits. There were 526 hits on September 30, then 2,750 three days later. The number doubled every few days, passing 100,000 by October 18. A year later, Google found more than 100,000,000 hits on the word "podcasts." [Wikipedia.org]