Cable News Is Not a Radio Product

The Hidden Flaws in Streaming Audio Metrics

The podcast explores the challenges and limitations of streaming audio metrics, highlighting the lack of independent verification and the selective use of data by streaming platforms. It also compares streaming metrics to broadcast radio and discusses the impact on royalty pools and reclassification of premium subscriptions. Takeaways * Streaming metrics lack independent verification * Streaming platforms control how streams are classified and priced Chapters * 00:00 The Mystery of Podcast Metrics * 05:08 Defining a Stream on Spotify * 10:36 Reclassification of Premium Subscription

How A UK Radio Broadcast Controls Household Heating

The conversation explores the concept of hidden data signals and focuses on the Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) in the UK. It compares the UK approach with US systems and discusses the shutdown of the RTS after over 40 years of operation. Takeaways * Hidden data signals * Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) Chapters * 00:00 Introduction to Hidden Data Signals * 09:14 US Approach vs. UK Approach

Why Podcasting Metrics Matter: Understanding the RSS Enclosure Tag

The Hidden Structure of Podcasting: Why It Matters Turns out, the core of podcasting isn't just about the content — it's about a tiny XML tag that nobody owns but everyone depends on. That one tag keeps the entire industry running, yet it leaves questions about measurement and control hanging in the air. In this episode: The origins of RSS and the enclosure tag Why no one owns the main infrastructure How platforms like Spotify tried to control the medium The complexity of measuring listens versus downloads What's new with Podcasting 2.0 and open extensions The implications for independence and platform risk Timestamps: 00:00 - The mystery of podcast download counts 00:21 - The birth of RSS and the enclosure tag 00:51 - How the enclosure tag revolutionized podcasting 02:04 - Who built the podcasting infrastructure? Nobody owns it. 03:56 - The basics of how podcast feeds work 04:37 - The difference between downloads and listens 06:14 - Radio vs podcast measurement methods 07:07 - How server logs improve download accuracy 08:07 - Spotify's big spend to control the medium 09:12 - The failure of platform-dependent exclusivity 10:29 - What's new with Podcasting 2.0 11:41 - The ongoing struggle to measure audience engagement 12:28 - The importance of openness for independence

Understanding RDS: The Hidden Backbone of FM Radio

You press your ear to the radio and wonder what’s buried in the static. Turns out, there’s a tiny data protocol still riding shotgun inside FM signals after all these years—RDS and RBDS. It’s the reason your car’s dashboard knows what’s playing, and it’s holding up a lot more than most folks realize. Key topics: History of RDS/RBDS Technical workings of RDS/RBDS Impact of RDS on modern radio and vehicles Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to RDS and RBDS 06:41 The Role of RDS in FM Radio 13:24 Future of RDS and Its Importance

Cable News Is Not a Radio Product

This is my opinion as someone who works in broadcasting and spends probably too much time thinking about radio. Take it for what it is. Cable news channels have the infrastructure, the staff, the brand recognition, and the content volume to build genuinely compelling audio products. They have people who know how to talk and news gathering operations most radio stations can only dream of. Instead, they route the 24/7 TV audio feed to a streaming platform and call it done. CNN is on TuneIn. Fox News is on SiriusXM. MSNBC has a linear feed on TuneIn. You can listen to all of them. But listening to TV without the picture isn't the same thing as audio, and the fact that you can technically do it doesn't make it a radio product. Real audio is built around the assumption that you cannot see anything. The writing accounts for it. The pacing accounts for it. When something visual happens, someone describes it. When there's a graphic, someone reads it. When there's a clip, the anchor sets it up so you know what you're about to hear and why it matters. None of that is complicated, but all of it is deliberate. TV assumes you're watching. When an anchor says "as you can see here" and pauses while a map fills the screen, audio listeners get silence and no idea what they were supposed to be seeing. When a breaking news chyron goes up, nobody reads it aloud because everyone in the studio assumes you can see it. That's not a small problem. That's the whole product. The proof that it can be done differently isn't hard to find. WTOP in Washington D.C. has been running commercial all-news radio since 1969. Traffic and weather on a regular cycle, written for listeners, paced for listeners, ads sold against all of it. It consistently ranks as the highest-rated station in the D.C. market -- not the highest-rated news station, the highest-rated station period -- and has the Murrow Awards to back it up. The BBC and CBC get brought up in conversations like this because they did the same thing at a larger scale. BBC Radio and CBC Radio were built as distinct operations from their television sides, written and produced specifically for listeners. CBC Radio has been commercial-free since 1974. Those funding models are real differences, and anyone who says they don't matter is wrong. But WTOP is right there as evidence that the commercial-free argument is a deflection. The question was never about the funding model. It was about whether you treat audio as its own discipline or as a TV byproduct. If the business case for a fully produced commercial feed is still a tough sell, SiriusXM and TuneIn already have the infrastructure for tiered models. That's not a novel idea. Neither the production problem nor the monetization problem is actually hard to solve. MSNBC is worth noting because they're doing both things simultaneously. Their podcast operation is legitimate. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra earned an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2025, and those narrative series are produced for ears, not repurposed from TV. The criticism isn't about that work. It's specifically about the live 24/7 feed that gets dumped on a streaming platform and called radio. The national news audio space isn't crowded. Public radio serves a different mission. There's real room for a cable news operation to build something audio-first. The audience exists. The content pipeline exists. The talent exists. What's missing is the decision to treat the live feed as something other than a TV byproduct. Nobody is choosing TuneIn CNN because it's a great radio product. They're there because it's available and the brand is familiar. That's inertia, not a product strategy. WTOP has been answering this question since 1969. Cable news just hasn't bothered to ask it.