

State of the Union Address for 2012 at 5by5 - neXter
http://blog.5by5.tv/articles/2012/11/18/state-of-the-union-address-for-2012

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arrrg
I’m very sad that Hypercritical ends. Siracusa was a podcast making machine,
always great at picking out interesting topics, always great at explaining and
finding the right analogies. Sure, not all episodes were always genius (as is
bound to happen with a weekly podcast), but it’s not like that has happened
more often recently.

I’m not really at all in tune with American pop culture, so his appearances on
The Incomparable are sadly not as interesting to me.

I’m guessing doing an interesting podcast week after week is just hard and he
wants a break?

~~~
DaNmarner
According to Dan, Siracusa will make appearances in the new show called "The
Crossover" (<http://5by5.tv/crossover>), aleit irregularly. All is not lost
for Hypercritical listeners.

~~~
kylec
The problem I foresee is that, by its very nature, The Crossover is intended
to have on multiple hosts from other shows, and as such it's likely that he
would have to share the episode with people other than Dan. While this could
work for some things, I don't think it would work as well for subjects where
he has deep, complex opinions or observations that he needs to impart without
interruption. Still, I'll take what I can get.

~~~
DaNmarner
Very true. I'll miss the Siracusian-length rants.

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petercooper
Random question but I've always wondered this: I don't yet understand the
market for 1.5+ hour weekly podcasts like some of 5by5's. Do listeners
generally have long commutes or even listen during work? Do listeners
generally only listen to 1 podcast a week?

I'm intrigued because I listen to a few far shorter podcasts each week but
would find even a single 2 hour episode almost impossible to get through on my
schedule.

~~~
arrrg
You might have very atypical media use. I fit podcasts in by replacing other
media use.

I was just looking at media use data in Germany† and people spend tons of time
using different media: 242 minutes of TV (that’s four hours!), 191 minutes of
radio, 83 minutes on the Internet, 23 minutes reading newspapers, 31 minutes
listening to audio recordings, 22 minutes reading books and 6 minutes reading
magazines. That’s minutes per day (numbers from 2012, Van Eimeren, Frees
2012).

Those who are younger (14–29) use media a bit less – but still quite a lot:
138 minutes TV, 146 minutes radio, 150 minutes Internet, 10 minutes
newspapers, 72 minutes audio recordings, 30 minutes books and 4 minutes
magazines.

So if people just forgo a little bit of TV use they will easily be able to fit
in a weekly 1.5 hour podcast. If you look at the time when people use
different media (radio use peaks in the morning at 7, probably when people are
in the bathroom or on the way to work, TV use massively peaks around 8 in the
evening, Internet use is pretty evenly spread throughout the day) you can also
see that radio use is also a prime candidate for replacement by podcasts.

By the way, the data I was looking at can tell you very little about how
people use podcasts, because in the general population very few do. Only two
percent use audio podcasts at least once weekly.

—

† I’m sorry, but I’m too lazy to look up numbers for the US right now. The
paper with the data from Germany is the one I have handy. As far as I remember
the details of US media use are different but they are broadly similar (as
would be expected for two similarly developed countries).

—

Source: Van Eimeren, Birgit; Frees, Beate (2012): 76 Prozent der Deutschen
online – neue Nutzungssituationen durch mobile Endgeräte. In: Media
Perspektiven 7–8/2012 (p. 362–379).

~~~
petercooper
Just wanted to thank all of your for your responses - this is very
enlightening!

I can't listen to speech while doing something else (other than driving or
sleeping) so that probably limits my opportunities time-wise.

