The SF State radio show, "No One's Listening," is including a podcast component with its production.

Podcasts are often used by bands to distribute their MP3 files. However, shortly after its introduction, wanna-be DJs grasped the podcast, launching a new trend, reminiscent of that old Christian Slater movie, "Pump Up The Volume."

The latest trend in multimedia is producing podcasts. Introduced in the summer of 2004, podcasts have been touted as a medium to produce a low-cost and easy way to distribute MP3s online.

Created by BECA graduate student, Irene McGee, "No One's Listening," (N1L) is hosted by SF State’s radio station, KSFS, and streamed online on the KSFS website.

The weekly show about media literacy discusses media ethics, corporate policy, and the state of affairs with industry experts. Episodes of the show are archived in a MP3 format and are available through the N1L website at www.nooneslistening.org.

“The first show was really live on the radio and that was about it. Then we rebuilt it and by the second show we were focusing on the podcast,” said Chris Cornell, a BECA graduate student who engineers the podcast element for N1L.

The first episode of N1L was mostly McGee talking for two hours with KSFS station manager Mandy Brown, who helped launched the show.

The N1L crew is mostly consists of BECA graduate students, with various concentrations. The radio show is initially live to tape, with Cornell editing the show to tighten things up and make the show flow better.

After the first show, Cornell and McGee focused on producing the show with a podcast in mind, allowing flexibility for the show to be formatted for a podcast.

“What we found was we started getting this feedback (that) we shouldn’t really put anything up more than 30 minutes long,” said Cornell. He also says keeping a time limit on the show can be frustrating, since the basis of the show relies on discussions.

“As we started getting some well-known guests, we wanted to hear them talk,” said Cornell. “I didn’t want to reduce them to five-minute sound bites. So we started breaking up the show into parts, pieces and just releasing it a day or two apart."

Past guests have included author Noam Chomsky, FAIR Senior Analyst Steve Rendall and Sociologist Donna Gaines.

N1L began to use podcasts as a way to distribute the show, otherwise presuming no one was going to listen.

“Now that people have been exposed to the podcast, we have more people listen to the live stream,” said Cornell. The N1L crew has come full-circle to focus on the radio aspect of the show.

“We’re basically taking what we have and using it to a maximum,” said Cornell. “It’s great to have access to the studio, to allow us to do the show.” He adds with a podcast and live streaming, they don’t have to cater to a certain market. “I just got an email yesterday from the UK.”

Although podcasts allows people to be flexible with content, BECA Professor Rick Houlberg suggests podcasters should be aware of the law.

“One of the things we tell students when getting a job, is to find out what laws applies to them, state laws and federal laws,” said Houlberg.

He states podcasters should be aware of licensing laws, when using copyrighted songs. Whereas, a radio station has memberships with BMI and ASCAP, the two performing rights organizations which licenses and collects royalties on behalf of performing artists.

"The BECA department is not entirely ignoring the podcast trend, but rather focusing on producing 'great communicators,'” said Houlberg.

“It’s interesting but it’s just like Live 365,” said Houlberg, referring to the web service KSFS uses for streaming.

“We are training students to be aware of the technology and to be able use it,” said Houlberg. “Most importantly in college, what you don’t get on the job is what about the ethics. What about what you should do, like social responsibility. Once you produce a message, what is the purpose? The audience, programming, ethics, legal and regulatory issues." said Houlberg.

However, podcasts offers listeners a way to have on-demand programming.

“The Truth is now, people watch TV threw TiVo. Everybody is into watching and listening to things whenever they want,” said Cornell.

For more information visit http://ksfs.sfsu.edu.