Wave goodbye to radio

• Podcasting is spreading faster than you can say ‘geek’

By Anna Johns

The Portland Tribune, Feb 8, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

From a desk in his sparsely furnished apartment above Northwest 23rd Avenue, Tim Germer hosts his own broadcast. Er É make that podcast.

In the parallel high-tech universe known as the blogosphere Ñ where anyone with an Internet hookup can hold forth Ñ Germer, 24, is the host of “Northwest Noise,” an audio program about all things Northwest.

“I have this weird mission that I have to tell people we’re over here in the left corner of the States,” Germer says.

That mission grew out of a semester he spent at the University of Florida, where he discovered that not everyone knew where Oregon was.

“Some people thought Oregon was next to Ohio,” he says.

Two or three times a week, Germer reads Oregon news stories into a microphone that’s hooked up to his computer. He talks about Oregon politics, beer, food and music. He also plays music from Oregon musicians who aren’t getting any attention on mainstream radio. Then he uploads his program to his Web site for others to download to their iPods (or any other MP3 players). The entire process uses five computer programs and takes about an hour and a half.

Podcasting started last August with Adam Curry, a 40-year-old former MTV VJ who was living in Amsterdam at the time. Word of Curry’s program of tunes and trivia, called “Daily Source Code,” quickly spread on technology Web sites. It was a fan who dubbed it a “podcast,” and the name stuck.

Curry started a podcast community site called iPodder, one of several directories to podcast shows. He divides the shows into categories: everything from religion to technology to sex. The Web site allows listeners to “subscribe” to their favorite podcasts, which will automatically download to their computers when new episodes are posted.

One of Germer’s first podcasts got Curry’s attention. When Mount St. Helens started to erupt last fall, Germer edited a skit about a fake news correspondent reporting from the volcano’s crater. Curry loved it, featured the skit on his program and told his listeners to check out “Northwest Noise.”

That brought Germer a larger audience, and he got even more attention in October when an article in the Los Angeles Times mentioned his podcast.

“That’s when things started taking off for me,” says Germer, who now has at least 1,000 faithful listeners.

Podcasting took off at about the same time. When Germer launched his first podcast in late September, his was one of a handful of programs. Now, more than 1,000 podcasts are available for download on various Web sites.

“There used to be a time when I could keep track of everybody,” Germer says, but now he listens to only about a dozen podcasts, including a handful of local programs.

Germer sees the pool of podcasts quickly getting murky. It’s hard to navigate through the hundreds of shows to find any that are entertaining. Germer wants to create a Northwest podcasting community where subscribers could download all the local shows with one click. He’d like to see other Northwesterners with special interests, such as cooking or hiking, start podcasts and join the community.

The case for comedy

A handful of other podcasts are based in Portland, all with different topics. “Delta Park Project” is a weekly program hosted by former improv actor, Jason Ruby, 28. He performs original monologues, plays funny music sent to him by fans and provides witty banter on a variety of topics.

“This kind of broadcasting is such a cool avenue for comedy,” Germer says.

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