Chances are you listen to radio AND podcasts. Or at least have listened to one podcast.
We've adapted to exploring audio by search out pieces one at a time, that have a finite beginning and ending. 1250 WHNZ produces podcasts as well, especially Let's Talk Nutrition and Best of the Bay. Many of our syndicated and brokered shows also make their own podcasts.
But what if we had always listened to stand alone audio in discrete pieces and then suddenly, talk radio had come along? Granted it's hard to imagine with the technology of a previous century. Perhaps the Sony Walkman personal cassette player might have inspired talking books to evolve into what we now call podcasts in the 80s. Or maybe the long-playing vinyl record might have inspired storytellers, in just the way comedy albums took off in the real life 1960s.
How would we explain spoken word radio to someone who had listened to podcasts all their lives?
"Hey, there's this new thing, and it's like a podcast, only it's continuous and when one podcast ends... they call them 'shows'... instead of it just ending, they start a new one... you don't have to search another one out... and it might be similar or it might be different... and you get to discover new people and new topics... financial or health or politics..."
As I said, many of our WHNZ shows are podcast now. But there's always the thrill of discovery that comes from just turning on the radio or scanning the presets and finding something new. If you know someone who's into podcasts but hasn't discovered 1250 WHNZ yet, why not take the time to introduce them? We're easy to discover, not just on an AM radio. We're on the iHeartRadio app, which works on any iPhone or Android phone, as well as Amazon Echo and Google Home, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox 360, and all sorts of apps and locations we can barely comprehend.
For someone you know, it might be like the first time they heard a podcast.