I sent a brief email this morning to the fine folks at WNYC.org, asking them to considering changing the format of their podcast of the Brian Lehrer Show. See, they recently changed the podcast format from one 20-30 minute segment of the show (only a portion), to six separate segments totaling about two hours (the whole show).
Multi-segment podcasts tend to get unwieldy: in order to play them all in a row, you can’t just sync them to your iPod. They’ll stop between each track, and you’ll have to find the next one to start it playing…not safe behavior while driving. It’s possible to get around that by organizing a playlist of the episodes you want, prior to syncing your device…but that takes time, and it has the downside that each of those tracks can now be included in your music rotation if you put your device on shuffle. There are a few other reasons why the small segments get prohibitively more annoying to work with (if time is hard to come by, as is true of many folks), and that’s kinda why I haven’t listened to the Brian Lehrer Show in a week or so.
Anyway, I sent the email kindly asking if they’d consider larger podcast episodes, and I received this email from the WNYC Program Director about 4 hours later:
Dear Jim,
Just wanted to let you know that we got your note about the Lehrer show podcasts and are investigating with iTunes. We agree—it would be a good solution.
So stay tuned, and thanks very much for writing,
Chris
I’d say that’s cool as shit. Nice to know they’re not only open to suggestion, but also very nice about responding to requests!