TechCrunch reported that Natali Del Conte is leaving Podshow for CNET TV:
TeXtra, a tech news video show hosted by former TechCrunch writer Natali Del Conte, may be shutting down well shy of its first birthday this upcoming February 13. That’s because CNET has poached Natali away from Podshow, which owns TeXtra.
That, by itself isn’t too interesting. There were already enough tech podcasts on the market with a pretty girl moderating.
The real meat is in the last paragraph on TechCrunch, though:
There are a lot of rumors about Podshow floating around right now. The company has yet to have a bona fide hit and is reportedly talking to numerous venture capitalists about raising a third round of financing. The nearly $24 million they’ve raised in two rounds of financing may be running dry.
A couple of days ago I restated my argument that podcasting is in a holding pattern. A lot of podcasters had set high hopes on Podshow to attract a larger audience to podcasts and break some of Apple’s monopoly with some new podcatching software, but Podshow, with its megalomaniac CEO, bad site design and empty promises never delivered.
If you are interested in getting into podcasting at this point, you either must have a huge following that is going to come with you, or you are in for a big disappointment. Being part of Podshow isn’t going to help you much one way or the other.
Is anybody surprised that Podshow might be running out of money? What are their hit shows? Don’t say Curry’s show, because I don’t know anybody who is still listening to that drivel. Maybe Dvorak’s five minute show can attract a big enough following, but that won’t save the company. These days Podshow is so desperate for publicity that they put out a press release celebrating the availability of their shows on the Zune.
Maybe, with Podshow gone, podcasting could become interesting again - less focus on money, more on creativity.
The funny thing, to me, is that if everyone would just concentrate on the creative side, they might actually have an easier time building an audience.
Actually, building an audience is the easy part, for me. Finding reliable folks to monetize that revenue is hard.
I can build an audience of a few hundred thousand in under a couple of months.
Finding an agency that will live up to its promises of paying for their ads has been my great difficulty.
“Maybe, with Podshow gone, podcasting could become interesting again”
Where’d we get free hosting then? If we can’t get free hosting anywhere, many podcasts will just die…
Hosting is so cheap these days, I don’t think this would affect too many podcasts.