I am an avid netcast viewer (I’m using the word “view” as a blanket term for watching or listening). Content produced by individuals on the internet has really taken over my viewing habits. There is very little broadcast TV & radio I listen to now, compared to what I watch and listen to from the internet.

There are two key benefits to internet delivered content compared to broadcast content. First is that it is on-demand; you view it when you choose. Secondly, you are able to enter search requests for what you want to view. You cannot search within individual shows, but you can search the text describing individual shows.

Next, some shows that I get are nice little 7 to 15 minute episodes that take very little time out of my day to view. Although, some shows are bohemouth 50 to 100 minute shows. Not only do these provide a headache for either finding a long enough slot in my day to view or for remembering where I stopped listening each time, but it’s also pretty hard to find an any specific moment with content I may need to refer to.

However, there is something that netcast producers can do, and are starting to do, to cure this problem. CBC Radio’s science show, “Quirks & Quarks” is usually over an hour long. However, when their netcast comes out every week, it is split into 5 or 6 parts, one for each section of the show. Also, the popular Linux netcast, “The Linux Action Show” is also just about to start doing a similar thing. Rather than doing their usual long format show. They will be producing short, on the fly shows to cover the latest news as and when it come out.

I think this approach to long-format internet multimedia content is excellent and provides a number of benefits to viewers:

• Easy to keep track of where you’re upto in a long show.
• Allows you to delete the parts you’ve listened to as you go.
• Makes the content more searchable.

This post has been written in response to the following blog posts:

• http://bin-false.org/?p=4
• http://www.lunduke.com/?p=304