Steven Lin is a senior editor at Sohu.com and one of the founders of the excellent Chinese podcast Antiwave. The other day, at a BCG conference, I got to talking with Veronica Wu from Apple Asia, and one of the topics of our discussion was why podcasting nevers seems to have taken off here in China. I introduced her to Steven and they met for dinner Saturday night. Afterward, I asked Steven if he’d consider writing a post for Digital Watch on the topic, and the very next day, he delivered! Enjoy his insightful post below, written in the fluent English of his which has never failed to amaze me.

Why Podcasting Never Killed the Radio Star in China
by Steven Lin

Three years ago, an article from Time magazine changed my life. “Will Podcasting Kill the Radio Star?” The idea of a automatically-downloaded multi-media feed changing the new media landscape blew my mind. In the evening of December 2004, I was only a college student.

As a teenager who speaks with strong Southern Chinese accent, I could have never imagined that some day tens of thousands of people would listen to audio programs produced me.

Six months later, Antiwave (反波) was launched by my friend Randy Jiang and me. Randy had been a DJ for Tianjin Radio Station for eight years and still has countless fans in the city. Even so, he was shocked by the number of unique visitors from all over the world to this Chinese podcast in the Day 1 — more than 10,000.

In the same year, Antiwave won the Global Best Podcast award from Deutsche Welle. And the logo with a reversed “反” (anti-) character has been printed on lots of newspapers, magazines, and TV networks — from Phoenix TV, CCTV to BBC and CNN. Antiwave has been a media babe for years and made a successful business cooperation with Cisco for its global “Human Network” campaign.

But you know what, even being called as a “podcast pioneer”, I have to admit, podcasting has never successfully killed a radio star in China. Ladies and gentlemen, in fact, it’s somewhere far from the goal.

The inconvenient truth: Antiwave is still the only Chinese podcast people can remember even three years after its debut. Why? After talking with Veronica Wu from Apple about podcasting in China tonight, I thought I should write something down.

1.    Blame Apple. The iPod maker has done nothing for podcast in China.

No offence. We bloggers like such aggressive headings.

You may argue that Apple is not the inventor of Podcast (Adam Curry, a former MTV employee invented it) and the audio subscribing method had already achieved a success back in the US long before Apple adopted it as an “official” feature in iTunes. So why should Apple do anything for Podcasting in China?

Today, you can see “subscribe to podcast” buttons on the website of almost every American mainstream newspaper, magazine, radio station, and TV network. Try searching “New Yorker” in iTunes Store, you can find a stylish page (which was obviously made by Apple staffers) including nine podcasts from the elite magazine founded in the mid-1920s.

There’s no doubt Apple has invested a lot in the collaboration with the press. Result? When readers find the “iTunes” subscribing link on NewYorker.com, they will not only enjoy the smooth subscribing experience provided by iTunes+iPod, but also accept that podcast has already become today’s mainstream media platform.

And don’t forget the greatest Apple has done for podcast is making a portal page for it in iTunes Store, on which you can easily find podcasts in different languages, from the blockbusters to some niche ones in the “long tail”.

Unfortunately, in China, the independent and business podcasters have never got a Chinese version of this a great virtual marketplace, iPod users don’t know what podcast is, and Apple could try to create more win-win cases with China’s traditional media in this field.

Wouldn’t it be great?

2.    Blame Sina. The Chinese portal website has terribly distorted the idea.

In China, marketers have to create a simple Chinese name for a foreign marketing term, if you want the words got spread among Chinese consumers. China is the only country in which Google has to create a local name “Gu’ge” (谷歌), so you could understand how terrible the situation is.

Podcasters were called “Bo’ke” (播客, meaning someone who’s broadcasting itself) in the early days by the media. In 2006, the second year of podcast in China, even the largest Chinese television network CCTV used this Chinese name “Bo’ke” for podcasters in its news about Antiwave.

Days later, Sina launched a YouTube-clone service and named it Sina Bo’ke (新浪播客)in Chinese. And then, things went wrong. I still remember the day when lots of journalists called me and asked my opinions about the Chinese portal website’s “podcasting” service.

My only response was: “Please, it’s not a Podcasting or Bo’ke service which could be subscribed to and downloaded automatically to your iPod. It’s a YouTube-clone. The idea of Podcasting has been distorted by Sina. I don’t like Sina’s supremacy at all.”

Then, Podcasting lost its only Chinese name under Sina’s strong media influence. Even Caijing (财经), a Chinese financial magazine with a good reputation, couldn’t tell the idea of podcasting from video sharing sites.

It’s a PR crisis for the whole Chinese Podcasting community, and Chinese Podcasters can hardly get over it. Since then, I haven’t accepted any interview requests from Chinese journalists on the topic of Podcasts. I’m fed up by the questions about Sina Bo’ke and I haven’t figured out how to answer them in Chinese.

Things could have been totally different, if only Apple had entered the Chinese Podcasting market. They missed it. They missed the opportunity when Chinese media were dying to do some great stories about Podcasts in the winter of 2005, when Antiwave won the global award from Deutsche Welle.

3.    Blame the podcasters. Users don’t have enough attractive programs.

When talking about the “podcasters”, I don’t only mean the small independent online producers. I mean the big guys — audio content makers from the whole media industry. They were born to be Podcasters, right?

But all of them (my partner Randy is an exception) gave up the chance to change something. People from different radio stations talked with us and tried to understand more about how podcasts work. But every single time after hours of talking, the first ideas poping into their minds were identical: ““So we can easily copy and paste our programs for governmental stations online? It sounds great.”

Now you see, this is exactly why Antiwave chose as its slogan, “All radios go to hell!” The brainwashed DJs deserve to be squeezed by the wheel of time.

In China, the main reason why traditional radio stations haven’t died off is the fast-growing number of car owners. In the early 2000s, the boom made the radio channels which are dedicated to transport something people cannot live without. Today, China’s traffic channels are so profitable that all other channels in the same radio network heavily rely on them for survival.

Do people need some real-time traffic informations recorded as podcast programs? Most of you would say no. How about the hours-long commercials selling drugs, bullshit midnight dial-in music programs, or morning news about the conferences hosted by some CCP leaders? Oh no, I don’t mean to doubt your taste. Anything else? Sorry, those are all you can get from China’s radio stations.

So, forget about the “potential podcasters”. Now do we have any chance to get some great podcasting programs from the printed media as same as what Apple and American press have done in the US? Hmm… as my observation, the editors in chief are still struggling to understand what RSS feeds are.

I once believed independent podcasters was the only hope for podcast in China. I was a reporter-cum-designer-cum-developer who understand the most cutting-edge technologies  and how traditional and new media work, while Randy is absolutely one of the most experienced DJs and best media people in China. We could invest more than 8 hours to produce a 10-minute long talkshow. We are able to think out of the box and have every detail totally under control in the same time.

The bitter fact: how many other podcasting teams with the same quality can you find in mainland China? Not so many. Take a look at the list of Top 50 Podcasts in iTunes Store, most of which come from professional content makers like NPR, NBC, or Oprah Winfrey.

Without the support or experience from traditional media, the independent podcasts could only end up to be some rough-made grass-root content.

Why bother listening to that crap?

4.    One more thing: the Chinese consumers.

In PR industry, we all know that the consumers are people you never want to provoke. So, nah… I don’t blame them.

I really envy the American Podcasters who live in a country where iPod is a dominant portable media player. Only with iPod and iTunes, consumers could enjoy the smooth experience of “subscribing”: after one click, every latest episode of NBC Nightly News and NPR Fresh Air could be there in your pocket every morning.

You can never find a dominant portable player in China. Though more and more beautiful white earphones designed in California are pretty impressive in subway, 10 times more people using some 10USD Mp3 players will persuade you that it’s still a developing country.

According to my source close to Apple China, iPod’s market share in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai is much higher than in the small ones like Fuzhou because of the focused marketing strategy. But even among the premium consumers from big cities, few of them know what “podcast” means in the 10,000-songs-in-your-pocket toy’s menu.

Here’s one more thing Apple can do: educate the Chinese consumers and explorer more potential out of iPod. Don’t leave such an expensive and stylish portable media platform in the dark corner with other crappy Made-in-China mp3 players.

Do something. Anything.