Archive for April 26th, 2006

Samuel’s Persiflage Statistics

Before you get your hopes up, no this post does not contain download statistics, they will be delivered in the monthly blog view stats.

In the last few weeks I’ve received a bit of correspondence from the guests who have been on Samuel’s Persiflage, about the monthly statistics I send out. You see, not only do I post the download statistics each month in the blog view stats, I also send statistics letters to all of the guests, with details about the downloads of their episodes.

In general the response has been very good, the guests are pleased to know approximately how many people have been listening (these are download stats, they don’t prove exact listenership), and are looking forward to the monthly updates.

This is pleasing for me as I decided that it would be a good idea to do this from the start. Basically, when you do a radio or television interview, you can find out pretty easily the approximate number of people listening/watching. TV ratings are published daily, and radio ratings come out to a set schedule. Unfortunately the same is not true for podcasts, and as this is a relatively new form of media, some people are skeptical of there being any point in appearing on a podcast.

There is also a problem with the fact that traditional broadcasts are generally instant or mildly delayed, but are usually broadcast once, with no ability for the end viewer/listener to replay what happened if they didn’t record it. Basically, you speak, people hear you, the world carries on. With podcasts though, you speak, a bit later the podcast is published, and for the rest of eternity people may hear/see your message. This obviously isn’t any good for a message you need to deliver right now, but for non-urgent messages this can be quite effective.

This changes the way ratings need to be measured though as you can’t just say “250,000 were listening when you spoke”, you effectively have to say “250,000 heard you on Monday, 75,000 on Tuesday, etc etc”, and of course you can’t really measure the exact size of the audience due to the very nature of downloads, so you measure downloads and call it an approximate audience size, which it is with the law of averages (some will download part of a podcast, some will download a full podcast and share it with others).

As podcasting matures, I think we will see more and more podcasters providing download statistics, as it is something which interests most of the audience, is useful for future guests, and good information for previous guests.

I’m by no means the only podcaster doing this, but I am one of the leaders in providing statistics, and I get the feeling that one day I will be able to say “I helped to start that!”.

Samuel

1 comment April 26th, 2006 at 11:14am

ACTION Timetable Change Delayed By A Month

You may recall that earlier this month I informed you of some changes at ACTION Buses, including a timetable change scheduled for August.

According to my sources, this has now been put back to September, and may be further delayed as these changes require careful negotiation with affected unions, and a lot of time and resources need to be spent on getting the new timetable ready, which not only means generating new driver shifts, but also preparing bus timetables and informing people of the change.

What most bus travellers are not aware of, is that bus drivers have different shifts during the school term and the school holidays, to accomodate for the school bus services (which obviously don’t run during school holidays). This generally means that it is easier to launch a new timetable, and effectively new shifts, on the Monday that schools resume. In that case, I will say right now that the earliest we are likely to see a timetable change is Monday, October 16, and if we don’t see it then we will just have to wait for next year.

Samuel

April 26th, 2006 at 08:27am

Samuel’s Footy Tips: Results

Another long weekend, another 3 in the NRL and another 4 in the AFL.

AFL Round 4: 4/8 (50%)
NRL Round 7: 3/7 (42.86%)
Week Total: 7/15 (46.67%)
Graph of the weekly results

Totals:
AFL: 18/32 (56.25%)
NRL: 20/49 (40.82%)
Total: 38/81 (46.91%)
Graph of the total results

Samuel

April 26th, 2006 at 12:26am


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