Pew backtracks on podcasting survey numbers

The other day we were pretty skeptical about that survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project which found that something like 29% of people who owned MP3 players had downloaded a podcast. The methodology seemed iffy from the get go (they only interviewed 208 people, which lead to a whopping 7.5% margin of error), but that didn't stop them from issuing an attention-grabbing press release about how 6 million Americans were listening to podcasts, a number which has been thrown around endlessly over the past couple of days. Well, now Pew's research director is engaging in a little backtracking, saying that even they don't believe that 6 million Americans are listening to podcasts, and has admitted that the question they asked (if people had "ever downloaded a podcast or radio Internet program") was a little overly broad since it could easily encompass all sorts of things besides podcasts. And since most people still don't know the difference between streaming and downloading, we bet that anyone who has ever even listened to Internet radio said yes to this question, too. Not that podcasting as a phenomenon isn't growing rapidly or anything, but there's no reason to overinflate its importance, you know?

[Via TechDirt]

[narco @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

Yeah, I figured the numbers were flawed. Looks like PEW released the results too early; maybe the PE in PEW stands for "Premature Ejaculation."

Fishes,
narco.

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

More like "Premature Extrapolation"

[greenlightguy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

Seriously, this report was quoted all over the place. People really WANT podcasting to be a huge phenomenom and it really isn't. At least not yet. But really, most of the podcasts are just people talking. Meh. Big deal. Some of 'em are funny- some interesting or informative, but so what? OOOh 'everyone can have their own radio show'. But if you've got nothing to say who cares really.

[Jack Krupansky @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

Has anybody done a survey of how many people have listened to people talk about listening to podcasts? Surely, there's no easy way to inflate *that* number!

Seriously, presumably one of the reasons for doing a podcast is that you'll inspire the listener to turn into an evangelist ("Hey, I was listening to this cool podcast and...") Getting a handle on the "podcast fanout" would be useful.

-- Jack Krupansky

[SideSwipe @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

Anyone else read this like "Pew, Internet!", as in "The internet stinks" ?? O_o

[Producer @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

To be even in the ball park as far as accuracy goes, you need at least 1600 interviewees.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 12:12AM]

file that one under.... "duh?!"