Thanks to the Internet, waiting for the latest news is a thing of the past. Most credible web news sites provide RSS feeds and are updated 24 hours per day, allowing important stories to propagate across the entire web in mere minutes. The resulting consumer desire for immediacy and the wide availability of internet connections has presented a challenge for traditional media like newspapers (which are forever condemned to slow periodic releases) and television (which precludes fast searches for specific content). Many major news services in Canada have attempted to bridge the gap between old and new media via podcasting, releasing creating just-in-time audio and/or video broadcasts of news content for download onto IPods and alternative MP3 Players. Apple’s Itunes contains one of the largest collections of free audio and video news content – perfect for making that daily trip to work just a little more pleasant.
CBC leads the way for Toronto and Canada with a comprehensive selection of weekly, daily and even hourly news podcasts. Provincial, national and international programs are available for download as well as specialty programs like Quirks & Quarks and The Hour (the latter provided in video format) Music fans will be happy to hear that several Classical, Jazz and Pop music programs from Radio 2 and Radio 3 are also available for download, though some require a modest fee (most likely to keep CIRA quiet).
CanWest Global provides a worthy alternative to CBC for more conservative listeners. Its Global TV news station provides a daily video podcast of the 6:00 news. The catch is that the news segments are posted the morning after the TV broadcast, so avid watchers may not gain from this content. For editorial content, CanWest’s National Post newspaper offers two podcasts - Full Comment and Posted Toronto. Full comment topics are usually political and patterned around editorials on the Full Comment section of the NP website. Posted Toronto deals strictly with GTA matters and uses an informal talk radio format. Both NP podcasts are approximately weekly.
CityNews provides a daily web-only podcast with rotating news presenters. Unfortunately, the podcast is rarely longer than five minutes and contains no sports, weather or entertainment.
The Toronto Star provides several weekly special-interest podcasts. John Sakomoto’s Anti-Hit List takes on added relevance when one can actually hear the music being described, while Linwood Barclay manages to be more entertaining audibly than in print. YouDoc podcasts are less than two minutes long and offer quick health tips that straddle between info and advertisement. The auto racing podcast features decent speculation and debate but probably would have packed more punch in video format. Strangely, the Star doesn’t offer any news or editorial content, despite being Canada’s most prominent newspaper.
At the rear the pack, Sun Media appears to have no ITunes presence at all, while a search for the Globe and Mail revealed only one discontinued tech podcast. This is surprising considering the Globe was one of the first newspapers to allow user comments on its web content while the Toronto Sun’s columnists excel more than any other paper at covering local issues. Hopefully these two entities join the podcast party soon.
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