Friday, March 27, 2009

Podcast Review: Buzz Out Loud


Flagship podcast from CNET. Buzz out Loud (a.k.a. BOL) is an awesome daily show covering the top stories in tech of the day. The hosts are knowledgeable, excited and interact very well. The show lasts on average from 30 - 45 minutes.

This crew is very well organized, stay on task and cover the proper topics of the day. If there is any criticism of what they cover it is solely to be blamed on the news of the day. These guys do not "wing it" and manage to fill a show card for every day. Professional reporting, with each of the team and guests all voicing their points of view on a topic which offers a very good "point - counterpoint" matter of banter which covers topics deeply as well. Stories of substance get more attention and the silly stories only get the mention.

BOL has managed to set up video and audio feeds (recently all fixed) and you can choose which one you prefer to take in. If you can manage, you may also see the video feed live while they do the show at Watch BOL. This may be the first audio only podcast that I've seen make the transition while maintaining the audio version just the same.

As CNET was recently aquired by CBS Interactive, their production value across the board has improved, presumably with more resources available. This is most pronounced in their video productions more so than their audio only offers. Thus far, there have been some changes in the sponsorship ads they place around their products, but the content has not, thus far through the transition, been slanted or objectively changed. My point of view on this point is that having listened to the podcast now for over 2 years that the change so far has only meant that my favorite CNET crew have gotten much more visiblity as they appear as tech resources on other CBS assets.

I have to admit, this show is just the right length to fill my drive time to the office. Which makes it great since it's a daily podcast. After I speak about how I manage to digest a lot of this content later but, frequency and average length has a lot to do with my current podcast selections. I'll cover the "diet" after I cover the podcasts themselves.

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CafeNinja

2 comments:

Tom Merritt said...

Thanks for the review! Glad you still liek the show and what we've been doing to improve.

Jason Howell said...

Thank you so much for the awesome review! It's good to have you as a loyal member of the Buzz Brigade. (sound the horns!)