What does someone do when they can't stand the advertisements at the beginning of some podcasts? Why, they come up with a script to remove those advertisements, of course! Given that one of the reasons for podcasting's success, in my opinion, is the large number of people seeking an alternative to the constant bombardment of ads on commercial radio, it is to be expected that some people would seek ways to get rid of the ads that are now appearing in some podcasts.
This does,however, present a bit of a dilemma. Many in the emerging world of podcasting are seeking ways to make a living though podcasts... to "monetize" their shows (oh, how the linguist in me abhors that word!)... and turning to advertisements is one logical step, assuming the community of listeners will stand for it. PodShow has been one of the main folks out there experimenting with how to monetize podcasts - and it's been interesting to watch their experiments. But here you have some folks seeking a way to strip out those ads. What's next? Do we get a TiVo-like MP3 player that can automatically detect and move past ads in podcasts?
It's a fair warning, though, to people looking at how to market into podcasts that maybe advertisements aren't necessarily the way to go - at least with the population listening to podcasts these days. (That may change, of course, as more people move into listening to podcasts that are drawn to podcasts primarily for content rather than a dissatisfaction with the way things are today on commercial radio.)
P.S. The irony, of course, ist that the specific ad that Christopher Penn and others in NE Podcasting were seeking to remove is a ad for the "Help Podshow Suck Less" campaign that is effectively Podshow's effort to involve people in customer satisfaction surveys, etc. to make the network better.
