Podcasts and propaganda
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Almamater – I always wanted to try and set up a radio station so that we could respond to events as they happen. The cost is minimal (I believe although I don’t know the cost of licenses etc. these days) to set up an online broadcast. I was told that we don’t have the personnel but if any comrades are interested in such a project let me know as I have some broadcasting experience and these days we can all broadcast from home.
Seems a bit offtopic here but..
if any comrades are interested in such a project let me know as I have some broadcasting experience and these days we can all broadcast from home.
It’s easy to do, and the relevant PRS licence starts from a few hundred. But it’s much harder to get any listeners. The digital media space is way past over-saturation.
Instead of trying for a live station why not do a podcast like MHI? I can advise on microphones and the technicalities of uploading them etc
The International Marxist Humanists and the Marxist Humanist Initiative ( a split from the News and Letter Committee ) started a few years ago and they have branches, committee, and correspondents in the USA and in some foreign countries, and they have members from different countries including Iranians, they have given talks in China.
For several years I have been saying that the SPGB should start a Podcast and publish or broadcast news every day or every week, the WSWS has a podcast and they publish and verbally record their own articles every day .
The International Communist Current started in France and they have branch in several countries in Latin America and they are publishing their articles in several languages.
A Trotskyist newspaper known as La izquierda started a few years ago and they have thousands of readers,
The CPUSA they is publishing its newspaper every week and they have a house in Los Angeles where they are giving classes on socialism and Marxism to members of the community, the house is located in a poor neighborhood and most of them are Mexicans and Central American workers.
Smell the coffee !!!
The IMHT is more active than the initiative and they have better articles and better writers such as Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson
DJP – That looks good – and we have quite a large archive of debates etc. that we could post.
I’d advise against posting old recordings, if you want to create the impression of a living and relevant organisation bad sound quality cassette recordings from 30 years ago won’t help!
Make some new material. Or read something from the latest Standard.
However the MHI website does look a bit ‘dry’ so perhaps we could add some ‘rebel music’ with a DJ and some more eye catching graphics?
A podcast gets syndicated across all the various podcast services (Apple music, Google podcasts etc) Not everyone would be looking at it via the MHI website.
Music? I’d advise against it – one person’s ‘rebel music’ is another’s trite cliche. Plus you’ll have licensing issues.
I’m not a big fan of ‘phone-ins’ but they do seem to attract audiences. We could provide movie and music reviews etc.
Podcasts are pre-recorded, so I’m not sure how a phone-in could work. I guess you could record comments from people and answer.
Movie and music reviews – that’s already an over-saturated market – talk about socialism!
DJP – I understand why you reject my more ‘populist’ ideas but if we go your route aren’t we in danger of ‘preaching to the converted’ and attracting just the educated minority who are interested in political theory? Your contention that a music content would be ‘trite cliche’ would seem to exclude one of the most powerful vehicles of communication available to our species. Have you seen the massive audiences at rock concerts etc.? And what does ‘talk about socialism’ mean – politics is a part of everyday lives and we need to link ordinary experiences with socialist consciousness and I don’t think an endless list of intellectual lectures as on MHI is attractive to the ‘average worker’. Anyway this is just my perspective and you might be correct but perhaps we might attempt a ‘synthesis’ of our different approaches?
OK – a podcast episode *about* revolutionary songs could be interesting if the people talking about them were well-informed and presented it well.
A programme of songs with somebody talking over them like a DJ, a socialist Radio Caroline, wouldn’t be very interesting, and not really what gets called a ‘podcast’. Think more spoken word radio. “In Our Time” rather than “The Essential Mix”
With regards with who you could reach – it comes down to marketing. You need to decide what you are going to do, who it is aimed towards and why those people would be interested in it. I think the audience would have to be the already slightly informed or interested, but not fully converted or paid up members.
Sorry, I can’t actually get involved in something like this – but if you need to learn about what gear to get and how to produce and market it I could give some pointers of where to look at.
DJP – I don’t know the reasons why you can’t ‘get involved’ but it maybe that, like myself, you have serious health issues that might preclude me occasionally from proceeding with such a project. As a broadcaster I invited DJs onto my show to discuss their favourite albums which, as it turned out, were all political at their heart. I hope it doesn’t ‘all come down to marketing’ since the broadcasts will seek to subvert and undermine consumerism and its demographic designations.
I’m not a party member and currently am very busy with other projects.
Take the ‘marketing’ comment with a pinch of salt. My point being that it will be worth some time thinking about who you want to talk to and what you can bring to them. From that you can work out a strategy for getting your message out there. If you end up reaching nobody it doesn’t matter how much you want to undermine consumerism.
The articles of the Socialist Standard that are published every month can be read and recorded in a Podcast, that is what the WSWS is doing every day.
Personally, I prefer to be an independent individual, I do not like anybody giving me order and telling me what to do, and I do not want to participate in any party activities, committees, or even writing for the socialist standard .
I am running my own websites
I have my own computers and my own servers, and my own contacts, and my own bank of informations, I am doing my own translations and I publishing them on my blogs.
I am here in this forum because I have not found anything better
The articles of the Socialist Standard that are published every month can be read and recorded in a Podcast, that is what the WSWS is doing every day.
Yes, I think that’s a good idea. Something that should have been done a while ago. With all the articles in the Standard each month it would be easy to read and put up one article a week.
Almamater – ‘I do not like anybody giving me order and telling me what to do, and I do not want to participate in any party activities, committees, or even writing for the socialist standard .
I am running my own websites’How very bourgeois individualistic of you Almamater – don’t you believe in democracy?
DJP – ‘From that you can work out a strategy for getting your message out there. If you end up reaching nobody it doesn’t matter how much you want to undermine consumerism.’
Having been a graphic designer all my working life I perfectly understand how marketing ‘works’. I had to endure endless meetings where people tried to second guess the tastes of others – very tedious. The best advice I ever got was ‘make the show that you would want to listen to. If it fails then so be it but don’t play anything merely because you think the audience would like it.’
Wez
Whatever I do or decide about my life is not your business, take care of your problems and I will take of my problems
There are several members and ex members of the socialist party that are doing what I am doing and probably we contribute more to the cause of socialism
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