OPEN

The Channel 4 Radio service launched online today, according to journalism.co.uk.

When they say radio station, they are actually talking about something a bit more innovative than a webstreamed series of shows. It’s more like a podcasting content community with a dash of social networking thrown in for good measure.

To be honest, it’s the sort of thing that I would have expected on the podcast front from bbc.co.uk 2.0.

I mean that as a compliment, but it also makes me realise how little up until now I’ve seen Channel 4 trying out social media type stuff – weird when I think how seriously they invested in the web over the past few years. I guess this venture may be the start of a new chapter for them. 

Being a bit of a podcast / radio fan I had to take a look straightaway. There’s a beta/work-in-progress feel to the whole thing (it doesn’t seem to be heavily promoted on the Channel 4 home page, which adds to this sense) and indeed it will need to grow to become a fully fledged service – but more of how it intends to do that in a moment.

After a bit of a painful registration process I found an interesting site, with a smattering of freshly commissioned original audio programmes in arts, comedy, entertainment, music, news and current affairs, and sport categories.

You add shows you’re interested in to your library and then download them to your PC. Alternatively you can subscribe to your library via iTunes or your RSS reader and get your shows that way. All very sensible.

The shows are all free at the moment, but there is the option for Channel 4 to sell content in future.

The service has lots of webby / social features: you can rate shows, recommend them and then talk about the service on the message board.

But the most exciting feature was revealed to me when I saw the button marked "Upload". Yes you can post audio shows to the site – I wonder how that will work out: a kind of YouTube for audio? Podcast Alley for the early majority?

There are some things I’m not sure about. For instance, the FAQ on the site stresses that WMA (Windows Media Audio) files may be used in some cases to take advantage of the DRM (copyright protection) features. The FAQ also says that you have to buy WMA files using Internet Explorer 6.0 to make sure you get the licence. Ugh – sounds scrappy – let’s just focus on the pretty community potential while they hopefully sort all of that out.

No if only I could revive my @!£%$! iPod I could be listening to all of this tomorrow on the train…

Tags: radio, podcast, channel4, community