Adam Curry, a former VJ for MTV, developed concept of podcasting. He became intrigued with idea of freeing internet radio and audio blogs from his computer and putting them on hard drive of his Apple iPod.

He called result podcasting, named after Apple iPod that is often at centre of system.

Instead of listening to radio over airwaves, you download radio shows you want from internet onto your iPod or MP3 player and listen to them at your leisure.

Thousands of amateur bloggers have launched podcasts and even companies like Heineken and Playboy have got in on act. Virgin Radio recently became first major radio station to offer content for podcasting.

Podcasting is growing fast. There were just 17 Google results for podcasting in September 2003. In early April 2005 there were nearly two million.

Talking about podcasting in a recent interview, Mark Curry said: "It is totally going to kill business model of radio.

"[Radio stations] are scared to death of next generation - like my daughter who is 14 - who don't listen to radio. They are on MSN, they've got their iPod, their MP3 player, they've got their Xbox - they are not listening to radio. So how are they going to reach these audiences?"

Opportunity

But what could be a threat to commercial radio stations could easily be turned into an opportunity for business communicators.

The easy answer is to publish your content when you have something to say. But this presupposes that your audience is same, whatever time of day, or day of week. This is just not so. The type of content management system (CMS) in use on most intranets just exacerbates problem.

Most CMS work on a scrolling, "first in, first out" basis, with new news being given priority. Once three or four stories have been published, any previous content is pushed either off screen or appears "below fold", needing a scroll to see it. This means that for maximum readability an important news story must be left on its own for a period of a few hours at top of tree.

Once three or four more stories have been published on top it effectively becomes invisible. But content management aside, is there a right time to publish? Anyone working in an office will know that Mondays and Fridays are usually favourite days for holidays or "sickies". The extended weekend, whether approved or not, is fact of life within most organisations. The truth is that if you publish important news material on either of these days a large percentage of your readers may never see it.