One of the key points about podcasting is it is time shifted. It is content on demand. I can have content delivered automatically to you, and you can listen to it whenever you feel like it. CNET has produced 1500 episodes of “buzz out loud” podcast. They have decided to podfade most of their podcasts. The reason? Their LIVE audience is too small. Seriously? This is like saying I'm not going to Rock concerts because the music is too loud. Hello? According to the article:

“But here's the thing: we've closely observed over the past few months how our audiences watch video, and we're finding that a truly tiny percentage of our podcasts are consumed live as they happen. The vast majority of you download and view our videos much later. So we've decided to break out of the small podcast studio and wind down many of our live podcasts.”

Later in the article they state. ”
The industry as a whole conducted a broad-ranging experiment, searching far and wide for the right format for online video. Some companies think that live content is the future (ahem, AOL). In the past year, we've seen glimpses of the future of TV, and we disagree. We believe that the future is a fully on-demand world — more and more, users are busy cutting cords and saving long-form video content to view it later.”

So you agree that live streaming is NOT the future, and that more content will become on demand. Great. Me too. But because there is a very small audience for live shows (something you just stated will be the norm) you pull the shows so that the people who WERE listening later don't get any content.

I've been a big fan of CNET for a long time, and I can't help but think there is more to this story as this doesn't make sense.