It doesn't add up

As we await the unveiling of the BBC's first Podcast Commissioner, we also look forward to an understanding of the funding strategy behind this re-invention of radio.

In the old days, you could only make podcasts by cutting up bits of things that had been already broadcast. Then came the days of announcing a new podcast, and finding odd slots to broadcast them later - like Christmas holidays, or overnight on Radio 1. Now we seem to have BBC podcasts that exist only only to download - but on whose budget ?   Remember BBC Radio used to be run so close to the bone that it threatened to close 6Music; Radio 2 is so strapped it can't afford to be 'live' overnight. The old BBC Trust used to set 'service licences' with an agreed sum of money against each network; has this latest re-invention been run past the new BBC Board ?

Clearly there's not much money in podcasting; one critically-acclaimed offering from the Radio 4 stable offers no fees to contributors, which surely isn't a stable way of moving forward. The Podcast Commissioner will apparently have "a budget for podcast innovation"; licence-fee payers should be told how much it is, and what's being cut from radio to raise the money.