Podcasts surge but is Apple listening?

New York

STEVE Jobs put his talent as a master salesman to the test when in 2005 he introduced new Apple software for downloading digital audio shows. The format was so incipient that he struggled to describe it.

"It's sort of like TiVo, for radio, for your iPod," he said. "It's not just the Wayne's World of radio, but real radio is jumping onto this." But he was clear about the potential. "It's getting very, very exciting," he said.

He was talking about podcasting - radio-style shows made for the Internet that have in recent years exploded in popularity.

These days, many amateur podcasters are going professional. Major media organisations, searching for answers and bright spots in a fast-changing and confusing …