Over in a Facebook video thread about video consumption, the prolific blogger and thoughtful student of trends around the web Tinu Abayomi-Paul mentioned that she likes long-form audio media. It was shocking! In the rush of enthusiasm for short form video content I think that audio content has lost a lot of its momentum. I love short videos online as much as anyone, but I also have literally hours every week (walking my dog) when I’d like to be listening to audio podcasts if I could find more that satisfied me. This didn’t use to be a problem.

I love good audio content and I like it to be long. Give me hour long, smart tech podcasts! Please. There is a real market for this kind of content, even if video is what everyone says is hip these days. Remember all the arguments in favor of video that people used to make? You can listen to audio and do other things at the same time (unlike video) and audio is something that can be produced by a wider range of people than the aesthetically demanding medium of video.

What bright lights are there in this neck of the woods? BlogTalkRadio is a service that’s getting loads of traction right now and deserves some more attention from listeners. ITConversations continues to publish really great stuff every once in awhile and if your tastes are different than mine you might find even more there to be valuable than I do. Two good shows recently from ITConversations include an interview with Elizabeth Ferranini on getting your customers to market for you (not nearly as insipid as the title makes it sound, trust me) and another on Web 2.0 for scientists by Timo Hannay, the head of the Nature web publishing group – that conversation with Jon Udel was *awesome*.

I’ve also been meaning to post here about Dana Gardner’s recent podcast Sam Whitmore Helps Parse Search Marketing, the ‘Content Pyramid,’ and RSS Strategies – one of the best things I’ve listened to in months. If you’re an in-house content creator or sympathetic to that emerging job description, that podcast is “required reading”.

All of these great podcast episodes are things I’ve listened to over the last 6 to 8 weeks, though. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the audio podcasting world ought to be producing far more high quality content than it is – and part of the problem is the over emphasis on online video.