By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The International Herald Tribune has launched a new twist on the podcasting craze sweeping media companies with a service that instantly generates an audio version of any article in the newspaper.
The IHT, which is owned by New York Times Co., said it was the first English-language Web site to deliver the service, which it rolled out on Wednesday with Swedish technology company ReadSpeaker. German newspaper Waz has unveiled a similar service.
A female voice with a British accent and only a slight robotic stammer reads the articles with nearly accurate intonation and word emphasis, though the beta version is not glitch-free as some words were difficult to understand in a recent test.
The IHT is providing the audio service free at
"It allows us to sell advertising on a scalable basis," said Meredith Artley, editor and publisher of IHT.com.
"No advertisers are on board yet, but we've got a couple of folks who are interested," she said. "We would probably put on five to 10 seconds of an audio ad, and we're considering doing it on every third or fifth article."
Users can either listen to articles on the spot or download them onto an MP3 player or mobile phone, creating a personalized audio version of the Paris-based newspaper, which was founded in 1887 and is sold in
180 countries.
The IHT Web site draws 2.7 million unique readers a month.
About 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, are downloading audio podcasts, according to figures released on Wednesday by research firm Nielsen/NetRatings.
"The portability of podcasts makes them especially appealing to young, on-the-go audiences," Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Michael Lanz said. "We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media players proliferate."
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.
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