The podcast world is abuzz - an icon in the podcasting world has passed on as a company. Adam Curry's PodShow is dead, but before you podcasting naysayers start dancing on it's grave, you should know that it's simply a name change (and a site redesign).
Mevio, which still claims co-founder and former MTV VJ Adam Curry, was one of the so-called founding fathers of podcasting, along with perpetually cranky coder and serial entreprenuer Dave Winer. The company and Adam Curry both, though, have more fame for some less than scrupulous moves in their past than their accomplishments in the podcasting world.
As Kent Nichols of AskANinja fame notes today in his account of the name change, PodShow was also known for another significant achievement: constructing one of the business's most restrictive contracts for their talent ever put to paper by a lawyer. At some point last year, while renowned indie comedy podcasters Keith and the Girl were shopping around for an ad network, they got their hands on a copy of a PodShow talent contract and read it on air. The company which purports to give their producers the ability to quit their day job was revealed to be paying their talent only somewhere around $4-5 CPM. For the majority of podcasters, this comes out to some where around $50 a month, but can be as high as $400.
In return for the payout, podcasters were forced to cede all rights and intellectual property in perpetuity (or in certain cases a few years) to the PodShow network - a sad aspect that gained noteriety recently by Steve Gillmor's ability to just now, after several years from being on the PodShow network, be able to use his own last name in the title of his podcast.
NewTeeVee, in their coverage of the name change, theorize that it has to do with spurning the 'curse of the pod.' I share Podcasting News' James Lewin's skepticism that this is the cause. Adam Curry has long been a polarizing figure, and within the podcasting community, the name PodShow tends to polarize similarly - you either love it or hate it, but you're rarely on the fence.