Collectively, for all my podcasts, counting both the Mininova posts and the RSS feeds, I calculate that the podcasts have been downloaded over 80,000 times. By the time I've finished with the Beowulf readings, I should be past 100,000 downloads.

Since Beowulf has proven so successful, I'm going to change the format of Podcast Ping a little but that won't be until after I've finished Beowulf. I'll give more details later.

Although the actual number of downloads per podcast episode varies, I've been getting an average of about 1,000 downloads per podcast episode (mostly thanks to Mininova). The average podcast gets 100 downloads per episode, although some claim to have over 100,000 per episode (I have no idea which ones those are and none of them are willing to show thier proof).

Still, a good podcast is more likely to get about 10,000 or more, but there might not be more than one hundred getting that many. The podiobook series SEVENTH SON claims more than a million downloads overall and 35,000 listeners for three books. (That averages about one book per listener.) It is one of the most successful podcasts. But that still works out to a very rough average of about 10,000 downloads per episode. (1,000,000/100 episodes).

By own Beowulf readings have seen a maximum of about 6,000 downloads with a current average of about 2,000 per episode. And that's just for an old poem that everybody knows. Still, television broadcasters have advantages that give them the competitive edge.

There are approximately 130 million television viewers in North America. (I may be off with that number, but it's close enough.) The average television viewer might have about 50 channels to choose from. (Although even if it's 100 they would still have the advantage.) That means that each channel would get approximately 2.6 million viewers.

Now take podcasts. There are about a million podcast listeners/viewers and approximately 10,000 podcasts. That means each podcast gets an average of 100 listeners/viewers. Even if the number of viewers/listeners was equal to television, each podcast could still hope to get only one or two percent of the number of viewers a TV channel gets. (Roughly about 10,000 per podcast.)

Granted, the numbers are very rough and one could argue that each person gets a different selection of TV channels depending upon where they live and what service they have, but TV channels still have an advantage.

For someone to get a TV channel, they have to go through a long liscencing process and put forth a great deal of capital. For someone to start a podcast they simply need a computer (with internet access) and a microphone. As such, as the number of podcast listeners increases, so does the number of podcast providers.

So if the number of podcast listeners/viewers should ever reach the same as TV viewers, each podcast could have to compete with about 100,000 others. (Which works out to an average of about 1000 per podcast.) And as it is, unless you're in the top 1% of podcasts you're not going to show up on any top 100 lists, let alone any guides like iTunes (unless you're featured). But since every channel gets listed in a TV guide, TV will aways have an advantage that a podcaster could never have.