A discussion about corporate and business podcasting with tips and guidelines

It's been all over the Internet for the past 24 hours or so. Amanda and Andrew of Rocket Boom fame, have parted ways. Amanda was the host of Rocket Boom and Andrew was the creator and producer of the show. Rocket Boom, for the uninitiated, is the original daily video cast and one of the most popular shows out there. Rocket Boom has a daily viewership between 130,000 and 300,00 depending who you listen to and week long advertising spot on the show sold for $40,000 recently on eBay. In short, Rocket Boom is a Big Deal (tm) and now it's over.

As a podcaster, I can't help but side with Amanda. She owns 49% of the show and is therefore under the thumb of Andrew, who owns the remaining 51%. This wouldn't be so bad from a financial standpoint, except that Andrew is now claiming that their agreement stipulated Amanda would return the 49% of shares if she ever left the show.

Clearly, I'm not in a position to take sides with any confidence, but speaking as a podcaster who was once part of a network and had to leave 30 shows behind when I left, I feel the pain of not owning your own stuff.

Personal feelings aside, let's look at this from a business perspective. This is Biz Podcasting, after all.

Regardless of who owns what, and regardless of whether the show will go on or not, the Rocket Boom brand has been hurt. The next few entries will deal with some of my thoughts on how a business who is podcasting, or a podcast that is a business, can mitigate this type of situation from happening. These entries are not meant to be a hindsight "You shoulda, you coulda" thing - they are merely observations.