Advantages to podcasting

What are some advantages to an audio podcast over text-based presentation?

This post is in response to the above question, which was posed by the professor, Anselm Spoerri, in the course podcast here. My response, summarized after the jump, is available here.

What I see as the major advantages of the podcast are getting access to users who can feel overwhelmed by overly hyperlinked and visually "noisy" web presentation. These types of sites are common, and can often turn readers off. Another possible advantage (not mentioned in my response) is accessing users who are quite mobile, and like to have access to internet content while not necessarily being tethered to a device that can display web content. For example, commuters who hate morning radio would perhaps prefer this style of delivery.

If you can't tell (based on this rather lengthy explanation of my response) I am a very visual person, and express myself much better and more thoroughly though writing. I also prefer to digest information through reading and exploring web content myself, rather than having it explained aurally.

I suppose I would be remiss if, after my espousal of the importance of hyperlinking to content, I did not include the appropriate links here. The Sirsi/Dynix podcast can be found here (or the direct feed), and, for a good example of visual "noise," maybe you should check out this good reason to stay away from certain blogs.