I definitely don’t want this blog to devolve into Podshow bashing, but they seem to keep tripping over themselves lately. The latest innovation from the network is a listener feedback system called “Suck Less” (as in… “help us suck less”). It’s basically a demographic questionnaire that gets users points for gift cards and the like. In promoting this, Podshow has slapped a pre-roll ad to every one of their podcasts, and that has met with grumbling from a lot of podcasters. Check out the latest Podcast 411 for some thoughts on that… including one author who decided not to go with Podshow because he did not like the preroll ad. It’s even come to the point where some enterprising individuals have posted instructions for listeners on how to use iTunes to automatically trim the preroll ads from Podshow podcasts…

I’ve never been a fan of preroll ads… 60 seconds is a long ad for something that presupposes that some members of the network (apparently) suck at what they do. Not something I’d want my listeners to hear before my shows start…