Cuban's rare podcast appearance highlights podcast publicity problem

Individual podcasters can figure out their audience size by examining hits to the hosting Web sites. But what about the competition? And specifically, what about those podcasts occupying better real estate on the iTunes charts?

ESPN's Bill Simmons has uttered such a refrain, as his competitive nature manifested itself in constantly checking his iTunes popularity ranking. He wondered how Apple figured out these rankings, and the only thing that most of these podcasters have figured out is that it helps to have lots of five-star fawning praise listed on the podcast's informational page. (This article from 2005 details the use of recent subscriptions to figure iTunes rankings, and this story from 2006 asks a similar question.)

Thus, recent listens to podcasts such as On the DL and The Basketball Jones have included a call for fans to write reviews to the ubiquitous podcasting interface.

The confusion between the have's and have-not's also can be confusing for prospective guests, as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban explained this week on the BS Report:

Bill Simmons: I've been trying to get you on for a year, and Marc Stein says that you didn't want to come on mainly 'cause you hate being on the phone, which I accept. That's a valid reason.

Mark Cuban: Yeah, it's not so much that I hate being on the phone. The honest answer is I'm just not a big fan of podcasts.

BS: You're anti-podcast?

MC: Yeah, it's not that people don't listen to them. Obviously, people do. But it's just, you know, there's only a few of them, yours included, that have more than 10 people that listen to them. I always felt that, If I'm going to be fair and objective, I'm going to have to do a whole bunch of them. And so, if I wasn't going to do them all, I wasn't going to do any of them.

Of course, Cuban goes on to use his opportunity to stoke an uprising in support of HDNET's battle with Time Warner Cable. So as podcasters do their best to appeal to advertisers, they might need to make two copies of that presentation and save one for audience-generating guests, as well.

My Boys, Cubs "meet cute"

As a Cardinals fans, I don't demonstrably relish a Cubs cold streak. Like a no-hitter or a woman who takes interest in me, I don't want to jinx it by making any loud noises. But the team's power outage against the St. Louis pitching staff last week continued against the Padres, and only a series against the Pirates could solve their problems.

Even so, I'm not the type of fan to invade the opposing teams' blogs to see what the fans are complaining about this time. This is why I was so surprised to see a couple of Cubs invade one of the last remaining shows recording to my DVR. "My Boys" on TBS can be counted on for a couple of laughs, some Chicagoland-centric plot devices and just enough ridiculous references to the journalism profession to make me scoff. As mentioned in this previous post, the show toned down its peek inside the journalism world to focus on more important things, like love triangles and visiting new bars.

But Tuesday night's season finale remembered how PJ affords her apartment. She travels down to Arizona for spring training to parachute in and find the column angle seldom seen among the sunburned scribes. Along the way, her friends end up conversing with none other than international superstar ... Mike Fontenot! The (overextended in regular playing time? Or just intimidated by the manly presence of Aaron Miles?) infielder even gets in a few lines in the B storyline, as the boyfriend of a woman looking to make the Cajun jealous.

Micah Hoffapauir also makes an appearances as himself, with game footage featuring Derrek Lee and Lou Pinella, among others. TBS doesn't have the episode up just yet, but you can check out the show here. Mouthpiece Sports has some captured video of the show for those who can't wait. So for at least one day, Fontenot can count Keith Hernandez ("Seinfeld"), Kevin McHale ("Cheers") and Joe Namath ("Brady Bunch") among his peers.

(Image inexplicably found on Chicago Cubs official site)