Talk Show Podcasts Keep It Local

Don Vonderheide

Dan Vonderheide has always been a radio guy. He worked in media, on-air and behind the scenes, since he first landed a show as a high school student in Madison, Ind.

But earlier this year, according to courier-journal.com, the 41-year-old was laid off from his job as digital sales manager for Cox Media Group. Around the same time, Vonderheide attended a course for entrepreneurs at Nucleus, the University of Louisville’s business incubator.

And for the past month, he has been presiding over his own media property, Louisville.am, from a small recording studio at the back of an office suite. There, he produces talk shows with local hosts on Louisville-centric topics like restaurants and sports.

Vonderheide sees Louisville.am as offering on-demand talk programming of an equivalent level of quality to local radio stations and, with distribution on the Internet, a potentially boundless audience.

In many ways, Vonderheide’s job isn’t so different from what a radio station manager does. First, he has chosen the hosts of the shows carefully. “Not just anybody can have a podcast (on Louisville.am),” he said. “You have to have a personality, you have to have passion about the topic, and you have to have deep knowledge.”

He selected five local bloggers who he believed would be able to make compelling podcasts — and who would bring their blogs’ substantial audiences with them.

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