FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2006- (CHICAGO, IL) – Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, one of the most popular shows in all of radio, is now offering listeners a free weekly podcast at any of the following web sites: thisamericanlife.org, chicagopublicradio.org and at the iTunes Store. Starting Monday, October 16, each show will be available to podcast subscribers on the Monday following its national broadcast. Shows will be available for free download for seven days. After that, the shows will migrate to the program's online archives.
The price for downloads of these archived shows — currently more than 300 programs spanning ten years — is only $0.95 cents per show. Each is available at Audible.com and at the iTunes Store. This American Life will continue to offer free streaming of past shows at thisamericanlife.org and chicagopublicradio.org.
Ira Glass, host and creator of This American Life, will announce the podcast launch on this weekend’s program, which broadcasts to an estimated audience of 1.7 million listeners nationwide. "We've wanted to offer free podcasts for a while," says Glass. "And we're all excited to see how they do. We hope they introduce the show to an audience that maybe isn't tuning into public radio just yet. And of course, my co-workers and I just love the fact that podcasting makes it easier for our current listeners to get to hear the show."
“For more than six years Audible.com has had the privilege of introducing tens of thousands of new listeners in more than 120 countries to This American Life,” says Brian Fielding, EVP Content for Audible.com. “The ten-year This American Life archive is the paradigm for the power of the internet’s ‘long tail’ and Audible.com is delighted to continue our association with This American Life by offering it on-demand - as individual programs and in multiple program packages, as well as through our advertising sponsorship support of the free podcast.”
The podcast will be hosted by online media provider StreamGuys.
Produced by Chicago Public Radio and distributed by Public Radio International, This American Life has been widely lauded for pioneering a new way to tell stories on the radio. The show has won every major award for broadcasting and journalism excellence. A television version of the radio show will launch in 2007, as a series on the Showtime network. A feature film Unaccompanied Minors, based on a story from the radio show, will premiere in December 2006 from Warner Brothers.
In 2005, the groundbreaking radio program celebrated its tenth anniversary on the air, and reached a broadcast milestone of carriage by 500 public radio stations nationwide