The Rio Podcast Company is a weekly video podcast show that promotes El Paso and brings a local perspective to national news, art and sports.
Member of Rio Pod Co. Joseph Brooks said that the Rio Pod Co. is an umbrella for other podcasts.
“It is a collection of podcasts and we do three different shows,” Brooks said. “We do a sports show, a show about El Paso that promotes local businesses and artists and we have our entertainment show that is about current events.”
Being an independent broadcast, the Rio Pod Co. can address a wide variety of topics and talk about them however they wish.
“We speak of local and national sports, we have ‘Chuco Talks’ that’s promoting El Paso, we get owners of local businesses and we let listeners know about them,” Brooks said. “Our last show is ‘Rio Pod Co.,’ we speak of current national events from a local perspective.”
According to Brooks, the Rio Pod Co. but is not necessarily only about themselves they try to help other podcasters.
“The Rio Pod Co. is a company that hosts podcasts. If somebody else has a podcast they can give us a call and join us and see if we can get them on our website,” Brooks said.
Rio Pod Co. member Gabriel Acuña, UTEP alum with a degree in media advertising, said that Rio Pod Co. is a way to have fun and promote El Paso.
“Our premises are a different form of entertainment,” Acuña said. “It is online and an alternative to your standard radio shows. So we give a different perspective on topics, whether it is local or national and something that is not censored or diluted as you get on radio.”
Rio Pod Co. can be heard online at their websites at riopodco.com and through an app called Stitcher available on iTunes and Google Play.
“We transmit live shows, but we always post them on our websites every Tuesday by midday,” Acuña said.
Rio Pod Co. encourages local artists and businesses to approach them to get promoted.
“People just need to inform us in advance that they want to be in the show–of course it has to be local,” Acuña said. “We get booked very quickly, so inform us more than a week in advance.”
Rio Pod Co. began in 2011, but they took a one-year break and decided to bring back the podcast in 2013 because, according to Brooks, it was the perfect time.
“We felt that we had to do it because El Paso is changing right now,” Brooks said. “I think we can be the voice of that change.”
Rio Pod Co. member Javier A. Martinez, UTEP alum with a degree in computer science, said fans have received the show very warmly.
“Curiously, most of the listeners are females,” Martinez said. “We played with Google analytics and we noticed we had listeners from Alaska and Germany, and I think some people here from El Paso took it and went over there and just to keep up with El Paso they listen in and we give them that.”
Tim Haren, UTEP alum with a degree in political science and Rio Pod Co. member, said fans also let them know how much they are interested in the show. They encourage them to contact the show if they don’t agree with what they are saying.
“We are interactive, we like to hear from people via Facebook, email or they can call us if they don’t agree with what we are saying,” Haren said. “We will address it, we are always willing to bring the subject back and expand on it.”
According to Rio Pod Co., in the future the podcast will continue as it is, but the company has many different things planned such as Rio Online Radio and Rio TV.
“Rio Online Radio is going to be local music and we are going to be promoting local music through the online station––and not only that, every time any band comes into town, we will let you know and you’ll be able to hear that band before their event,” Brooks said. “Rio TV is so that people can actually watch us and what we are doing and interact with us better and we will bring people and we want to do this through a livestream.”
To learn more about Rio Pod Co., visit www.riopodco.com or call 915 247-8746.
Leonardo Montañez may be reached at [email protected]
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