New York public radio powerhouse WNYC has started a new campaign called #SmartBinge (the hashtag is part of the official name). #SmartBinge plays off of the trend of “binge viewing,” an increasingly popular activity that involves marathon-length sessions of TV watching, usually over the course of a couple days. But instead of tuning into the latest seasons of your favorite shows on Netflix or Hulu, WNYC would like you to load up on shows from its podcast archive.

The official #SmartBinge page implores you to “Binge This” with a tiled list of shows underneath. Mouse over a tile, and it’ll bring up a description of that particular show. Clicking a tile takes you to a simple media app containing a list of embedded audio players, a volume control and a sidebar of other functions. When a tile is clicked, #SmartBinge automatically saves all of the available episodes form that show to a folder in the sidebar. Once you’re done with an episode, or if you’d like to remove an episode for any reason, just click the trash icon next to that episode’s player and it’ll disappear from the list as well as your Saved folder.

If you run out of episodes in your Saved playlist, you can listen to live audio streams from right inside of #SmartBinge. There’s also a Trending section that includes audio clips that can be added to your Saved list.

I have tested #SmartBinge on both my iMac and my iPad. The app works identically on both. There’s no need to download a native app for iOS. But if the web-based #SmartBinge app doesn’t work for you, the official page also offers “Other Ways to Binge” with links to WNYC’s full podcast directory, WNYC’s iOS and Android apps, as well as other services that syndicate their content (Stitcher, TuneIn, etc.).

#SmartBinge is a pretty cool idea and since the app runs completely in a web browser, it’s easy to use and will likely work on most devices. I’m already thinking of ways to try and implement something similar (tho, much simpler) on my own podcast website.

Posted by Shawn Thorpe