general

In October 2003, Matt Schichter launched his weekly chat show The BackStage Pass. B.B. King, Third Eye Blind, Gavin DeGraw, The Beach Boys, and Jason Mraz were notable guests the first season. The hour long radio show was recorded live, transcoded to 16kbit/s audio for dial-up online streaming. Despite a lack of a commonly accepted identifying name for the medium at the time of its creation, The Backstage Pass which became known as Matt Schichter Interviews[17] is commonly believed to be the first podcast to be published online.

"Podcast" is a portmanteau word, formed by combining "iPod" and "broadcast".

 first suggested by The Guardian columnist and BBC journalist Ben Hammersley,

Use of the term "podcast" predated Apple's addition of formal support for podcasting to the iPod, or its iTunes software.

On September 9, 2005, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected the application, citing Wikipedia's podcast entry as describing the history of the term.

Some sources have also suggested the backronym "portable on demand" or "POD", for similar reasons.