Jason Unger

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It's easy to hate on the mainstream media, especially in an Internet age where most companies don't understand Web publishing.

Newspaper sites don't write Web headlines. Magazine sites think people care what issue a story is from. And TV networks? They just think we're all pirates.

But there are a few broadcasters with mainstream podcasts that are getting it right — and believe it or not, they're actually worth watching.

NBC Nightly News w/Brian Williams
Almost immediately after each day's broadcast, the NBC Nightly News is available commercial-free as a podcast. It's not a special "online" edition — it's the entire show, sometimes even updated when the West Coast edition has something new.

We've talked about Brian Williams and the shift in media before, but what makes this broadcast interesting a day "late" is that it isn't really that late. While there's obviously news from the day, a lot of the content is timeless — so if I watch it a day or two later, it's still worth it.

Anderson Cooper 360
AC 360, iTunes' "Best new podcast" last year, doesn't feature all two hours of Cooper's nightly news program, but it's the first podcast I watch every morning. Running about a half-an-hour an episode, it normally has the latest news from the previous night.

Beyond the news, Cooper and newsgal (and former TechTVer Erica Hill) seem to speak to the Internet generation — they're not old and stogy, and love to laugh at videos of bears falling out of trees.

They also incorporate their daily blog contests — The Shot and Beat 360 — into the podcast, which are lighter fare.

Meet the Press
NBC also gets it right with Meet the Press, which it offers in its entirety, also without commercials.

Obviously, things have changed a bit since the show lost host Tim Russert, but since the show has never been about breaking news, it can be watched at any point during the week without feeling completely out of the know.

What mainstream media podcasts are you watching?

Live, from Las Vegas, it's the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

While I didn't make it on camera this time, I was on G4 once.

During last night's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams, speaking to Time magazine's Richard Stengel, made an off-hand comment I found interesting.

"I was surprised to learn that Time.com comes out in a paper version," he told Stengel, laughing it off.

For a guy in his position — the man behind the desk, the anchor of the national evening news — it's a funny thing to say. But, at least to me, it shows that he and NBC have the right mindset when dealing with the shift in media caused by technology.

Normally, the old media types are so afraid of technology that they make dumb decisions that end up shooting themselves in the foot.

NBC doesn't seem to be doing that.

The only reason I heard Williams' quote was because I was watching his broadcast today as a podcast. It's one of my two daily news podcasts, along with Anderson Cooper 360.

NBC streams the whole broadcast, adding in-house ads where the commercials would normally be. It's great — I wouldn't normally be watching Williams at night, but since I can watch it on my own time, I do.

Good for NBC for adopting technology and making their content available by different means.

I've been a die-hard 24 fan since I began watching the show (I even had a Jack Bauer profile on facebook for awhile, at least until they deleted it).

But Jack has some competition this year from one of the best new shows on TV: Heroes.

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