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NICK DOUGLAS — PodTech.net, one of Silicon Valley's most-hyped video networks, is fake. How do you spot a fake company? First observe a real one. A media network needs content, an audience, deals, a plan, and momentum. In all of these, PodTech is deficient.

Content
 A media network needs media. Not just anything that fills camera time, of course; a media outlet needs good stuff, delivered in a format its main consumers will like. For instance, a news blog needs constantly updated stories in text, pictures and/or video, whereas a deep documentary series needs longer episodes more carefully crafted.

Obviously, PodTech has shows, including some great ones, like the entertaining food show Freshtopia (an independent show licensed by the network). But the interesting shows stick out oddly among the sea of dull interviews that make up most of the PodTech lineup. Of the twenty-four shows on the front page, twenty were about business and technology.

So PodTech is a Silicon Valley business network. Boring, I know, but maybe useful for businesspeople. But all but seven of the shows on the front page last over 5 minutes, with several clocking in at 10 to 20. One show consists of a 40-minute audio feed of entrepreneur Jason Calacanis talking to other startup leaders. Robert Scoble, PodTech's most prominent show host who runs many of the network's interviews, confessed at a public talk with TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington that his editing time is shorter than his runtime: Scoble doesn't even watch the entire show as he edits it.

Hours of poorly edited content, hardly worth watching and hardly ever worth linking, are as bad as no content at all.

Audience
 As noted, it's not enough to slap something up there. Shows have to be targeted at an audience. But who is fascinated by interviews with tech execs, but has the time to watch and listen to un-annotated shows?

PodTech's main offerings are useful to someone doing due diligence on a startup, but that's about it. The huge geek audience already has better shows to watch. For instance, there's Leo Laporte's more entertaining This Week in Tech network or the PodShow network's slicker business and technology channels.

Deals
 No media outlet is an island. (Damn, that is just not catchy.) It needs advertisers, partners, and distributors. Even an online video site needs some outside sites to help it catch on. (Of course it's best if that deal comes for free.) So what deals has PodTech made?

Well, there is an impressive list of advertisers. (Will they stick around? Check the section below, "Momentum.")

And in addition, there's a new partnership with Jerry Zucker, creator of Airplane and Naked Gun. Zucker has launched a Podtech-powered comedy network called National Banana. Unfortunately, it's nothing like Turner's Super Deluxe; it's not nearly as promising as Will Ferrell's Funny or Die. In fact, it's just three almost-funny videos. I know groups of guys in the middle of nowhere who have more than this to show on day 1. This isn't a partnership; this is PodTech name-dropping a washed-up Jeff Zucker.

A plan
 This may be less necessary than you'd think. But that's only true for networks with content, audience, and deals. If the company's going to survive without something real to offer, it'd better have a scheme for passing it off and selling the whole works like a pump-and-dump.

PodTech doesn't seem to have a plan. Sure, the Zucker deal could be a stab at raising value, but if they'd really thought that one out, PodTech would have made sure he launched more than his weaksauce three-video page, right? (Hell, there isn't even a comments section on that thing.)

I've also heard the story of one show "bought" by PodTech: Last year the network hired the two creators of Geek Entertainment TV, promising to buy their show. But in the ten months since, PodTech has only worked out a temporary licensing deal, took one of the creators to a new show, and laid off the other part-time. How did a deal this simple get this screwed up?

Momentum
 This is simple: a media network has to grow. Content, audience, and deals have expiration dates. Traffic should rise, the plan should become the trajectory.

PodTech, however, hasn't gone anywhere. The traffic according to Alexa (PodTech doesn't even show up on the ranks of the industry standard, Comscore) is quietly dying, not that it started that high in the first place.

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So what?
 PodTech's dead. There's nothing good to watch, no traffic, no pickup, no significant deals, no standout talent, and nothing really there. So another startup will go tits up unless the owner foists it upon some unsuspecting buyer. The story of PodTech's creative bankruptcy and business unsavvy is also a template for how not to run a media network and a warning to those who think that all it takes is some cameras, a boring interviewer, and a site to stick the shows on.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Prezzish, and Look Shiny. In full disclosure, he'd like to start a media company, but that's as likely as all the other stuff he says he'll do in his byline.