For several years, now, I've been using iTunes to manage my podcasts. I have 54 different podcasts which I download daily (except for the discontinued/moved ones, but for which I still keep the episodes). Some of these are radio shows, mostly weekly, while most of the others are different preaching ministries (which is why I keep all the downloaded archives.)
The problem I have with iTunes, is that if you don't listen regularly to a podcast, it stops downloading automatically. And let's face it, I obviously don't have time to listen to all 54 different broadcasts on a regular basis. What I'll often do, is to create a playlist consisting of several podcasts (particularly when a preaching ministry has a series going on, on a topic of some sort), and listen to them while working around the house (whether cleaning up, or whatever...) But that's not enough for iTunes... So every once in a while, I have to go through the whole list and manually select to "Update Podcast," so that they start downloading automatically again. While this is not exactly straining, if you forget to do it for too long, you may end up missing podcasts (since most broadcasts only keep so many episodes in the archives, themselves, deleting the old ones after a predetermined amount of time). This behavior is particularly troubling if you happen to go away for a while, and forgot to do the manual update before leaving...
I once tried installing Microsoft Zune, which showed promise, from the online description, but all it did was erase a substantial portion of my Podcast archive! (Several years' worth!!! I know, I know, I should have made a copy of my Podcast directory elsewhere, first...
) I got rid of Zune in no time flat...But it still leaves me stuck with iTunes... iTunes, which also insists on installing Bonjour (no, I'm not trying to share my music library with any other - non-existent - computer here), as well as some background tasks to update any iPod or other such device (which I do not have, either)... In other words, every time I download the latest recommended iTunes version, I have to go and disable all the other cr*p it installed against my will...
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So my question is, what podcast manager do you use? How well does it organize your podcast archive? How good is it at automating the downloads? Anything else noteworthy about whatever software you are using?
Thanks.