<p>I think you are comparing apples and oranges. <br>
UCTV is a TV channel collecting programs from 10 large public universities and national laboratories. I even remember getting it in North Carolina on my parents' Dish Network satellite feed.<br>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California_Television<br>
Philosophy Talk is a podcast with 2 guys who probably are spending way too much on production budget compared to the number of listeners/viewers. They are using Ben Manilla Productions who has won a Peabody Award. Also, their website looks fairly professional. Who created / maintains it? None of that can be cheap.<br>
http://bmpaudio.com/</p>
<p>This says that for 10 years they got 80% of their funding from Stanford U. Now they aren't getting that much so they are asking for listeners to help out.<br>
http://philosophytalk.org/philosophy-talk%E2%80%99s-community-thinkers</p>
<p>10 years ago when podcasts first became popular I had a couple of friends make a podcast at home. They were in bands so they had good microphones, mixers, sound editing software. Posting files to free file sharing sites and since they were computer programmers made the web site themselves. It sounded pretty professional. Making interesting content is the more difficult thing. </p>