Why do podcasts suck? A Primer.

Why do most podcasts suck?? — Scott Roche

How badly a podcast sucks is highly subjective, and subject mostly to how close you are to either the subject or the producer. This means that if, say, you have a buddy who does a podcast on flight sim games, and you’re also a flight sim nut, your opinion of the show will be way more forgiving on it than mine will be.

And not everyone has good taste.

And almost no podcasters are professionals or have pro training or experience in their field or medium.

And almost no podcasters have a budget to procure the right tools.

Lets just assume that all of this is granted, ok? Accepting that podcasting is an amateur, enthusiast genre with very small audiences per show mostly made up of personal friends of the podcaster, we can start trying to judge podcasts a little more impersonally. Even if you try to judge podcasts on their own terms, there are still a lot of genuinely wretched podcasts on the net.

Oh no! Gasp! Content criticism is rude! If you don’t like it, don’t listen! Suck it, internet. It’s not personal. I have right here 5 Reasons Meredith Thinks Your Podcast Sucks, grown out of years of intensive podcast consumption.

1. Your audio blows.

It takes a  lot to have audio that’s so bad, a listener will turn off your show, but it happen all the time. Having cheap equipment isn’t an excuse, because if you can get the audio into the computer, there are free tools available that can work miracles in post-production. There’s no excuse for excessive noise, blatant screwups, low volume, and all-around crappy production if you just take the time to make a nice show.

At the same time, you don’t need to put out professional-quality stuff, either. It’s a podcast, and you’re probably not a professional, so don’t feel bad if it doesn’t sound perfect. Some podcasters actually advocate for leaving your edges a little rough because it’s an integral part of the DIY aesthetic. How polished your production will be is a decision you’ll have to make for yourself, but if you don’t bother to at minimum run your track through Levelator and give it a full listen through from beginning to end, I’m not going to bother listening to it.

2. Your show lies.

There are approximately 80 bazillion podcasts that should be titled The Me Show, or My Friends And I Podcast As An Excuse To Hang Around And Chat, and there are lots of shows that are exactly that and make no bones about it. That’s perfectly fine. What frosts my ass is when a podcast is supposed to be topical, and the shows never bother with the topic, instead just bullshitting around individually or in groups. For some reason, video game podcasts seem to be particularly guilty of this. Again, I’m not against blathercasts, personal journals or buddy bull sessions, but if that’s what you’re going to publish, don’t pretend you’re doing a podcast on computer flight simulators.

3. You’re a douche.

A podcast is a fantastic foundation on which to build a cult of personality. It starts with cheap production and ends with me being a disembodied voice in your head. If you’re going to take this route, and many do, try to actually have a personality to build a cult around, ok? Queercasters seem to be most guilty of this, where the podcaster’s goal is to portray himself or herself as the most awesome thing ever, and only succeeds in insulting other people, being insulted by other people, and portraying a remarkable lack of redeeming qualities. Your show sucks because YOU suck, and that’s one thing Levelator can’t fix.

4. You’re inflexible.

Long ago and far away, in 2005 or so, someone somewhere decided that podcasting (audio podcasting, anyway) is at its best when shows are 20-30 minutes long and released once weekly, and somehow this became gospel*. This led directly to people establishing their podcast “format” and sticking to it religiously, cramming otherwise perfectly good shows into these artificial boxes because they thought they had to. With this basic assumption comes a whole host of other standard moves that far too many podcasters try to impose on themselves because “that’s how it’s done”. For instance, promo breaks, which are really commercial breaks but without any money involved; a common structure that mimics television, theme-intro-housekeeping-break-primary topic-break-secondary topic-credits-outro-more credits; releasing podcasts under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivates licenses. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but over and over again podcasters do things like this to their podcast without sparing a moments thought to whether or not it’s a good idea.

I blame this type of behavior as the primary reason why podcasters stumble and fade. When a show is full of stuff because it has to be, instead of stuff you want, it becomes work and it stops being fun and the show goes away. Make the show you want to make. Release the show when it’s done, make it only as long as it needs to be, and only include in it the stuff you love. Don’t try to mash your podcast into some sort of shape you think other people will like, just make the show you would want to listen to. You won’t make any money doing this, so keep it fun. If fun for you is fulfilling a production schedule or promoting other podcasts, that’s awesome, but don’t do anything because you think you have to. Don’t be afraid to just do the fun part and ignore the rest.

5. You’re just filling time.

The other day, I downloaded a podcast for freelancers. The show is just a series of book authors who write books that are of interest to freelancers, everything from business theory to motivational self-help dreck. The interviews are usually interesting and informative, and I enjoy listening to them, but I never listen to a whole episode. Why? The host always plays a podsafe song at the end of the show. The song isn’t related to any topics of the episode. It isn’t to my taste. It’s been bitcrushed in the editing process. The only thing this song enhances is the length and size of the podcast. When a podcaster does this, I skip the song.

Another podcast I’ve listened to in the past would regularly go through the following rigamarole: “Hi! Welcome to my show! It’s time for feedback! Or it would be if there was any feedback. Now it’s time for the rest of my show.” Utterly pointless waste of my time. He didn’t ask for feedback, he didn’t make a joke about being lonely, he didn’t do anything but stick to the script like a moron. If you’re going to podcast and you want other people to listen, respect the time your listeners are taking with your show and don’t waste it. Make the minutes count. Get to the fucking interesting part already, and don’t pad your show with useless boring crap. Podcaster, edit thyself.

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If you want to subject yourself to this abuse, go fill out the Fauxspring for yourself. It’s anonymous!

* This is based on the presumption that a podcaster isn’t going to want to spend more time on a podcast than it takes to make a weekly show, and the rule of thumb that the average commute is between 20 and 40 minutes. In my personal experience, listeners like shorter and more frequent podcasts, and more is better. The most popular podcasts I’ve ever produced were a series of daily shows that were 45 seconds long, each. Wacky, ain’t it?