And now: Top Ten Annoying Things That Podcasters Do

Note from the author…

Let me preface this by stating flat out that there is no single podcaster that I’ve heard do everyone one of these things. I can’t even think of one that does half of them. Some of you have already heard these complaints and adjusted a long time ago. Some of you haven’t, but I beg your indulgence. None of this is meant in a spirit of meanness. Please feel free to ignore me or implement changes as you see fit. Hopefully you’ll also get a chuckle or two.

And now, without further adieu:

10. Use gratuitous obscenity or profanity. Some people don’t care. I do, a little. I mostly care that I can’t play it with my kids around. One of my favorite short podcasts has been slipping in bits that aren’t kid-friendly. Sigh.

9. Play music on a podcast that’s compressed down to 24 Kbps. urrrrrrrrkk…

8. Acquire a really nice microphone, but never learn how to talk into it. (Corollary: Acquire a nice portable recorder without also shelling out for a decent microphone – or worse, getting a recorder that doesn’t have a microphone jack at all!) Most of the time, all we hear is breathing noise/wind noise/pop/click/whistle, regardless of what you’re trying say.

7. Play the same sweeper in every podcast for weeks on end. Or, play it several times in the same podcast. Unless there’s a specific point to be made, Just Don’t Do It. Modest use of a sweeper can extend its useful life by months. Yes, indeed.

6. Fail to understand compression and EQ. Compression and equalization are your friends. Learn what they are and what they do and how to use them. Please?

5. Publish new content without at least skimming through the suspect trouble spots. The “barking” transcoded K7 calls are a perfect example. Either figure out a way to limit it, or just avoid including it at all. It’s hard enough to drive to work without having to look around wildly to see which way the marauding pack of sea lions is coming from!

4. Fail to do basic mic checks for shows that have two or more participants. If one of you is pushing +6 dB and another is barely cracking -3 dB, whether you can hear it on your mixing board or not, it sounds really dorky to us. Don’t trust your ears. Get a meter if you need to. We’ll wait.

3. Tell your listeners that you’re going to stop recording, and you’ll be right back. See, if you get to a good break point and just stop recording and then start it up again, chances are that nobody will notice. Especially if, in post production, you throw in a little teaser or sweeper or something.

2. Blather ON and ON and ON about contact info. Keep it brief! For example, give a phone number for your listener line and point them to your web site for more contact info. Whatever you do, though, don’t dwell on it for more than about 10 seconds. It bores us to tears.

1. Refer repeatedly to how many, or especially how few, listeners you have. We don’t care. This isn’t a popularity contest. We subscribed because we like your content and, well, this type of thing is most emphatically not content. The great thing about podcasts is that if you don’t put out a new show, I probably won’t even notice for at least 2 weeks, unless you happen to be producing my most favorite show. (If you do more than one show, I may not even notice for longer than that, if one of them is still continuing as normal.)