4 Hard Podcasting Lessons For Radio Broadcasters

When I was growing up, there was a memorable TV commercial for The Hair Club for Men, a company that somehow magically cures baldness. At the end of the commercial, the pitchman and president of the company, Sy Sperling, says, "And remember, I'm not only the Hair Club president, but I'm also a client!"

As I travel around the country speaking to radio broadcasters looking to dive into the world of podcasting, I like to remind them that I'm not just a podcasting consultant; I'm also a podcaster. In fact, everything I've learned about podcasting, I've learned the hard way: by doing it.

I started my career as a radio broadcaster back in 1995, but radio and podcasting are not the same. I launched my first podcast in 2011, and while I can tell you there is overlap between the two skillsets, there are also a lot of important differences. After two decades of radio broadcasting, I can deliver a tight, topical, clever break that nails the post on a Linkin Park song in my sleep. But after six years, I still find creating a compelling podcast far more challenging.

This fall, I am launching a new podcast called The D Brief. It is designed to incorporate everything I know from my radio broadcasting and podcasting experience. Along the way, I want to use this column to share a behind-the-scenes look at how that works - or doesn't work - for me. My hope is that by sharing these lessons with you, you'll have an easier time launching your own successful podcast.

But before we get to my new podcast, let's take a look at the hard lessons I have already learned over six years of podcasting, and what they mean for you as a radio broadcaster looking to enter this space.

Hard Lesson #1: Design a Manageable Podcast Production Process

I launched my first podcast in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I picked up a mic, headed down to the camps in Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco, and asked the demonstrators why they were there. Then I returned home, edited the interviews together, and published them as a podcast series. Even though I spent no money promoting it, the podcast took off -- it was downloaded over 35,000 times in over 80 different countries. I attribute this to the fact that "occupy" was a hot search term at the time, and when you typed the word into iTunes, it offered only two results: my podcast and a rap song.

Despite its accidental success, the podcast was very time-consuming to produce. I had to find a protest, travel to it, record the interviews, edit them, publish the episode, and then promote it on social media. A single episode could easily take ten hours or more to produce on top of my regular 9-to-5 job. My publishing schedule was erratic, and after a dozen episodes, the series "podfaded;" that is, it petered out, much like the Occupy movement itself.

Hard Lesson #2: Know What Your Skills Are

When I set out to launch my second podcast series, I was determined to develop a more manageable production process. This series would be a food and travel podcast. I would call up a culinary expert in another city and ask them what a visiting foodie needed to know: What are the best neighborhoods for restaurants? What are the dishes to try? Who are the chefs to follow? Etc.

Because the interviews were over the phone and the questions were largely the same each time, show prep for this podcast was minimal. The majority of my time was spent editing the interviews afterwards. With this podcast, I could produce an episode in a couple of hours, enabling me to adhere to a regular publishing schedule. At first, I published an episode every other week, but I quickly discovered that I was able to pump them out on a weekly basis.

But the repetition that made a regular schedule possible eventually started to bore me. After more than 100 episodes, I grew tired of the one-on-one interview format, and decided that I wanted to take on something more ambitious.

My new concept was a food and travel podcast that crossed Anthony Bourdain with Ira Glass. I would head to a destination, record a series of in-person interviews with a cross-section of experts and practitioners in the local food scene, and then edit them together into a This American Life-style masterpiece. I bought a portable podcast rig, headed out to various destinations -- including Ireland, Wales, and Scotland -- and recorded some fascinating culinary conversations.

But when I got home, I got lost.

Suddenly, I realized how little I really knew. I could conduct a compelling interview, but I have no experience with audio journalism. I had never fact-checked anybody, or recorded B-roll audio, or storyboarded a podcast episode. I've frontsold the Red Hot Chili Peppers approximately 73,000 times in my career, but that did not prepare me for this. Very quickly, I gained a newfound appreciation for Ira Glass' skills...and his staff...and his budget.

To this day, those interviews are sitting on a hard drive, untouched. This podcast podfaded before it even began.

Hard Lesson #3: Launch a Pilot Season

I returned to a series of smaller podcasts using the one-on-one interview format, including backstage interviews at the Worldwide Radio Summit, Jacobs Media's DASH Conference, and CES. Still, the desire to take my podcasting to the next level never left my mind.

When I moved to Detroit to become the Digital Dot Connector at Jacobs Media two years ago, I decided to try my hand at an art form that I have always admired: Stand-up comedy. I took classes at the legendary club, Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle, and started shlepping out to dive bars to tell jokes to small, inattentive audiences.

Stand-up comedy is harder than radio: On the radio, if you tell a joke that isn't funny, you never really know; it just fades into the ether. As a disc jockey, you're insulated from ridicule by soundproof studio walls. On stage, if you tell a joke that isn't funny, you know immediately. And it hurts.

On my stand-up comedy journey, I met Mike Geeter. Mike started performing comedy a few years before me, and we quickly struck up a friendship. We talked about co-hosting a podcast, and when Comedy Central announced that it would air a show called Detroiters, it seemed like the perfect opportunity: two Detroit comedians offering commentary on a comedy about Detroit.

But I also had an ulterior motive for doing this podcast: After watching my other podcasts fade, I felt that I had failed. Podcasters tend to think of their podcasts as open-ended commitments: "I'm going to do this podcast every week until the day I die!" There's a stigma attached to podfading, as if a podcast that does continue forever should be a source of shame.

To avoid that stigma, I have advised my radio clients to launch "pilot seasons" for new podcasts: commit to a small number of episodes and see how it goes. If it's a success, you can come back for a second season. If not, at least you've learned something and you're not locked into a failure.

For me, the Detroit vs. Detroiters podcast was an opportunity to test my "pilot season" theory. I had never co-hosted a podcast with anyone before, and I while I suspected that Mike and I would enjoy working together, I wanted to be sure before committing to anything too grandiose. Fortunately, Comedy Central was only producing ten episodes of Detroiters, so Mike and I would only record ten matching episodes of our podcast, enough for us to test the waters without feeling bad if things didn't continue beyond that.

Hard Lesson #4: Commercial Radio Podcasts Aren't Like Public Radio Podcasts

For each episode of our Detroit vs. Detroiters podcast, Mike and I would invite a local celebrity onto the show as we discussed the latest episode of Detroiters. One of our guests was rockabilly singer Rio Scafone. As we were recording, I delved into the plot details of the latest Detroiters episode. A look of confusion crossed Rio's face. "You asked me to watch the wrong episode," she said. A moment of panic set in. How could we discuss an episode that our guest hadn't watched?

This feeling was one that I have experienced many times before in my career. Any radio broadcaster with enough years under their belt can tell stories about moments where they were broadcasting live and something went wrong. It's these crises that make broadcasting so much fun; they keep you on your toes.

When Rio revealed that she had watched the wrong episode, my adrenaline started pumping. Without missing a beat, I pivoted the conversation to focus on Rio's experience in the Detroit music scene. I occasionally referenced the latest Detroiters episode in a way that did not require her to respond to it directly. The interview continued and after we wrapped up, I only needed to make a singled edit in post-production: I removed the line where she said she had watched the wrong episode. Once it was gone, it was impossible to tell that we had screwed up.

That moment was an epiphany for me. I realized that not only am I not good at the post-production required to make a compelling Ira Glass-style podcast, I hate post-production! The part of podcasting that I enjoy the least is sitting in front of my computer editing after the interview is over. I'm not a public radio audio producer, I'm a commercial radio broadcaster - and there's a difference! For me, the magic is in the moments during the recording. Suddenly, I was glad that Detroit vs. Detroiters was a podcast with a limited run, because I had learned an important lesson and decided that I wanted to make a change with my next podcast.

Introducing The D Brief

Mike and I enjoyed working on our podcast, and started looking for another project to do together. I now knew that I wanted to take everything I had learned in my years on the air at commercial radio stations and apply them to a podcast: What does a podcast sound like when the majority of the time is invested into show prep, not post-production? It would probably sound a lot more like Howard Stern and a lot less like Serial.

So Mike and I started planning a new podcast. The result is The D Brief, a podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene:

Everything about this new podcast - from the show structure to the topics to the teases - will borrow concepts from commercial radio. The show will launch this fall. As it does, I will use this column to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the hard lessons we are learning along the way. My goal is to use my show to help other radio broadcasters take the skills that they already have and apply them to podcasting. I hope you will be able to learn from my journey.