Brand New Podcasts And The Quiet Episodes That No One Ever Knows

I've teamed up with Detroit comedian Mike Geeter to launch a new podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene called The D Brief. In this column, I am sharing the lessons I learn from it for other radio broadcasters who want to do the same.

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Mike and I published our first episode of The D Brief in late October of 2017, but we had been working on the show's launch for months. First, we did a ten-episode podcast series around the Comedy Central show Detroiters. In many ways, that series was a test run to see if Mike and I worked well together. We did, so when that series wrapped up, we decided to create a (hopefully) bigger podcast series.

We came up with The D Brief, a podcast about the arts and entertainment scene in Detroit. This series would be far more complicated than any podcast series I had produced previously, requiring extensive show prep and multiple segments. Once we developed the show prep process, we decided to do some trial runs before recording our first "real" episode.

I am a big proponent of recording practice episodes -- episodes that are never meant to be heard by the general public -- before launching your podcast. For The D Brief, we produced four practice episodes.

The first practice episode was simply a "table read." We prepped the show, then read through an episode without any audio equipment, to get a sense of how it would work. We did not record this episode.

We did record our second episode. We prepped the show, then recorded it just as we would for an actual episode. The only difference was that we interviewed our intern instead of a real guest. These episodes not only gave us more experience with the show structure, but also allowed us to test the equipment.

Originally, our third practice episode would involve a real guest. However, Mike and I decided that we'd benefit from pushing back our podcast launch date a week and doing another practice episode. So for our third episode, we again interviewed our intern.

For our fourth and final practice episode, we asked a local comedian and friend of ours to come in for an interview. This allowed us to figure out how the podcast would work not just in terms of what we were saying on the mic, but also the behind-the-scenes coordination that comes with a live in-studio guest. Our intern had to let the guest into the building, we took photos with our guest, and we asked them to record an artist ID ("Hi, this is _____ of ______ and you're listening to The D Brief"), before pre-interviewing them to ensure that we get the best possible interview.

From each of these practice episodes, we learned things, both minor and major, that would help us create a better podcast. Here are a few of the things that we learned:

1. Because I am running the mixing board, the guest should call Mike's cell phone when they arrive, not mine.
2. Trying to book two live in-studio guests per episode is biting off more than we can chew; we should start with one and re-evaluate once we've become more comfortable with the show.
3. Cutting the show down from 16 to 13 segments makes it more manageable.
4. We can't realistically record 8 segments in one shot; we should take two short breaks during the recording instead of one. This gives us a chance to recalibrate and improves the quality of the segments without significantly increasing the amount of post-production editing that is needed.
5. When the intern lets the guest into the building, they should be careful not to let the door close behind them, or they will get locked outside.

Practice makes perfect, but perfect can be the enemy of the good. After the fourth practice episode, we hit a point where, though we would still benefit from additional experience...but we simply couldn't practice anymore. We needed real guests, which would only be willing to come for real episodes. It was time to launch.

Every podcaster's hundredth episode is better than their first simply because they have more experience under their belt. The only way to get that experience is to "just do it." The same is true of radio DJs. The difference is that a radio DJ's first show disappears into the ether, while a podcaster's first show stays online for everybody to hear. I recorded 114 episodes of my food and travel podcast, and I wish the first 50 didn't exist. It's not that the first 50 are bad, but the shows got so much better after that.

I knew the same would be true of The D Brief. As I write this, Mike and I have now produced a dozen episodes. In just three months, the show has gotten noticeably better. Nine months from now, it will be even better, and if it's still going in five years, it will be miles ahead of where it is now.

The bottom line: While I am a firm believer in the benefit of recording practice podcast episodes, don't let them paralyze you. At some point, you've got to take the plunge.

LISTEN: Hear the latest episode of The D Brief podcast.

More Glimpses Behind the Scenes:

1. Creating Production Elements for a Podcast
2. Building a Radio Station Studio on a Podcaster's Budget
3. How to Check 200 Websites in 2 Hours
4. Can Podcasts Be Live and Local?
5. A Show Structure for Podcasts and Radio?