Why It's Important To Think About The Shelf Life Of Your Podcast Episodes

I've launched a podcast about the Detroit arts and entertainment scene with Becky Scarcello and Jag 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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When I set out to create The D Brief, the idea was to use a podcast to expand upon the "live and local" role that radio stations play in the community. But doing so with a podcast presents unique challenges. After all, radio content is created and consumed at the same time: The audience hears the DJ's words at the same time that they come out of his or her mouth. This is not the case with podcasts.

Although some podcasts are repurposed live broadcasts, The D Brief is not one of those; it is exclusively an on-demand show. This means that there is a time lapse between when we record the show and when the audience hears it. We usually finish recording around 10:30 on Monday nights. New episodes are published to our podcast feed at 2:00 on Tuesday mornings. Most of our downloads occur on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

In the podcast, we talk about arts and entertainment events coming up in the next week. Specifically, we cover events happening between Wednesday and the following Tuesday. For example, when we record our June 4th episode, we'll discuss events happening from June 6th through the 12th. This means that most of our audience will hear about events that have not happened yet. However, if somebody were to listen to the podcast later in the week, they might hear about events that have already happened. As a result, our show does not have a long shelf life. Unlike Serial or WTF, there's very little reason to go back and listen to an episode that's several months old.

Of course, we're not the only podcast that's driven by current events. The popular Pod Save America, for example, covers the fast-moving Trump administration, so their episodes also have a short shelf life. But our short shelf life does present unique challenges. For example, Monday night football happens while we are recording the show, and it's difficult to talk about games when we don't know the outcome yet, but the audience will by the time that they are hearing us talk. Depending on when they fall on the calendar, holidays can present similar issues. Generally, we ask ourselves if the story that we are going to cover will still matter by the time the audience hears the podcast, or will it be old news?

One of the downsides of a podcast with this type of time frame is that we aren't able to get much mileage out of our past episodes. Even if somebody loves our podcast, they're unlikely to binge on past episodes because the events are out of date. Instead, we have to hope that somebody who loves the first episode will return to the show a week later. In that sense, even though we are an on-demand show, we are trying to build appointment listening habits just like real-time media. Getting people to remember to come back every week is an uphill battle.

This is part of the reason why we eventually spun off our big in-studio interviews as stand-alone episodes published on Thursdays. Usually, that interview has a longer shelf life than the rest of our episodes, and by separating it out, we are more likely to attract binge listeners with our back catalog. (The other big reason to separate the in-studio interview is episode length - we felt that a weekly 60 minute episode and a weekly 30 minute episode would perform better than a single weekly 90 minute episode.)

I have found that when developing a podcast, it's very important to think about the shelf-life of the content. Evergreen episodes mean that your older podcast episodes can be discovered months or years down the road, while current-event driven podcasts give people added incentive to listen to each episode in a timely fashion. As you develop your own podcast, pay special attention to its timeframe and think about the implications on your content and on your marketing efforts.

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

More Glimpses Behind the Scenes:

1. Creating a Facebook Video Ad for a New Podcast
2. How We Learned That Our Listeners Hate Music Beds
3. I Paid Strangers for Feedback on My Podcast. Here's What They Said.
4. How to Get Actionable Feedback on Your Podcast
5. Why You Should Create a Teaser Before You Launch Your Podcast