Can Segments Make Podcasts Smart Speaker-Friendly?

When I originally conceived of The D Brief podcast, the show contained about a dozen segments for one reason: to make the same content work on different platforms. The two platforms I had in mind were radio and a "podcatcher" app, such as Apple Podcasts. I wanted to know if was possible to create a podcast made up of segments that, on the one hand, could be listened in a row as one continuous show, but that you could also cut up, intersperse with songs, and turn into a 4-hour radio show. When it came to the format, Iwas looking to syndicated radio shows by hosts like Delilah and John Tesh for inspiration.

It was not until several months later that we stumbled upon a potential added benefit of these segments. At the NAB Show in Las Vegas last spring, Triton Media's President of Market Development presented data that showed smart speakers only accounted for 7% of downloads for the podcast episodes hosted on their platform. However, when you examined podcast episodes that were under 15 minutes in length, the number of downloads attributed to smart speakers rose to 23%. In other words, people are much more likely to listen to shorter podcasts on their smart speakers. Short daily podcasts, such as The New York Times' The Daily or NPR's Up First appear to be ideally suited to this platform.

Could our show be similarly repackaged as a short daily podcast for smart speakers? Our show is hosted on Libsyn, which provided us with an Alexa skill for it. All listeners have to do is say, "Alexa, enable The D Brief podcast" to invoke the skill and start listening on their Amazon device. Moreover, in the Libsyn backend, we can send different audio files to different destinations. So I can send the entire podcast episode to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, etc. for the usual weekly release, but also break it into segments which are released daily through Alexa. Theoretically, this would allow us to get listeners in the habit of calling us up on Alexa in daily bite-size chunks while they cook breakfast, or listen to us in long form on their commute to work.

Moreover, it follows that radio broadcasters might be able to do the same - design a show that can be easily repackaged to air on the radio, in a podcatcher app, and on a smart speaker.

This format could be a huge advantage, as we've seen surprisingly rapid adoption of smart speakers. According to Jacobs Media's annual Techsurvey, smart speaker ownership grew from 11% of radio listeners to 21% ownership in 2018. The Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod seemed poised to revolutionize the way people listen to audio in the home, and the ability to repackage audio for this platform could be a key advantage.

So far, the jury is still out with The D Brief's smart speaker strategy. To date, we have not seen significant downloads from daily segments, but it's still a small podcast. We'll just have to wait and see.

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

More Glimpses Behind the Scenes:

1. Covering Timely Events with an On-Demand Medium
2. Striking a Balance Between Informational and Conversational
3. The Art of Adding a Third Co-Host to Your Podcast
4. What Happens When You Have to Switch Podcast Co-Hosts?
5. In Podcasting, What You Say Sticks Around. Is That a Problem?