Splitting The Difference: The Ideal Length For A Podcast Episode

When it comes to podcasting, one of the questions I hear over and over again is, "What's the ideal length for a podcast episode?"

When people ask that question, they usually expect the answer to be a specific length of time: "Ten minutes," "45 minutes," "an hour," etc.

Over the last decade, I've heard a number of answers given, and none of them have been that straight-forward. Among the variations:

1. "As long as it takes to get your message across in a compelling manner."
2. "Whatever the length of the average commute of your listeners is."
3. "It depends on the attention span of your target audience."
4. "Fifteen minutes shorter than it is."

The truth is, there's a lack of hard data to provide insight into this question. Podcasting has long lacked the equivalent of the "Time Spent Listening" measurement that we use in radio broadcasting. We could see download numbers, but until Apple introduced its podcast analytics at the end of last year, there was no way to know how much of each episode people consumed. Even now, Apple's data only includes listening through the Apple ecosystem (although that is the majority of podcast listening) and the numbers are not published for all to see.

So our best hope when answering this question is to look at podcast downloads. Rob Walch, VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn, the largest podcast hosting platform, says:

"At Libsyn, we looked at all episodes released in a month and measured to the end of the following calendar month and looked at all episodes with 100,000 or more downloads. What we found was the episodes that listeners...downloaded the most (84%) were 51 minutes or longer. Less than 10% were 30 minutes or shorter."

Of course, the fact that an episode is downloaded does not mean that people listened to the entire thing, so while this data point is helpful, it still leaves plenty of room for debate. In fact, my co-hosts on The D Brief and I have been debating this subject for a long time. Becky Scarcello argues that shorter is better, while I believe that it's more important to focus on the quality of the content than the length.

While we still don't see eye to eye on this matter, we did decide to make a change to our podcast shortly after Becky joined the team: We split the episodes. Originally, our podcast was conceived as a selection of segments culminating in an interview with an in-studio guest. Invariably, this interview would last for 30 minutes or more - about a third of the length of our episodes, which were in the neighborhood of an hour and 45 minutes in total length.

Becky argued that we should split the show into two separate episodes each week: a Tuesday episode containing all of the segments about what's happening in the Detroit arts and entertainment scene, and a Thursday episode featuring an in-depth interview.

I see pros and cons to this approach. On the plus side, it moves the in-depth interview into its own episode instead of pushing it to the end of episodes where it is less likely to be heard. Also, the in-depth interviews tend to be evergreen, while the information in the segments quickly becomes outdated; so if we ever want to charge a subscription fee for access to our back catalog, we're in a better position to do so with the evergreen content separated from the fleeting content.

On the downside, our podcast feed now contains what are essentially two different show formats. I have never liked when other podcasts do this. For example, the podcast feed for the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher often includes full-length episodes and shorter bonus material in the same feed, which annoys me as a listener because I never know what I will get. Moreover, it put increased pressure on us when booking our in-studio guests. Because the interview episodes now stand alone, the guest (or their organization) has to have enough name recognition on their own to drive clicks.

After a few months of splitting the episodes, we did see an increase in downloads. However, this was probably due to the fact that there are now twice as many episodes for our subscribers to automatically download. Overall, I'd say the jury is still out.

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

More Glimpses Behind the Scenes:

1. Promoting Your Podcast by Tapping into a Pre-Existing Audience
2. Can Segments Make Podcasts Smart Speaker Friendly?
3. Covering Timely Events with an On-Demand Medium
4. Striking a Balance Between Informational and Conversational
5. The Art of Adding a Third Co-Host to Your Podcast