Listening to every Podcast

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There was a time when it was much easier to listen to every episode of a podcast for two reasons. The first of these is that they were new so it wouldn’t take too long to burn through one hundred episodes. The second reason is that podcasts were half an hour long so you could listen to two or three during a one or one and a half hour walk.

Long and Bad Ads

Today podcasts tend to be "live" and unedited so they’re one and a half hours long. You go from being to listen to three per day to one per day, and even then they might be too long. They also have hours and hours of chatter rather than relevant content. The result is that you’re wasting your time to people socialise, and self-promote and advertise. You might think "but the podcast needs to be self-sustaining", and I agree. What I don’t agree with is that I have to listen to minutes of the same thing every single episode.

I loved dozens, or even hundreds of podcasts over the years. I always enjoy the early years, when they’re new to podcasting. The shows are short, without ads, and relevant. Other time they get bloated and I get fatigue.

When I like a podcast I will listen to the same show every day for weeks or months in a row. The short bit at the front that is five minutes, when you listen to seven or more episodes becomes too much. I could skip, but if I am driving, or walking alone, I don’t want to be looking at my phone. I want to be walking full stride, and enjoy what I hear.

Recently I listened to every single episode of the Late Night Linux Family podcasts, without getting bored or frustrated. I see three reasons. The first is that the shows are usually half an hour. The second reason is that the ads don’t bother me at all on this show. The third and key reason, I believe, is that it’s an English/British podcast family of shows so we might have the same values when it comes to podcast content.

Affordable

I think that being happy to listen to one set of podcasts, rather than dozens is good, because it means that I could envision contributing 10 USD per month for that set of podcasts. Often the reason for not paying for podcasts is that we listen to a dozen different podcasts so a dozen times 10 USD per month becomes 120 dollars per year, and over a thousand per year.

I’d rather pay for the LNL family podcasts than YouTube, because I listen to all the content. It doesn’t mean I will, but now that I am up to date it would be easy to switch to that RSS feed, without worrying about synching the backlog as there is none, in theory.

And Finally

Podcasts need to be short, and to the point. Their adverts should be in the middle of the show rather than the start. Let me listen to what I chose to listen to, rather than ads for other programs. Often I start listening to BBC podcasts and stop within a few seconds due to their promotion of other programs. We will see when I find another podcast series that I listen to in full.