It occurs to me upon listening to a number of podcasts (I subscribe to around 100 podcasts) that many podcasters dabble with failure but never really fully embrace it. It seems like even the worst podcast has something that someone somewhere would value. But what, I wondered, if we combined the worst part of the worst podcasts. What would such a podcast sound like? Why would anyone even think like this? That I cannot answer but I can picture some practical applications if one really could devise the Titanic of podcasting (although even the Titanic had survivors). Say you wanted to quick podcasting and you did not want to ever have anyone ask you to return to it. This is the podcast that you would put out as your last episode that would cause the thought of you podfading to cause people to send you flowers and chocolates. So without further excuses, here is the recipe, in my opinion, for the world’s worst podcast.

Key Goals

• Practical - Don’t be
• Entertaining - Forget it
• Content - Avoid it

Sound Quality

Sure you could use a bad microphone, a noisy conference call service and the tried and true method of mumbling, but we these may just produce emails about your how your sound quality stinks. I used to record interviews on the same track as my guest and channel Dark Vader as I did heavy breathing over my guest talking and my show still grew. So to really fail we need to push the envelope here.

• Uneven Sound Levels - One particularly practical suggestion is to have an interview show with the two channels at vastly different sound levels. I don’t mean that one of the guests is hard to hear, I mean that even the dogs in the neighborhood are not sure that sound is coming from their iPods. Then you want that speaker to have long and presumably interesting monologs so that the user is tempted to turn the volume up, way up, “this one’s got eleven” up. Then when you have lulled them into thinking that this is the appropriate volume setting slam them with the loudest talker. Some shows (think Today in Podcasting) have actually reached sound differentials that can cause your ears to bleed. This is our goal.
• Clipping - A bad microphone is unimaginative, You can achieve much more annoying sound by simply setting your sound levels high enough that every unexpected laugh, sneeze or bilabial fricative (and we are going to want to do a lot of this) will clip in painful eye crossing ways.
• Drop Out - Don’t just make the sound quality bad. Make it bad at the worst possible time. “The secret to a six figure income is mumble pop squeak pop mumble”. “Wow Bob that’s incredibly simple. Anyone could do that!”

Pre-roll Ad

Clearly if we want to cause people to unsubscribe in droves we need to start with a preroll ad. We need to start with a long pre-roll ad. Ideally this ad needs to be totally inappropriate and offensive to the audience. We are looking for something here that makes the PodShow “Suck Less” campaign (one minute long) to become a fond memory. Think about the audience for your show. Annoying is easy but we are looking for rage or disgust. Have a Rock and Roll show? Consider a fund raising ad for the “George W. Bush Presidential Library”. Have a serious business podcast? Sure you could go with a Viagra Ad but people have been desensitized to such fare. Find words the repel like “bowel”, “sphincter” and “welfare state”.

Schedule

Of course you could skip a show or two and then spend the first 5-10 minutes of the next show apologizing or explaining just why your life is so busy, but who hasn’t done that. Try releasing two shows within an hour and then talk about the first show a lot in the second show since many users have iTunes and have it set to only download the latest show… then skip 4 weeks.

Intro

Your intro is very important. You have the listeners attention. Now is the time you want to lose it. Don’t be in any particular hurry to finish the intro. I know a show that extended the intro of their show, the part that was pretty much the same from show to show, to fourteen minutes. Fourteen minutes before they got to any real content. Can you do fifteen minutes? Tell them your email address, your blog address, what software you use to run your podcast, what cereal you had for breakfast and why, throw in an ad for “Go to My PC”. Don’t be entertaining. If you can’t help being entertaining then try the same jokes week after week. Script this portion of the show and try and not say this with any sort of personality.

Show Length

If your show is too short then you are not adding enough pain. Do people listen to your show at 30 minutes? Double it. Are this still listening at an hour? Double it. Don’t add more content, just add more time. Say things. Say them over again. Repeat them a third time. Insult your listener’s intelligence. When you are absolutely positively sure that even their toddler riding in the back seat of the mini van must understand your point by now, then dumb it down and say it again. Then repeat it again next week. Assume every email compaining about your show length is a complaint that you are not explaining sufficiently and explain it again. Don’t put in chapters in an iTunes enhanced version. That would save people’s time. Don’t just waste people’s time, waste lots of it.

Humor

Humor should be avoided at all costs. If you find this impossible, only use inside jokes that you never explain, preferably that defy definition. Some people fail to be truly awful because they try and make the humor offensive. This is a trap you should avoid. Never assume that there is a joke too low to stoop for. Someone out there likes that kind of humor. Some try and make the humor in their show impenetrable. That is also a trap. Someone will understand your joke about Attaturk or Micronesia. So again your best bet here is avoid humor or just beat the same shtick again and again.

Edit

Never never edit your show. Distain it. Insist that podcasts are not the same as main stream media. Shuffle your notes, take a bathroom break, stutter, Editing a typical half hour interview and you could easily remove 5 minutes of useless content, don’t.

Show Ending

If you have done your job correctly it won’t matter how you end your show. You could give away a free car to the first person who sends you an email and still keep the car.

Popularity: 43% [?]

It seems over the last few years main stream media has increasingly taken the position that main stream media is “professional” and that bloggers and podcasters are “amateurs”. When did “amateur” become a dirty word? I am an amateur, after all I have a podcast that proudly proclaims myself the “Amateur Traveler“. But what’s so bad about being an amateur?

The word “amateur” does not mean a beginner or someone who is bad at doing something, or at least it did not originally mean this. An amateur was someone who did something for the “love of it”. A century ago it was the professional who was under a cloud of suspicion as someone with impure motives.

Lets take the example of Jim Thorpe, sometimes called the “greatest athlete of all times”:

At the tender age of 24, Thorpe sailed with the American Olympic team to Antwerp, Belgium for the 1912 Olympic Games. Remarkably, he trained aboard the ship on the journey across sea. He blew away the competition in both the pentathlon and the decathlon and set records that would stand for decades. King Gustav V presented Thorpe with his gold medals for both accomplishments. As stated in Bob Berontas’ “Jim Thorpe, Sac and Fox Athlete”: “Before Thorpe could walk away, the king grabbed his hand and uttered the senta3ence that was to follow for the rest of his life. ‘Sir,’ he declared, ‘you are the greatest athlete in the world,’ Thope, never a man to stand on ceremony, answered simple and honestly, ‘Thanks King.’”

Thorpe’s glorious Olympic wins were jeopardized in 1913 when it came out that he played two semi-professional seasons of baseball. The Olympics Committee had strict rules about Olympians receiving monetary compensation for participating in professional athletics. Thorpe, who stated he played for the love of the game and not the money, was put under the microscope. Ultimately, it was decided that his baseball experience adversely affected his amateur status in the track and field events. His name was removed from the record books and his gold medals were taken away.

When Scientific American used to run a column called the Amateur Scientist from (1958 to 1978) they were not trying to encourage stupid people to build proton accelerators in their basements (Accelerator, proton. how to construct, 1971 Aug, pg 106). They were instead harkening back to the days of the renaissance man (or woman). It used to be encouraged for people to dabble in science out of a genuine interest without regard to what they did for a living. And why not, the most influential theory of the 20th century was proposed by an amateur scientist who worked as a patent clerk.

Mark Spitz was an amateur athlete as were all Olympic athletes of his day. One could be an amateur and still be the best. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are professional athletes. Jose Conseco was a professional athlete so a professional may not show professionalism any more than an amateur needs to be amateurish.

It is not my intention to try and swing the pendulum back to the days of Jim Thorpe or the early days of the internet when any hint of commercialism was seen as wrong. Rather we should see that whether or not a person is paid for their endeavors is not the sole measure of the value of their work. Edward R. Murrow was a professional journalist, but so was William Randolph “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” Hearst. A professional journalist can make making money their sole goal or they can aim somewhat higher.

So let’s not, as if we could, strive for an internet void of commercial interests but instead evaluate work based on value and quality remembering that the Ark was built by an amateur, the Titanic was built by professionals.

Popularity: 61% [?]

A nice surprise with watching the live broadcast from GeekBrief tonight was seeing Cali wear a t-shirt design that I created.

By the way if you have not heard of GeekBrief and you are a fan of gadgets, gizmos, and web wonderfulness, then you owe it to yourself to check out this brief semi-weekly video podcast. Perky Cali and her off camera husband Neal put together a very professional, entertaining, informative show that is a must watch for all gadget geeks.

Popularity: 21% [?]

I got back last Sunday from the PNME conference in Ontario, Californa. This is the biggest conference of the year for podcasters and it is a wonderful combination of smoozing, presentations, hobnobbing, and networking with other people who are also obsessed with podcasting. Tim and Emile Bourquin (The Podcast Brothers) did another wonderful job on the conference.

Some of my thoughts…
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 18% [?]

For those of you who missed it. My Amateur Traveler podcast was nominated for a Podcast Award. Vote early, vote often (every day through August 11).

Popularity: 7% [?]