Steven Goldstein gets to the point: “Podcast intros are way too long, and audiences are increasingly frustrated.” The Amplifi Media CEO argues that delaying an episode’s actual content for three or four minutes is increasingly risky. Would any reasonable person sit that long through a YouTube intro?
Goldstein has spent years in audio brand development, working directly with radio stations and podcast hosts. Listeners are more ruthless now than ever, he says. “The first :60 seconds (really the first :30 seconds) need to hook and engage the audience and set the table by laying out the benefit for listening to the episode.”
Pre-roll ads, theme music, and rambling banter will always be up against listeners’ skip and delete buttons. Goldstein points out that on “Wheel of Fortune,” Pat and Vanna made sure the game was rolling within 45 seconds of air time. “Cut the bloat. Your audience will thank you, or at least they might not leave.”
“Some of my friends have no idea I even exist,” writes Rachel Aroesti of The Guardian. Well over a year into the pandemic, listeners’ feelings about their favorite podcast hosts are more disorienting than ever. Parasocial relationships — summed up in Aroesti’s first statement — aren’t so strange to admit these days.
A 32-year-old fan tells Aroesti that isolation further blurred the lines between one- and two-way interactions. “A story you’ve heard [from a friend] and a story you’ve heard via a podcast are coming in via the same medium, which is a disembodied voice on your phone. In a lot of ways, one isn’t any more real than the other.”
As a podcaster, John Robins actively considers this angle behind the mic. He’s passing on the joy of listening to his own beloved BBC radio comedians. He and co-host Elis James, “terrestrial radio's most unproduceable presenters,” aren’t putting on an act. Their bond is real, and so is the listener’s familiarity with it.
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