Podcasters love regular listeners. And regular listeners love their podcasts. Dependability on both sides has been a driving and differentiating factor for podcasting. But is that still a good thing?
When the book I'm reading ends, I go get another book. With millions of choices for me to read, there's never a time when I can't find anything to read.
When the series I'm watching ends, I go get another TV series. With hundreds or maybe even thousands of shows I can watch, there's never a time when I can't find anything I want to watch.
When I'm in the mood for a new movie, I'm spoiled for choice, and there's never a time when I can't find a new movie to watch.
There's a lot of content at our fingertips. More content than any one person can hope to consume. People start and finish dozens or hundreds of books, tv shows, and movies every year.
But a lot fewer podcasts. Not podcast episodes, which easily get to the hundreds. But discrete, podcast titles or shows. Why is that? I have a hypothesis.
Edison Research's Infinte Dial report tells us that you can count the number of "shows" the average listener is actively consuming on one hand. And the most common type of podcast is the episodic, ongoing show. The type of show that doesn't give a chance to say "Well, that's over, so I guess I gotta go find something new to listen to."
Episodic podcasts don't have the terminal nature of books, television series, or movies. They don't have a finite end-point. They don't have a natural conclusion. There's no "the end" experience with forces listeners to hunt for something else to fill their time. Not with most episodic podcasts. They. Just. Keep. Going. For months on end. For years.
Podcasting is different from other media forms. They've adapted to provide their consumers a "get this and then get this when you're done" content fountain.
But much of podcasting is still built around the "get this and then never leave mode".
But I wonder for how long? Perhaps we'll learn more about that when the 2022 Infinite Dial by Edison Research comes out next week.
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Links
- Edison Research's Infinite Dial reports
- Over 100K active podcasters trust Buzzsprout
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. New episodes are released four times a week, providing ideas and questions every serious podcaster should be thinking about.
It's created and hosted by Evo Terra. Follow him on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come. Allie Press assists with the production and transcription of the show.
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