Back After The Break

I took a break from posting over Easter, but welcome back! It gives me pause to yet again bemoan an irritant when listening around… for which I can only apologise. To be fair, very seldom do I hear this on radio nowadays, but OFTEN on podcasts.

I’ve blogged before about how the audio medium, and podcasting is part of that just like radio, is a ONE TO ONE medium. You don’t have “listeners” you have a listener, singular. Talk to them as a single person, even when you know there are more than one “out there”, (oh and never say “out there”). “Thanks to my lovely listeners” is a moment for me to scream at you from this side of the broadcast chain. I know you can’t hear me, but it appears you don’t care much either.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to pick at that scab anymore in this post, but it appears it’s not healed well. I have already apologised, I’ll move on. The other real bugbear of mine is when podcast hosts announce into and out of the adbreak. One might assume that it’s because they are not really seasoned radio people, or commercial radio people perhaps, and so not used to the wisdom of the “back after the break” rule. ^{[It’s not an actual rule but when I rule the world it will be]}

For those unaware, let me explain. Listening is a continual stream and the intention is to keep people engaged, interested and (hopefully) staying right there. The last thing you really want to do is create a natural exit point for people to leave, tune out, stop the podcast, skip or I suppose sleep(?). If your podcast has an adbreak or two, that’s perfectly normal for those of us who have had some experience in commercial radio. We know that the approaching ads might not be the listener’s most exciting element of the broadcast (!) and can create an exit point all of their own. It’s for those reasons that you might not want to compound it even more by your language, inference and highlighting!

Some lines I’ve heard from podcasts before and after breaks along with what listeners really hear:

Commercial radio presenters, those with some experience, (and coincidentally with the better ratings), don’t refer to the break AT ALL. The break is a reason to leave. It’s a word we use when we go on a holiday from something (“I’m taking a break”), take lunch (a lunch break), or go to the loo in a meeting (comfort break). Why focus on, or even refer to, the negative?

INSTEAD– Talk about the positives, which I would hope is your content! Forward tease, or sell your content in advance, without mentioning that you are going anywhere at all. Rather than using the fact that a break is about to interrupt, look passed it and highlight something with genuine interest that you are going to do. [NB if you don’t have anything of genuine interest then end the podcast now!]. In radio we do this all the time and “book-end” the link with the station name or show name or something similar. Maybe use a form of words like that to neaten the segment end into the ads, which depending on your podcast ad provider might not even be there, so you might not even HAVE an ad, but you will still link to a break that’s non-existent and sound even more silly.

Imagine instead if podcasting producers and presenters used this more, just how much more engaging it might be…

“How might some of these simple changes impact our daily podcast listening experience, or even our recall of which podcasts we listen to? How could it improve the consumption of your content over time and make it more powerful? We’ll explore this in detail on the Dick Stone Blog Post Podcast” [CUT TO BREAK]

[BREAK END] “Let’s focus on the ways in which some simple, well-used, tried and tested techniques can really enhance the listening experience of your podcast for your listener. These techniques are not difficult at all, and are used in the world of radio often, where the interruptions from commercial adbreaks have been the lived experience for many decades.”

Even if there were no ads, it would flow ok and at no point did I ask you to leave, or suggest that it might be a good idea that you did. As an added commercial benefit it might even make your adbreaks more powerful, as you are not shouting LEAVE NOW to your listener, so they might hear more of them before they mentally, or physically tune away or skip. Focus on the content, the subject matter and the positives of your material, (you know, your reason to be there!), rather than the furniture of the podcast or the medium of delivery.

Radio people, commercial radio people more specifically, know this. They have been listening to (and shouting at) your podcast for a long time now.