#anthromedia

Hemlo, Tumblees

About 10 minutes in I must have zoned out because the podcast ended and I don't remember a damned thing anyone said except the very beginning.

"But Long Podcasts Must Be Great Right?"

The thing about long podcasts like this, is that it's extremely easy to make. You might think finding things to ramble on about for 2 hours might actually be difficult, but you'd be dead wrong so long as it's not just you. Typically any additional members of a recording are there because you all share a similar interest in discussing whatever topic the shows about. And naturally when that happens, the natural course of discussion is going to extend greatly. Now think about more than 2 people, even a typical group of 3 or 4.  A 2h podcast is insanely easy to create.  It takes massive precision and coordination to pull off a short podcast involving more than one person talking. A long podcast is typically supposed to be reserved for the informative category, like a lecture, or round table discussion about an important topic.  When it devolves into just a bunch of dudes talking over each other, it becomes not so much entertaining or informative as it is you are just eavesdropping into someone elses conversation. And while that may appeal to some audible voyeurism, it doesn't exactly make ti worth listening to.

Sidescrollers, the perfect format for a gaming podcast?

This is what I always appreciated about Sidescrollers by ScrewAttack.com back when their podcast was still exclusively audio. The casts very rarely extended 45 minutes, and they always tried to shoot for an average of 35 minutes. And they did.  In the beginning it was Craig and Tom, talking about random games in "Segments" which was a new concept for Podcasts at the time, and were introduced because of Craigs background in Radio Broadcasting. Each segment never lasted too long, each one had it's own intro narrated by Misanthropic Wes, with the longest segment "Hard News" clocking in an average of 15-20 minutes per weekly episode.

These guys had an almost unbeatable formula, and the chemistry between the two was just magical. Every episode, no one talked fast, but no one lingered either. When anyone was taking too long, the other would always do their best to move the conversation along to the next point. Hell im sure Sidescrollers was one of the first to have "The Buzzer" which was a sound effect either one of the hosts would play along with the phrase "NEXT TOPIC!". Each episode was like a speed round. No one cared if they were 100% accurate, no one ever dawdled, and no one ever rambled on. It was never an interview format (which is what most podcasts formats end up becoming like, interviewing eachother) these two acted as if they only had a few minutes to work with before the next song came up in a radio station.

Now, even though Tom parted ways and more staff joined the round table of Sidescrollers, the format rarely ever changed, and most importantly the running time was barely effected. Everyone knew the deal, you had to be quick on your feet and just play along if anything doesn't go your way. Simply incredible.

The cast members have rotated quite a bit but the big issue with Sidescrollers now, is that they completely changed it to a Video Podcast, which doesn't necessarily work very well for tuning in while commuting to work or school. This is something you now have to watch and pay attention to, when all it is is just 4-6 dudes at a long table and laptops in front of them.. talking. Lots of fun right? This is the worst possible direction it could have taken, and I just never bothered further when that happened.

The GiantBombcast and Smodcast are long podcasts and they work

For sure, the thing about these shows is that they have one thing in common most podcasts dont: Long term chemistry.

I really don't think Smodcast would have taken off as well as it did if it was made and distributed around the time of the original Clerks. Sure it got it's start because of the star power that is Kevin Smith, but his co-host here is Scott Mossier, a long time collaborator who has been apart of his life since College. These two have been through lifes challenges together in a fascinating career. Naturally they're friends, and both have the gift of gab and know how to bounce off eachother and make eachother laugh.

Giant Bombcast is very much the same way. It is the "Smodcast of Gaming" I've called it. Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis started "Arrow Pointing Down Podcast" which eventually became Giant Bombcast when they eventually founded the GiantBomb offices. These two had previously worked together for a number of years at their previous employer Gamespot (no slouch in the game journalism industry). These two knew how to entertain each other regarding the topics of Life and Games.  When bringing in more staff as the company grew, people like Brad Shoemaker, and Alex Navarro, all of these guys came from the same source and chops. They've known each-other for years.  They have, and know they have, great chatting chemistry with each other.

These podcast absolutely can last and hour or two, because the topics always end up resulting in something entertaining to the group, and thus something potentially entertaining for the listener. Even if it is just to "laugh along".

If your going to make long podcast, you have to retain attention. The onyl way to retain attention is to keep it interesting. "Interesting" can be defined differently for each person, and has and always will, but most can agree something can retain being interesting, if there's entertainment involved if it's not being super informative about an important topic. You have to be charismatic, you have to be charming in your own way, you just simply have to have chemistry with your co-hosts.

But Kyle, we're you not responsible for making podcasts that last 2 or 3 hours and was just a bunch of doods talking about games?

Yes. I am absolutely guilty of this, and absolutely guilty of dragging my co-hosts/friends through that process every two weeks. I went into podcasting to do a show inspired by how Sidescrollers did things. And our cast of colorful character grew to.. 6 I think was the peak number at one point. Everyone got along, but we had one major challenge: Skype.

It's not easing bouncing off each other in a big group if you're doing things exclusively over Skype. It just doesn't work out that well. And this was entirely my problem: but as the guy supposedly trying to be the "main host" running the show, it was actually quite rare that I did anything outside of the podcast with my crew after the first couple of episodes. So naturally, Chemistry started dwindling. I was getting all of my new information about each person im hosting with, at the time of recording. I should actually have pre-known all of this before going on air.  Again, that was my problem pretty much exclusively.  And eventually down the line, I miss a recording due to something happening, which breaks flow, and a couple revives later and the project just officially, quietly, passes away.  It's a shitty thing to happen, especially considering that some of the people who actually follow me around the internet know me almost exclusively because of my podcasts. But I had some growing up to do.

One of the other problems was a switch in focus. Originally the podcasts we're extremely over produced. I created special intros for every episode, mixed my own music cues, created my own segment stingers, and even got some of the cast together to perform special little radio plays. I was even well on my way, learning to use SAM broadcasted, and setting up a shoutcast server in order to perform the podcasts live, for real time listeners. Yes this was before the popularity of Twitch and uStream took off, and for sure there was no such thing as Google Hangouts and Skype Video was just way out of the question.  It's amazing to me that there rarely existed an Audio Streaming service that allowed multiple people to connect and talk at the same time, and not involve a video stream.  Eventually, it got difficult finding time during the week to scrape my favorite news sources to find interesting topics, and my cast mates would be as equally excited at that process as well, and by the time it came to record, very rarely did anybody have anything to talk about.  So we all had a group pow-wow at one point, and eventually agreed that we should just hit the record button, and just.. talk. Taking inspiration from Smodcast and such. Extremely minimal (if any) editing, and just record and publish.This sounded very enticing to me, because it meant far less work on my part, which meant getting burnt out less and less. A shift in focus to a very relaxed format was originally a good idea. But I was never convinced the chemistry between us all was truly there to run a format like that.

Like I said, I had some growing up to do, and this was all apart of learning how to run an audio show for the internet.

Am i doing anymore podcasts in the future?

The easy answer, is "yes". The difficult answer is "Yes, but I'm not sure when, who with, and with what method". I really REALLY honestly believe the better format is local recording. Where everyone involved outside of special guests exist in the same physical space recording on the same equipment. I believe the equipment should be prosumer and not radio shack to ellicit the best audio quality possible for the listeners ears. I also beleive that each member of the table should be prepared to tell each other to move on and not linger. And i beleive in audience interaction.

So what im getting at is: I would like to find someplace to run a little studio again. Whether it's at my house or someone elses, or if it's just some rented audio booth for a couple hours.  And ultimately, I need to find some people I can run interesting content with.  until that point the most ill probably do is a self-podcast again. Some might remember (though I wouldnt blame even my hardcore listeners for not remembering) "Coyotecast" where it was just me, by myself, spilling my mind about whatever happened to be on it that day. I would occasionally invite some of my roommates or friends to join me and we'd just shoot the shit, and I honestly think it was some of the best content I ever made (audio wise), despite how very little attention it received.  That was fun, it was still relaxing, but times have as well changed. I'm a family man now, living in a two bedroom 1000sqft apartment in the city. It's nice but there's no such thing as a sound-proof area of the apartment. Either my voice would wake my napping or sleeping daughter, or her voice would interrupt the audio stream, and theres really nothing I can blame for that except for the environment.

So who knows, I want my voice on the internet again, but I'm just at a cross-roads of how to proceed with it.

Ah well.