Ben Green - Podcast Master

For Noah and Louie. Sorry this Book With No Pictures isnt as fun as the one youre used to.

A few words of thanks:

To my wife Emma for allowing me the time to write and think and to start doing kickboxing at the same time while there were two whirlwinds of energy and emotion to look after.

To my sister Deb for proofreading, and to Olly Mann, Henry Barnes and Adam Martin for their feedback on initial drafts.

To mum and dad without whom, nothing and my brother Ant too. All three will have no doubt read all the way to the end, including the footnotes, even though there is almost nothing in here that will have made any sense.

To Michael Bhaskar and Simon Collinson at Canelo for inviting me to write this book in the first place and for being judicious and helpful editors to this first-time author.

To James Richardson, Rafa Honigstein, Iain Macintosh, James Horncastle, Philippe Auclair, Amy Lawrence, Jacob Steinberg, Paul MacInnes, John Ashdown, Barry Glendenning and the rest of the Football Weekly pod squad for being mostly a joy to work with. To all of our listeners, too, because there would be no point doing the show if you werent there to hear it.

To Sandy Warr and Henry Kelly the first presenters I worked with professionally for all their patience, guidance and advice.

And finally, thanks to all the producers of great speech-based audio. Long may radio and podcasting continue to flourish and be the most intimate, intense, and intelligent medium.

First published in United Kingdom in 2015 by Canelo

Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom

Copyright Ben Green, 2015

The moral right of Ben Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781910859063

Look for more great books at www.canelo.co

podcast (noun): a digital audio file made available on the internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player, typically available as a series, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically. Origin: early 21st century, from iPod + broadcast.

Youve probably noticed that podcasting is having something of moment right now. True, it had one around a decade ago too, but this this is something special. As a recent report from Edison Research concluded: .

Ever since the term was first used in 2004, podcasting has been looked upon as the future of audio. The initial boom, however, fizzled out as the technology was overtaken by more exciting digital innovations: Facebook and Twitter; YouTube, Spotify and Netflix; the iPhone, tablet computers and the rest.

It wasnt until the autumn of 2014 and Serial an American podcast series that reinvestigated a 1999 murder case in Baltimore that podcasting was catapulted to the forefront of the cultural conversation. Yes, the technology remains much the same as a decade ago but the ubiquity of mobile and Wi-Fi, and the audacity and quality of the programming, means that podcasting as a medium in itself is now being taken very seriously indeed.

Some numbers. There are more than 250,000 unique podcasts in more than 100 languages on the iTunes Store.

You get the picture.

These loyal and engaged audiences are considerably younger than traditional radio audiences some of them may not even own a radio and are also, in the main,

This is an overnight success story ten years in the making. But it doesnt matter whether youve been listening to podcasts since the beginning, or youve just encountered them after being swept along in the post- Serial wave this book will have something for the casual listener, the curious audio consumer and the podcast fanatic.

Ill tell you about the history of podcasting and how we got from the ramblings of Ricky Gervais and his two best friends to the President of the United States sitting down in a Los Angeles garage to record an hour-long conversation with a comedian. Whether youre a budding broadcaster, professional producer or accomplished presenter; an established media company; or a brand looking to advertise or create your own content Ill share production tips and advice on presentation. Ill help you choose the right software and the best hardware for your budget, ensure you get onto the right podcasting platform and even share some insider knowledge about how best to reach and build your audience. And apart from anything else, Ill guide you towards the best podcasts around because that, in the end, is what this is all about.

Here begins your journey into the podosphere.

Some of my closest relationships are with people I have never met.

Im in my mid-30s, married, with two young boys and a cat who is far too fussy about when shes in the mood to be stroked. Going out is generally something I used to do. But away from my family when I put in my earbud headphones my headspace is filled with hours and hours of speech: intimate conversation, idle chatter, inspiring life stories, or just plain old nonsense.

Podcasts.

Marc Maron from WTF. Wittertainment s Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode. John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman from The Bugle. Radiolab s Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann from Answer Me This!. Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow from StartUp. but I always look forward to hearing from them. In many instances, our relationship goes back years. Ive known them longer than my own children.

Theres something incredibly compelling about podcasts, and I listen to a lot of them.

I walk to and from work its about an hour each way and thats my prime podcasting time. I also have one earphone in when I go to bed, a holdover from childhood, when I had audiobooks accompanying me to sleep. Add to this a dose of radio in the form of BBC Radio 4, BBC 5 live or Absolute 80s in the morning and a fair amount of TalkSport in the evening strictly for professional reasons and all told, I spend around four hours of every day engaged with audio.

My audio diet is eclectic, to say the least. This week Ive listened to the deconstruction of a landmark interview with Barack Obama ( ), a film review round-up ( Kermode and Mayos Film Review ), a documentary about a giant squid ( Natural Histories ), an hour-long conversation with the worlds strongest man ( Talk is Jericho165: Mark Henry ), and several episodes from a series following the journey of two women as they try to build up their online dating site (the second season of StartUp ).