I realise I’m terribly late to this whole podcast party, and that everyone else has been into it for ages and all that, but never mind. I have gathered some thoughts together about them. Here they are.

• The optimal length for a podcast is 26 minutes. This is the time it takes me from putting my iPod in my pocket in the morning, getting my bike out of the garage, cycling to work, getting the lift up to the third floor and putting my bike in the corner. Much longer than this and I end up awkwardly standing around by my bike, waiting for the podcast to end, and any shorter and I end up standing by the side of the road fumbling around trying to get my iPod out of my pocket so I can play something else instead. This increases the amount of time it takes me to get to work and disrupts my whole day. This is non-ideal.
• The optimal length for a podcast is likely to increase to about 32 minutes soon, if I move to where we are thinking of living. The podcast making people should try and take this into account.
• American Public Radio is fantastic. Especially the music programmes, which are a bit like if Radio 4 were allowed to make music programmes, except less snooty and British. The presenters actually seem to enjoy listening to music, rather than being all loud and brash and sceney and playing stuff just because it’s on a playlist. They are also remarkably unprejudiced about what gets played, so it’s not unlikely that you’ll hear some hip-hop up against some indie and some country. It’s a broadening experience.
• New Scientist need to bring their podcast back. Like, seriously. Please.
• The Channel 4 music podcasts are somewhat variable in quality, and not always entirely suited to running to, as they frequently feature long periods of slowcore ambient droning, intercut with thirty second tracks of extreme grindcore noise metal.
• Anyone who’s not a professional broadcaster probably shouldn’t be trying to make podcasts. There are people who’ve been doing this thing professionally for a long time, and they’re almost certainly going to be better, and more interesting, than you. OK?
• The BBC really need to make more things available as podcasts. Mark Kermode’s film reviews are great, as is The Now Show, but there’s not much at the moment. More, please.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.