Podcasters Ditch Short Episodes in Favor of Four-Hour Conversations (bloomberg.com) 48
In a newsletter for Bloomberg, Ashley Carman discusses the rising trend of long podcasts and their surprising popularity among listeners. "By today's standards of interminable podcast discussions, a nearly three-hour recording isn't even particularly notable," she writes, highlighting recent episodes from Joe Rogan (2 hours; 16 minutes with Adam Sandler), Lex Fridman (8 hours; 37 minutes with Elon Musk), and the Acquired podcast (3 hours; 38 minutes with Lockheed Martin). "Increasingly, podcasters are pushing the outer limits of episode length while stress testing the endurance of their audiences. Popular podcast gabfests can now run on for half a workday or longer." From the report: One might assume such marathon episodes must be the result of a hands-off approach to editing. But this is not the case, said Ben Gilbert, co-host of the Acquired podcast. Every month, he and his co-host David Rosenthal release a three- to four-hour podcast, detailing the story of a specific company. The in-depth histories, he said, are the result of nine-hour recording sessions and a month of research.
"It's not important to ship every good minute," Gilbert said. "It's important to ship only great minutes. If you're actually intellectually honest with yourself, that's how to release a really good product." Even with the longer runtimes, he said, their audience listens to the vast majority of each episode. Consider their deep dive on Lockheed Martin, which runs for three hours and 38 minutes. On Apple Podcasts, the average listener consumed 70% of the show, he said. An episode on Nike, which clocks in at upwards of four hours, had an average consumption rate of 68%. "Every time we made something longer... people only seemed to love it more," he said. On the show's website, the hosts describe the episodes as "conversational audiobooks." [...]
[Jack Sylvester, executive director at Flight Studio, the Bartlett-founded podcast company behind Diary of a CEO] said the team can view data around how much of the audience consumes episodes on YouTube's TV app versus on a phone, tablet or computer. TV usage, he said, is ticking up. To give viewers a reason to keep the show on as their primary viewing experience, they're now making sure the videos have a top-quality polish. Still, in a world in which people scoff at the prospect of a three-hour movie -- and short-form video is the dominant consumption trend in entertainment -- these podcasters are eagerly meandering in the opposite direction. "The short-form obsession ended up creating white space for us," said Gilbert of Acquired. "Whenever you have a trend, that means there's people who feel left behind and want to flock to something new. This sets us apart."
"It's not important to ship every good minute," Gilbert said. "It's important to ship only great minutes. If you're actually intellectually honest with yourself, that's how to release a really good product." Even with the longer runtimes, he said, their audience listens to the vast majority of each episode. Consider their deep dive on Lockheed Martin, which runs for three hours and 38 minutes. On Apple Podcasts, the average listener consumed 70% of the show, he said. An episode on Nike, which clocks in at upwards of four hours, had an average consumption rate of 68%. "Every time we made something longer... people only seemed to love it more," he said. On the show's website, the hosts describe the episodes as "conversational audiobooks." [...]
[Jack Sylvester, executive director at Flight Studio, the Bartlett-founded podcast company behind Diary of a CEO] said the team can view data around how much of the audience consumes episodes on YouTube's TV app versus on a phone, tablet or computer. TV usage, he said, is ticking up. To give viewers a reason to keep the show on as their primary viewing experience, they're now making sure the videos have a top-quality polish. Still, in a world in which people scoff at the prospect of a three-hour movie -- and short-form video is the dominant consumption trend in entertainment -- these podcasters are eagerly meandering in the opposite direction. "The short-form obsession ended up creating white space for us," said Gilbert of Acquired. "Whenever you have a trend, that means there's people who feel left behind and want to flock to something new. This sets us apart."
Short format eating its own (Score:2)
-Early 1960s - Hard news in print, television and radio
-Late 1960s - Less hard news, more personal interest vignettes pumped into news articles to grow readership
-1980s - Hard news declining, more personal interest, gossip, health and lifestyle news. Appealing to audiences who do not want hard news.
- 2000s - Print / TV news declining to clickbait for internet clicks
- 2010s - Tabloid news and non-tabloid print/TV news become almost the same. Much space dedicated to filler news just recycled 2 fact, 1 quote
End result of treating readers like 4 year olds? (Score:2)
Decades of dumbing down news and treating readers / TV viewers as 4 year old children.....
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Some parents give their children video players way younger than 4...
Re: Short format eating its own (Score:2)
There's more high-quality long-form journalism around than any one employed person can read. Unless, of course, you exclude sources allegedly exuding left-wing bias. The New Yorker, Harper's, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Texas Monthly, Mother Jones, the Nation...
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I would think because people believe nobody really has time for that. You can indeed just run a long podcast as background or listen to only a part. And the typical streamer also does multi-hour sessions, so I do not really understand the surprise either.
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In a world awash with short form content, from YouTube to TikTok, why is it a surprise that something longer form would take off as seeming to be kind of fresh and new?
Especially when it's something you can listen to while doing other things... audiobooks are doing really well for a similar reason.
I wondered something similar. I thought that maybe people have a need to compensate for the short-and-largely-empty bits of programming that seem to dominate the Web now by indulging in some long-form content. It's like a craving to exercise your attention span. OTOH, I also thought something along the lines of gweihir's reply to you, that people use long programs as background.
Maybe it's both, simultaneously? Maybe they use the long content as background because the length makes it less information-dense.
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Sounds to me like some dude trying to define a "new" and "better" trend again. It happens all the time and it works sometimes because people follow whatever the new trend is just to feel more "in".
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The art of editing is about looking through the whole raw content and cutting out repetitions, meandering subtopics that only confuse listeners, and keeping the main story/argument clean and memorable. When this is done badly (or not at all), you either get a too short video that makes absolutely no sense, or a too long video that doesn't hang together and makes no sense. For example, see also Zac Snyder's Rebel
Re: Not surprising at all (Score:1)
It isnâ(TM)t just because of that type of short form content. For nearly a century news has been edited for us by really a handful of government-aligned corporations, in the US there were the big three and their offspring, in the EU it is actually government run media.
People know there is more to any issue than the crap that gets shoveled by influence operations and politically oriented media, you want to know whether to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or that unknown guy running for senator, wh
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Sure, short form may be too short, but who's got time for 4 to 8 hours of talking in a row? The listener WILL split it up. Is it so hard to have a part1, part2, part3? Now if you listen in the car, what happens if you forget where you were and the car forgets (some device got reset or such)? It takes me 10 minutes just to "fast" forward an hour long podcost to get back to where I was (mostly when I accidentally hit the rewind-to-start because the car hit a tiny pebble while using the steering wheel cont
Dang (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dang (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, it depends. If it is entertainment, video is fine. But if I want information, give me text every time.
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Damn yes! Isn't boring and a nuisance when all you can resort to for documentation are videos and screenshots? Heck, I still use Alpine (pine) to read 99% of my emails, only forwarding it to roundcube (bounce in alpine) if I need to see silly images.
Re:Dang (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't forget those return to office mandates, plenty out there with headphones on all day.
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Podcasts are basically for people who are in the car a lot (or even regularly in 15 minute increments). That's where they really shine.
Or running, or doing chores with your hands. There's a lot of cases where they work well.
The ones I don't get are the video podcasts because you can't really do much else while that's going on. The only advantage I see is if you want to share a short clip the video is the better medium, so that might be the reason they share.
Otherwise, I don't think the length is a problem as long as it fits the episode. It's not like radio where you might have to start and finish in one go. A longer podcast gets digested i
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Sure you can, I sometimes watch video podcasts while doing household chores. I might have to look away briefly to make sure that for example, a dish is actually clean, but most things don't actually require looking at it much. I can't do it while vacuuming, but most other chores work (and I can't listen to an audio podcast while vacuuming either, because I can't hear it over the vacuum...). I also watch
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Sure you can, I sometimes watch video podcasts while doing household chores. I might have to look away briefly to make sure that for example, a dish is actually clean, but most things don't actually require looking at it much. I can't do it while vacuuming, but most other chores work (and I can't listen to an audio podcast while vacuuming either, because I can't hear it over the vacuum...). I also watch while knitting and crocheting (has to be audio while sewing though), and I use to watch while walking on a treadmill (but I tend to walk outside now).
Ok, though for something like that I think I'd just watch a show or something. Though I guess a podcast is a lot less visually demanding so you can afford to look away/be distracted more often.
Found time (Score:2)
That's not for me ... I'll spend extra time searching for what I want to take in, as text ... can't stand that everything has to be videos or podcasts.
The issue is "found time", such as time commuting to work. If you can make productive use of that time you can get ahead more easily, and maybe not mind the commute as much.
Brian Tracey points out it takes 8 to 12 hours to listen to an audio book, and if you can do 30 minutes each way to/from work (a 40 minute commute, say) that's 1 book every 2 weeks, or 25 books in a year. If you happen to listen to books relevant to your job, or your home situation (how to raise your kids, how to keep your marriage stabl
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Each to their own. The great benefit of podcasts is the ability to multitask. Not everyone can do it, but there are plenty of people who can "take information in" while gardening, cooking, driving, etc.
That said, multi-hour podcasts... fuck that noise. I come for small targeted information on specific subjects. If your content isn't described in the headline and you can't get the point across in under 30 minutes I won't be listening.
Re: Dang (Score:2)
The issue for me isn't really multitasking, but mind wandering. Any sufficiently interesting topic will trigger my mind to go on a tangent of thinking about something orthogonally related to the subject.
When reading, this manifests as getting half down a page and realizing I haven't been ingesting the content properly, so I back up and re-read.
With audio, backing up is a nightmare. Most platforms use this interaction as a trigger for ads. And no platform I've found has a decent rewind. So, often I just don'
Not a fan (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, I liked the shorter, 30 minute ‘radio program style’ model, as that limitation tended to force the hosts/guests to stay on topic and be articulate and concise. If you are allowed to ramble on for hours, you *will* ramble for hours, and I think, often, that is to the detriment of the listeners.
Obviously I’m in a minority opinion group with this, as the long format podcast has sadly reined supreme, but I think we lost something by going this route.
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Exactly. Quality > Quantity.
One of the YouTubers I subscribe slowly bloated their reviews from 20 minutes to 3 or even 4 hours where they just let their special "guest" hosts people ramble on for hours on end. I don't have time to listen to 4 hours; I want the "Coles" Notes version.
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Bloat is bad in shorter videos too. I've seen videos where 30 seconds of content got stretched to 10 minutes.
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Yeah, sadly most of YT has turned into that. :-/
Re: Not a fan (Score:3)
Hey guys, please like and subscribe! I'm going to explain to you now how to like and subscribe because I'm going to treat you like an alien using YouTube for the first time. Also, be sure to check out my Patreon, because the algorithm keeps demonetizing me due to me being a dangerous subversive trying to bring you the truth. And be sure to check out my side projects linked below.
Without further ado, I will begin showing you other people's videos while my head is shrunk in the corner. ... ...
Now that's over,
Yeah but (Score:2)
With Lex you gotta hit 2x
tl;dl (Score:2)
too long; didn't listen
If it runs beyond 45-60 min, forget it. The information density is too low. I have a finite amount of time in which I want to listen to multiple podcasts. I won't dedicate ALL my listening time to only one.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (Score:2)
Dan Carlin has been doing long-format history podcasts for years. And they are very good. I listen to them maybe an hour at a time.
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It doesn't scale. (Score:2)
Interesting trend - I can't imagine paying close attention to a multi hour podcast on a regular basis - there's just not enough time.
Also I mainly listen while driving or doing chores. These time slots are usually less than one hour. I also do not have a podcast player
that supports resume consistently, so I can pause and resume more than one audio file. (Maybe there's a better player on iOS that does this)
Long podcasts may work as background noise, though, where you sometimes pay attention. It's probably a
Time shifting (Score:3)
I don't blink when a three or four hour pod comes through my feed. I listen to about 200 podcasts. My average listening speed is 2.5x. So that turns a 4 hour podcast into a 1.6 hour podcast. Very doable. Then if I decide I've had enough of an episode for now but still want to listen to the rest I can simply start another pod episode. And here is the thing that is different from other media: I can go right back to where I paused without having to hunt for it. My queue isn't bloated with platform recommendations. I don't have to type in anything to find the paused episode. It's just sitting there in my queue waiting for me. When I do hit play it won't make me listen to an ad before it restarts.
But other than Dan Carlin or Dan Cummings I don't see a lot of pods going past the two hour mark. And they totally make it worth it because they are covering one topic in depth. Most pods break things up into different aspects of a topic for digestability, I'm thinking of Planet Money making a T-shirt). But Dan is a captivating story teller. And Dan is fractalizing the current story and the background of how we got here. So it makes sense that it's all in one package.
Spare a thought for the poor podcasters (Score:1)
I can't imagine many things worse than sitting and chatting with Elon Musk for 8 hours and 37 minutes. I can imagine a few things sure, but this is really up there.
Religious programmes (Score:2)
It's more nuanced (Score:3)
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Re: It's more nuanced (Score:2)
Interviews with intellectuals and journalists promoting their books are the best place to find good books, in my experience. This is how I was introduced to people like Michael Lewis, John McWhorter, Pekka Hanalainen, Francesca Stavrakapoulou, and many others.
Not for me! (Score:2)
I have dropped several podcasts that consistently got too long."
How long is too long? I prefer no longer than 30 minutes but am unlikely to choose much longer than 15. I listen to podcasts for fun and don't need them as long as a badly run business meeting!
Of the next items in my queue, one is 1 hour and 15 minutes and the next longest is 28 minutes
Multi-hour podcasts? No thanks!
More ASMR (Score:2)
Most of these "podcasts" are way too long (Score:2)
Podcasts are a long form content but anything more than say 80 minutes is just way too long. Especially for these 5-7 day a week shows. I deally should be able to burn a podcast to a CD and then tune in next week.
Podcasts are part of my media diet they don't need to be my entire diet. If your podcast is 2+ hours long and done 5 days a week when I do I have time to listen to other shows. I just don't see the appeal. I remember when getting a 2 hour pod cast was a special episode in my feed but having that
Nope. Just, nope. (Score:2)
Sports podcasts were anyway long (Score:1)
Catering to podcast addicts (Score:2)
The only people who have time for this kind of thing, are the grown-up kids living in their parents' basements. My own son has gotten into some of these long-form podcasts when he was in the throes of depression. It required medical intervention to pull him away.
Sure, I can understand a one-time thing, or once in a while. But when it's every day, that's not healthy.