streaming Why are podcasts engaging?

[sfoster]

Thousands of years of novels and a hundred years of movies, all culminate in understanding of STORY STRUCTURE to keep the audience engaged.

All this meticulous thought and drafting and rewriting to get the events to happen fast enough, gotta have something happen at page 10 instead of page 15, cause that would be too slow and people would get bored.

It's so important to keep that pacing up for the story structure.

And then on the flip side we have podcasts, where its typically 2-4 people talking and it keeps listeners/viewers engaged for hours upon hours.
There's weekly podcasts that people look forward to more than their weekly television shows.

Podcasts are simply the talent shooting the shit, being natural, talking to their friends, with absolutely no planning or focus on structure at all and it doesn't seem to matter.

There are some movies that are almost podcasts.. like a couple people in a room talking the whole time, but there is always such a focus on drama and ramping up the suspense in those types of films. They're not usually comedies, or feel-good parasocial experiences.

Thoughts on podcast vs story structure as a source of entertainment?
Will a podcast ever become so successful it releases an episode as a feature film in theatres?

 

[Nate North]

It's an interesting question. This kind of question is what I think about all the time in one way or another. I don't have the energy to dive into this one right this second, but I will say that I think neurology research suggests that internally, our brains grow in areas that get used a lot. In example, the average person dedicates a much larger portion of their brain to remembering faces. So this is a bit difficult to grasp and correlate, but thumbnails with faces get maybe 7x more traffic than an identically themed one with no face. Humanity as a whole is kind of hard wired to respond to images of faces, and scientists think that it's because our physical brains have prioritized the processing of faces to such a degree, out of practicality. I think normal conversation is probably something that our brains "lean" towards.

I think this is linked to the viability of reality television, the conversational nature of the podcasts, the disposability of the content, and maybe a few other things. It's a lot easier to listen to or engage in a casual conversation than it is to try and read even simple books like Dickens work. In addition, I think that there is no feeling of responsibility when listening to a podcast. In example, if I'm hearing great things about a book/movie/show, and I want to read/watch it because I'm interested in it, I need to pay attention to every word, often for a long time, in order to really get what I came for. And for me, that's what I'd rather do.

I think I've had some relevant conversations in the past though. Those were about energy. I'd be enthusiastically recommending to some coworker on whatever project that they read this or that great thing, watch some show, etc. I had a lot of energy, but some that I talked to were working really long hour jobs, juggling family, career, and work, or some other such life with a lot of things eating up their energy. They always seemed to veer towards this lower effort content.

Long story short, I think you don't have to work at listening to podcasts, aren't expected to remember what happened, and it's just a low effort situation that works well for people that already have lives full of complexity and effort. Or, you might just have less energy to start with. It seems to be a lot of reasons that effect this one thing, and the net effect vs what people consume in media is that people with less energy veer towards media that's disposable, forgettable, and enjoyable.

For those of us that really appreciate a masterpiece of entertainment design, such as GOT, Shogun, Boardwalk Empire, To Kill a Mockingbird, Casino, etc, it can be hard to get why so many people prefer 1 minute clips of the JRE. I get it though. I'd prefer a steak dinner, but a steak dinner is a whole thing, it's a trip to the place, it's 2 hours of time, etc. Sometimes you just want a couple of Doritos so you can get on with your life 30 seconds later.

Lastly I think it's much cheaper and easier to place requisite psychological hooks into an audience with a podcast. Let's say you make a show. It's 6 million an episode. One of your jobs is to get people to memorize the theme song. No problem, just get them to listen to it 10 times, and now they really remember that show. That costs you 80 million dollars by the time they've heard your theme song 10x. Podcast can accomplish the same thing, for $100. They have a strong competitive edge, but no follow through. So you can make one popular way faster and cheaper, but you can't internationally market a podcast on a 25 dollar blu ray disk. Advantages and disadvantages.

 

[sfoster]

interesting points.

Something that occurred to me just now too, similar to standup comedy, podcast has the ability to turn on a dime and change subjects.
In standup you can be in a story at a drivethru one second, then before you even realize the subject has changed youre suddenly hearing jokes about walmart or dogs or something, without the jarring effects of a jump cut. The constant change of subject and POV really helps with engagement

 

[CelticRambler]

I think this is linked to the viability of reality television, the conversational nature of the podcasts, the disposability of the content, and maybe a few other things. It's a lot easier to listen to or engage in a casual conversation than it is to try and read even simple books like Dickens work. In addition, I think that there is no feeling of responsibility when listening to a podcast.

... it's just a low effort situation that works well for people that already have lives full of complexity and effort.

Agreed. I think a huge amount of "content" on the Internet is nothing more than a substitute for the kind of low-investment discussion that takes place around water coolers, in bars/pubs, or any other gossip-friendly meeting space. In most of those situations, you'll get a few "talking heads" who dominate and/or lead the chatter, and plenty of other folk who in attendance without ever really contributing.

Podcasts are essentially the same: a "few lads talking shoite" (as we'd say in Ireland) and a bunch of people listening in because they have nothing better to do. More likely half-listening, which means that the same content can be endlessly recycled because few people will remember what was said the week before.

This is not exclusive to podcasts, though. An awful lot of YouTube is the same sort of low cost, low quality, zero creativity output. Unlike studio-produced reality TV, there's frequently no structure at all to these videos - other than a vague "follow us as we do something with our lives" - and 90% of the time nothing exceptional or dramatic happens (regardless of the clickbaity TERRIBLE NEWS promised in the title) yet a scroll through the comments shows that there's no shortage of adoring fans, delighted to see the same formulaic fly-on-a-wall video diary over and over and over and over again.

To segue into another thread, this is why I think AI both is and is not a threat. It's not a threat because it can't be truly creative, so there will always be a place for the human brain (and miscellaneous other body parts) to generate unique content; but it is a threat, because the great unwashed masses will happily pay for whatever recycled words, songs and plotlines it churns out every day.

 

[AcousticAl]

There are some great podcasts out there that are highly-produced and anything but low-effort. Check out Twenty Thousand Hertz.

But, let’s be completely honest here: neither highly-produced podcasts like that, nor the freeform discussion versions, are anything new. Podcasting just the new version of radio. Really, that’s all it is - same idea, same formats - and it has everything from quality human interest stuff like “This American Life”-style audio documentaries, to radio plays, all the way to crappy talk radio. But even talk radio has a following.

And the talk-radio style podcasts can be interesting, if the topic of discussion is interesting and the people talking about it have at least some qualified experience to discuss it.

 

[directorik]

Podcasting just the new version of radio. Really, that’s all it is - same idea, same formats - and it has everything from quality human interest stuff like “This American Life”-style audio documentaries, to radio plays, all the way to crappy talk radio. But even talk radio has a following.

I listen to two podcasts - one five days a week and one three days a week.

In both cases the host was once on the mourning radio show I listened to every
morning. They left the radio and started a podcast. The new version of radio...