Reasons Why Radio Shows Posting Podcasts Is Not Good For Your Brand

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Feed your Brand. I'm Tracy Hazard.

And I'm Tom, her co host.

And we are going to talk about something that is a hot topic around here because we have been getting a lot of radio hosts, whether they're Internet radio, blog talk radio, national public Radio, like all kinds of radio, right?

Yeah. And it's a hot topic because I'm really fired up about it. I am very frustrated for some of our clients who have really been misled and not overcharged and not served well by these Internet radio companies. And they say, oh yeah, well you'll be on our network and get exposure to all these millions of potential listeners. Which I don't really believe the numbers that they quote anyway. But then they say, but it's okay, it'll be a podcast also.

It's.

And it leads those customers to believe, oh, I get on a radio show and have a podcast and that's perfect. I have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different.

This is the thing. It's like the radio shows themselves are also a little hard to manage because you've gotta be there at the specific time every time. And a lot of them have call ins. So there's also like that number one sound problem that comes from call in. So not everyone is like that. There are some that have gotten themselves a lot more professional, but for the most part you have a call in phone number that you call into.

Yeah. The technology they're using to not only record you as the host, but any guests that call in is older technology really. And this audio quality just is not the best.

Right. And they don't provide you equipment. So many of the hosts that we find don't even have a microphone hooked to their computer. So they may call in through their computer, call in through Skype, you can call in through Zoom if you've got an upgraded package. But they call in without using a microphone, only using the microphone on their computers.

But even if you do have a good quality mic, we find the quality and the systems they use are not the best. But really this is the least of the issues that we've been finding lately with these radio show networks.

Now, we should say that there are some radio shows that you go down there and you record at with the full studio, with the full sound. And those are brilliant. I mean, and that's happening absolutely fine, if that's what you want to do. And you've got the sound engineers and everything there. So there are some that have that as a part of their package. You pay a lot of money for that though, so just keep that in mind. And that is sound overkill. So you're paying for way better sound and editing than you actually get through on a podcast.

You know, that's actually true, Tracy, because the reality of podcast distribution is mp3 files are the only format that podcasts are distributed in, and MP3 files are limited in their audio quality capability. So it's kind of like you're driving a Formula One race car on a street that is 65 miles an hour. You know, you can only get it so good.

Right. So either you have downgraded quality to begin with, it's not recorded very well, or you have overpaid over engineered sound for what you're going to get when it comes through on a podcast. So sound quality is, I think, one of our issues, but it is minor in the scope of things. Right. And that's where Tom's getting fired up. And so before we head into techie, I just wanted to hit that sound level first.

Okay. And it's a good point, Tracy, but I want to really talk about how these radio networks are really misleading podcasters. And unfortunately, the most of the podcasters I come across who are working with a radio show company don't even know how they're being poorly served.

Right. They have no clue on that. But I want to clarify this. It's how those radio show hosts are being poorly served by the podcasting process of the radio show. They may be perfectly served well by having a radio show because their topic is is that drive by drive time. And it works really well for them. We have a couple of clients who want radio shows because that's their primary demographic listens on the radio. Now they definitely want it also repurposed and put into a podcast as well. So just keep that in mind that there is a play and there is a marketing opportunity and possibility for radio shows. It's just not for if you want to podcast solely.

That's fair. Tracy. Yeah, I can agree with most of what you said there, but I'll tell.

You, you're a little podcast biased.

I am Podcast biased, for sure. And part of that becomes, because the radio show model, that you're going to be on the air at the same time of day, on the same day of week, every day, is very different from the podcasting model where consumers want to listen to audio on their time, on their schedule, when and where they want, and they really don't have time. Most podcast listeners in this modern day and age to schedule to be listening to something live.

But that's different than radio listeners. Right. So if you are syndicated and actually on a radio station abroad, that's what they're expecting. So that's the model. And it is old school. I will give you that. It is old school. But then the radio shows and the Internet radio shows will especially tell you, well, hey, it doesn't matter because we podcast syndicate you.

Right.

And here's where it starts to fall apart.

Sure. And so my most recent experience has caused us to want to record this episode now because we've talked about this before. We have a past episode about blog talk radio versus podcast hosts.

Right. If you're trying to decide between one or the other, we laid that all out there. And that's a really great episode to go back and refer to.

Yeah. And if you haven't listened to it, there'll be a link in the blog post for this episode, which will be the most recent blog post on feedyourbrand.co. so you can check that out. But this is really builds upon that and it's an extension of that. So we've had this happen with a couple customers recently, and most recently, one that has a radio show that's on what's called the Bold brave media network.

BBM talk radio.

Yeah, BBM. Yeah, BBM. I think it's boldbravemedia.com is their website and whatever. So the reality is they do the radio show just fine, but when it comes to the podcast, it's clearly an afterthought. It's not their primary interest and goal. And so they don't do a good job on it.

Yeah. We find that a lot of Internet radio got forced into podcasts. They're still fighting it, that they don't value. They think podcast is for millennials only. And they have this attitude about it, like, well, we have to do it because everybody asks, and I'm tired of telling them we don't do that. And so then I can't close them as a radio client. And so that's why they've come into this model of, yes, we have that. And then they Just do it as an aside.

Well. And they would have their customers believe they do it. Well, unfortunately, we're going to show you here that they don't. So in this case, listening to this client's episode, you know, the radio show is broken up into four segments. It's an hour long show, so every 15 minutes there's a different section. And the reality is they are running advertisements. In fact, when you listen to it as a podcast, they haven't edited it differently to be a podcast. They're taking what they did and produced in that live radio show and they're putting it out as a podcast. They're not doing any more work. And that show starts with two audio advertisements right at the beginning, before they even get to the intro for the.

Podcast, before they even mention the name of the host or the show.

Absolutely. And so those two ads, one of them is for a paid sponsor, and one of them is for the Bold Brave Media Network. It's for the radio show company.

Yeah. And we're singling this one out because it's very obvious and you guys can go check it out and hear it and see it for yourself. However, this is very common among these networks.

It is. Then I didn't do a whole lot of research on a whole bunch of them. This isn't a primer on all the different radio networks. Okay. But this is a lot of these characteristics we do see over and over again.

Right. And if you're considering going on one of these radio networks, you need to check it out against these reasons that we're pointing out right now that are hurting your podcast plays, listens, and ability to gain an audience from that replay that is happening in podcasting.

So in this case, there were two ads that took 90 seconds long and then was the intro to the show, which was also a little long, in my opinion. And it was a full two minutes of the podcast episode that you would have to listen to before you get to the actual host speaking.

Right. And this hurts binge listening tremendously. Hurts binge listening, but annoys the heck out of podcast listeners because if they wanted to listen to ads, they would listen to radio.

Right. Now, there's nothing wrong with having some ads in a podcast. It's a wonderful thing you can do to help monetize your show and, you know, to help either promote your own products or have paid sponsors.

But having irrelevant ones, ones that are not relevant to your core audience or.

To your show, and having only one, two, or at most three at an episode, is the most that I would recommend. And your listeners won't mind listening to a reasonable amount of ads. If they enjoy your show and your content, they know you need to make some money on it to keep bringing them good content. But in this case, the radio show had two different audio ads every quarter hour. And so it ended up being eight ads throughout the entire show. And that's just too much for an hour long podcast.

Right. And the reality is that we don't really recommend hour long podcasts for most hosts. So you're doing more work than you need to do. If you're spending an hour waiting on the phone and recording this and doing all that and also figuring out how to keep it segmented so you can stop whatever you're talking within 15 minutes, I couldn't do it. I mean, my thoughts are continuing.

Right.

So it's also a little harder to be more structured as well. So you're working harder on your show to begin with.

Well, and then at every break in the actual content of the show, there's not only two ads, but there is then an announcer from the radio show company announcing that, you know, we'll be right back to after these messages to this show on the Bold Brave Media Network. And so every quarter hour, they're again, really pushing their own platform. And that gets very annoying. The reality is they would have taken probably a good 10 or 12 minutes out of the show if you took out all the extra stuff that wasn't the real content.

Now, if you're new to our show, if this is the first time that you've listened to feed, you'd brand. I really want to point out here, our goal with everything that we do and everything that we point out here is to make sure that you as the host, that you as the brand retains your authority, that it doesn't go to a network, it doesn't go to itunes, it doesn't go to YouTube, it doesn't go to Facebook, it doesn't go to places that are not giving you the names and email addresses of your subscribers, we want it to go back to you at the end of the day.

That's right.

That's our ultimate goal here. So everything we say is looking at business practices and hosting practices that do that and how this is in violation of those practices that we put on our platform and that we recommend for all of you here on this show.

And to that point, Tracy, the itunes listing for all the shows that are syndicated as podcasts by this radio network have listed in the subtitle of the show that it Is their network. It says the name of the show and that they're the author, which they're not. The author is the host of the show. And in fact, I even the contract of this person, they shared with me their contract with the radio show company, and they have full rights to all the content. They didn't sign it away.

Right.

This author actually owns the content. But they would have you believe in the itunes listing that they don't.

Now, there are some exceptions to this. Companies like gimlet media, for instance, they're paying the host. They're paying for production of the show. They're paying for all of that. You're not paying them. And so in that case, yeah, they own the IP and they should be the listed host because they're paying for all of that. So just keep that in mind that radio shows where you pay them do not fall into this world.

Right. And you know what else? In your itunes listing, and this is on a lot of different podcast platforms, there is a link to the official website for the show that you can click and it takes you to a browser and takes you to the website for the show. But what they've done, because they syndicated the show and they're in control of the itunes listing, they have put a link to their website to information about that radio show on their network, not the website of the actual host who owns the show.

And not even the page for that host on their.

No, it does. To the page for that host on their platform. No, it does do that, but it would tell you nothing about itunes. It tells you to, hey, come to our radio network and listen at this day and time. But what they're doing is what we say a lot is they're stealing your authority. They are taking advantage of you and the content you're creating and then sending you to their website, and they're benefiting from it more than you are.

Okay, so I want to recap so that we're kept up with where we are. So sound quality is one time commitment, and breaking it up in time is another one. The multiple ads for the network and for sponsors that may not have anything to do with your audience and your show. And now the host author name that is listed or the artist name, because that's actually how it is in itunes. That's listed is the network and not you.

Correct.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff.

So there's a couple more things that are really very important. The title of every episode is listed as the name of the show and the episode number and Then sometimes nothing else. So that every title except for the episode number looks exactly the same. You have no idea what the title or the unique aspect of the show is. Sometimes on some of them, yeah, they have a little bit of a description or a name in the title beyond just the name of the show and the episode number. But the way most apps and itunes and different platforms display titles, you only get so many characters that get displayed. And even if there is what I would call a suffix here of a unique title name, in the title, it's truncated and cut off. You can't even see it. And that's just a bad titling technique. They should always be having the title be unique to every episode. So when people at a glance, looking at a list can say, oh, I might want to listen to that one. This just looks all the same.

Right. And this is also something. We have a whole episode about this as well, about titling your episodes within itunes, we don't recommend numbering because there's already a number to the side of itunes, and because it starts at number one, no matter what. And let's say if you're on episode 102, the one on the side that itunes is listening, because it's in reverse order.

Yeah. Number one is. Well, you can change your itunes listing to actually have the newest one up top or the oldest one up top.

Right.

And if you have the newest one up top, it's not really episode one, but it's the first in the list that's the newest one.

Right, right. And so it confuses people. And so we recommend taking numbers out. Besides, why waste the characters? Because as Tom put, there's very little that shows hair. So we don't put any of the. Like, we used to have wtff, and then we'd have a number. We've taken that out of everyone so that we can just go straight into show titles. So we maximize the amount of title that's showing, the amount of words that show in the amount that gets searchable by itunes. Search engine, absolutely. So we want to make that happen.

And that's critical. And another thing that's important to the search engine within itunes and all the podcast platforms is the actual description of your episode. And what we found looking at this show coming from the BBM network is that more than half the shows have absolutely no show description.

You know, the interesting one here is, too, is that the ones that have no show description have no listens either. They have no popularity.

Yeah. You know, the popularity rank in itunes to the side of every episode. All the ones that have a popularity ranking have some kind of episode description, and the ones that have no description, they have no popularity. It means they're not getting listened to. So this is rookie stuff. This is baseline stuff. Any podcast producer worth anything, producing your show for you, syndicating it to you, to all the different podcast channels, should know better than to not have unique titles that are descriptive of what the episode's about and to not have full descriptions. At minimum, even if they were promoting themselves more than you, they should at least be doing a good job to make sure you're being heard.

So what it seems to me, though, is that they've created that this is how the feed works on their own blogs, on their own system, because they have so many shows, so they put the show name and all of this stuff within it, and that they have all of that and that they've just re syndicated that same feed without creating a podcast unique feedback, which is required because podcast listeners are different than radio listeners. And we want to make sure that you, as hosts, get that credit yet the full maximum value and attract as many listeners as possible off of each one of the directories you're listed in or syndicated into, depending on the terminology you use.

Absolutely. And it's just very disappointing to see people who think, oh yeah, I'm a podcast host. They also did not share with this host any of their statistics from wherever their podcast feed is being syndicated from. They had no control and no visibility to it. No wonder, because they're not getting a lot of plays. I'm sure they don't want to share that. Well, they're not getting a lot as a podcast.

When we investigated further, they're using a free service to syndicate it. And when you use one of those free services, you don't get statistics with it. So they don't even get it anyway.

Or not. Certainly not meaningful statistics. You get maybe some, but they're very, very ultra basic. So it's just so disappointing and I'm so frustrated when this happens that I just want to share this with all.

Of you because you're spending time and money. And that's our big thing, is we want to make sure that the time and money and energy you're putting into your show, you're getting back out in value. And when that's not happening, then that's just so frustrating for you. And the other thing I want to mention is usually you see also the exact same show art that is used on your show, which is great for radio when you have A ton of hosts, and they're trying to advertise at different times that they might be showing you. Not so good on podcasts as cover art, though. And so that's also doing a disservice. And it wouldn't take much to have a different cover art that you syndicate. It's just not that different.

I agree 100%, Tracy. The example here is the COVID art for this show says Mondays at 8pm Eastern time. Nobody listening to a podcast cares one bit about that. They're obviously listening as a podcast. They're going to listen when and where they want. So having that on your cover art is just a waste.

And it's big and bold and it's taking up space so that you really don't get the highlight of who this person is and what their show's about.

Absolutely. So I could go on for hours, Tracy. And I don't know if this is gonna be a popular episode or not. It's really meant to be a public service. Yeah. Or a public service announcement, really. For podcasters to beware of these radio networks and understand that they're in it for themselves, not for you. And that's so opposite to what podcasting is all about. It should be benefiting you and benefiting your audience. The message you want to bring to the world, helping you get that out to be heard and help serve others. And you know what? It's just not being done very well. A lot of times, what we're seeing from these radio networks.

You know what? We don't often do a call to action, but I think that we should here. If you have a radio show, if you are concerned that you're following into this trap, if you're not sure, we're going to invite you to come to poditize.com inquiry and book a time with Tom. He'll review your show, he'll check your stats, he'll do everything and really look through this for you. Because you're spending a lot of money and time and energy, and we want to make sure you're getting the most effective value from that.

That's a great idea, Tracy. And I'd be happy to talk to any of you that have questions about this and you know and get to.

Know our listeners and what else you'd like to listen to while you're on the call with us.

Absolutely. And that's a little different. We haven't usually actually published that booking link before on this show because the home for this show is. Because the show is feed. You'd brand. The website is FeedYourBrand code, but my booking calendar is through our other site, poditize.com, so poditize.com inquiry we'll have a link in the show notes for this episode which is on FeedYourBrand. Co. That's going to be a little confusing for people, but it is what it is, right?

And so there's no sales here. This is in service to you as listeners. So if you have questions, if you want to have your show evaluated, if you want to go through that, please, please book a time. Tom's happy to take calls.

Well, I hope a lot of you will take advantage of that offer. It does come from a place of service and integrity. I hope you come to believe that even if you don't know me yet. But you will see and of course you can reach out to us other ways if you have comments on social media anywhere at FeedYourBrand. You can also find this episode among all others@feedyourbrand.co.

So thanks everyone for listening. This has been Tracy and Tom on feed.

You'd brand.

Sam.