8 ms·

I'm sorry to say that podcasting's best days are behind us. Podcasts were so great when it was about discovery and sharing. Now podcasts are so heavily corporat

I'm sorry to say that podcasting's best days are behind us. Podcasts were so great when it was about discovery and sharing. Now podcasts are so heavily corporatised I'm barely able to enjoy them between ads and self promotion.

hbn 3y ago
If you're sticking to the corporate shlock that's promoted on the front "explore" page of every podcast app, sure. If you stick to smaller podcasts that are patreon-backed or have a couple 1-minute ad breaks in the entire 90 minute show, it's fine. I mostly listen to comedy podcasts anyway and they tend to make ad reads entertaining by riffing on them. If it's just someone reading from a script, I'd skip it.
- bityard 3y ago
  Can you recommend any comedy podcasts? I tried a few improv podcasts which had reasonably good reviews but for my taste, the quality was anywhere between "mildly entertaining" and "I'd rather snack on a big ol' bowl of fire-damaged roof shingles"
  - selectodude 3y ago
    Bill Burr’s podcast has been whipping the llamas ass for a long time now.
    - hombre_fatal 3y ago
      Check out Tim Dillon’s podcast.
    - goles 3y ago
      Check out Anything Better if you haven't. It's my favorite podcast even though they don't do it that frequently anymore. It's just two friends trying to make each other laugh and bitch about their wifes, sports, smoking sticks and drinking.
  - evancordell 3y ago
    Do you just mean comedic quality or do you mean production quality as well? Some that I've listened to are good on both fronts (in my opinion): Mission To Zyxx, Dungeons and Daddies, Beef and Dairy Network.
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    If you specifically like improv then Hey Riddle Riddle is pretty good, and their neighbor Hello from the Magic Tavern. The anchor characters here perform at the Io Theater in chicago. None of them touch on current events and the tavern's meta narrative is not important so just click anyone that that catches your eye.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    I've started listening to the back catalogue (as in like, from 2007) of The Flop House, and I'm enjoying it. I'm not sure what a 'comedy podcast' is exactly, but a bunch of commedians reviewing bad podcasts is alright.
    - theluketaylor 3y ago
      Love The Flop House. I'd also recommend Judge John Hodgman (which is also part of the Maximum Fun network, but if you're in 2007 that hasn't happened yet in the Flop House timeline)
    - hbn 3y ago
      Who Are These Podcasts also does a podcast roast, though the second half of each episode tends to be joking around about burnt-out satellite radio stars (Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, etc) and I have no idea about any of that history so I usually just listen to the first half.
  - hbn 3y ago
    Taste varies, 2 of my favorites right now are The Biggest Problem in the Universe and The Boyscast. There's also The Snow Plow Show which is just a guy who does prank calls. I'm sure a lot of people would find the humor in any or all of these crass, but it's what I enjoy!
  - jszymborski 3y ago
    Off Book is great if you love musical theatre and/or improv
  - noree 3y ago
    Cum Town. Or The Adam Friedland show if you're more center-left leaning.
  - Zizizizz 3y ago
    If I Were You by Jake and Amir was going for a decade I think but just finished. The questions are timeless though so you can easily go back and binge if you want
themagician 3y ago
Podcasts today are fundamentally different from podcasts of yesterday. Some of the old ones still exist, but for the most part the industry has been completely transformed. The word means something different now. Podcasting started with a mix of radio drama and some really incredible radio journalism—a lost art. Podcasting transformed into parasocial background noise. Most top "podcasts" today are just people talking. It's like roundtable discussions with no script, no sound design and often no real production of any kind. As with reality TV, it turns out that's where the money was all along. If it doesn't cost anything to produce then you can create endless hours at zero marginal cost. Why people listen to this stuff I honestly have no idea, but they do. There are still a few things I find worth listening to and I often find myself going back into the back catalogs of This American Life and Radiolab. But when you think about the "good stuff" you start to realize very quickly why there isn't much of it. Creating an engaging one hour long audio drama that really pulls you in is very expensive. It's hard to do that once, let along every week. It's expensive to produce, time intensive, and then you've got bandwidth costs on top of all of that. Some of the really iconic podcasts took months or even years to make, and they were almost always made at a break even or a loss. Now you can record two people having some beers for two hours, monetize it, and post it same day. You can do it multiple times a week. Someone else will pay all the bandwidth costs and send you a check.
- ironmagma 3y ago
  I am subscribed to 115 different podcasts but just end up listening to Dear Hank and John episodes on repeat. It’s a sad state of the podcasting world. The only other show I found that was really enjoyable to listen to was Hello Internet (actually one of the first popular podcasts) and it went on indefinite hiatus years ago.
- morsch 3y ago
  Interview and talk podcasts have always been popular. I'm not sure why that's surprising? It's an established format in all media, and in my experience podcasts aren't bad at it -- certainly much better than TV which these days seems to be universally terrible at it; there are some tradeoffs when compared to written formats. Individual talk podcasts or episodes tend to be as good or as bad as the people in them. This is also not surprising? Edit -- here's a somewhat tenuous Top 10 list from 2005, via Web archive via USA Today (of all places) via Wikipedia History of podcasting. A few of them are still going, 18 years later. They're mostly people talking, not radio drama or stone cold journalism: 1. The Dawn and Drew Show, dawnanddrew.com: Married-couple banter. 2. Engadget, engadget.com: Technology news and gadget reviews. 3. Reel Reviews, mwgblog.com: Reviews of current and classic movies. 4. IT Conversations, itconversations.com: Hard-core tech talk. 5. The Daily Source Code, live.curry.com: Adam Curry with podcasting news and the latest shows. 6. Coverville, coverville.com: All about cover songs, the good, the bad and the never-should-have-been-recorded. 7. Free Talk Live, freetalklive.com: Political talk radio with a libertarian perspective. 8. The MacCast, maccast.blogspot.com: All things Macintosh, by and for Mac nuts. 9. The Rock and Roll Geek Show, americanheartbreak.com/movabletype: One fan trails rock's less charted waters. 10. Tracks Up the Tree, upthetree.com: Music show featuring artists whose tunes are available online. http://web.archive.org/web/20060207133911/https://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2005-02-09-podcasting-usat-money-cover_x.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20060207133911/https://www.usatod... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting#Wider_notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting#Wider_no...
dnissley 3y ago
I maintain that there were never any consistently good podcasts[1]. There were and are many good podcast episodes, however. Because of this I've never really understood the whole "subscribing" deal -- I always end up subscribing to hundreds of podcasts that all had one or two good episodes, but basically almost never have a good episode ever again. It's also been my experience that most people who are especially into one podcast are in a parasocial relationship with the host(s). 1: For the purposes of this argument, I'll say this means >50% good episodes, but even setting the bar at 10% doesn't change much.
- zerkten 3y ago
  It's hard to evaluate your experience without knowing more about you and the podcasts you subscribed to. Can you share more? In my experience, repeat listening is going to depend on the content and style of the podcast. Some will naturally bring you along while others can't generate great output consistently. The pattern I see is guest participation in the great episodes. Guests can't sustain a podcast unless there is a strong pipeline. A podcast like Accidental Tech Podcast is consistently great for the fanbase, to the point where they'll pay for unedited versions. There have only been a few guests over the years and it's completely sustained by the creators. The Rest is History is completely sustained by the creators, but guests are regularly included. Sometimes I'm disappointed when they have a guest. CoRecursive depends on guests and has much more variability for me.
earthboundkid 3y ago
If you like this comment, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

hbn 3y ago

If you're sticking to the corporate shlock that's promoted on the front "explore" page of every podcast app, sure. If you stick to smaller podcasts that are patreon-backed or have a couple 1-minute ad breaks in the entire 90 minute show, it's fine. I mostly listen to comedy podcasts anyway and they tend to make ad reads entertaining by riffing on them. If it's just someone reading from a script, I'd skip it.

bityard 3y ago
Can you recommend any comedy podcasts? I tried a few improv podcasts which had reasonably good reviews but for my taste, the quality was anywhere between "mildly entertaining" and "I'd rather snack on a big ol' bowl of fire-damaged roof shingles"
- selectodude 3y ago
  Bill Burr’s podcast has been whipping the llamas ass for a long time now.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    Check out Tim Dillon’s podcast.
  - goles 3y ago
    Check out Anything Better if you haven't. It's my favorite podcast even though they don't do it that frequently anymore. It's just two friends trying to make each other laugh and bitch about their wifes, sports, smoking sticks and drinking.
- evancordell 3y ago
  Do you just mean comedic quality or do you mean production quality as well? Some that I've listened to are good on both fronts (in my opinion): Mission To Zyxx, Dungeons and Daddies, Beef and Dairy Network.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  If you specifically like improv then Hey Riddle Riddle is pretty good, and their neighbor Hello from the Magic Tavern. The anchor characters here perform at the Io Theater in chicago. None of them touch on current events and the tavern's meta narrative is not important so just click anyone that that catches your eye.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  I've started listening to the back catalogue (as in like, from 2007) of The Flop House, and I'm enjoying it. I'm not sure what a 'comedy podcast' is exactly, but a bunch of commedians reviewing bad podcasts is alright.
  - theluketaylor 3y ago
    Love The Flop House. I'd also recommend Judge John Hodgman (which is also part of the Maximum Fun network, but if you're in 2007 that hasn't happened yet in the Flop House timeline)
  - hbn 3y ago
    Who Are These Podcasts also does a podcast roast, though the second half of each episode tends to be joking around about burnt-out satellite radio stars (Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, etc) and I have no idea about any of that history so I usually just listen to the first half.
- hbn 3y ago
  Taste varies, 2 of my favorites right now are The Biggest Problem in the Universe and The Boyscast. There's also The Snow Plow Show which is just a guy who does prank calls. I'm sure a lot of people would find the humor in any or all of these crass, but it's what I enjoy!
- jszymborski 3y ago
  Off Book is great if you love musical theatre and/or improv
- noree 3y ago
  Cum Town. Or The Adam Friedland show if you're more center-left leaning.
- Zizizizz 3y ago
  If I Were You by Jake and Amir was going for a decade I think but just finished. The questions are timeless though so you can easily go back and binge if you want

themagician 3y ago

Podcasts today are fundamentally different from podcasts of yesterday. Some of the old ones still exist, but for the most part the industry has been completely transformed. The word means something different now. Podcasting started with a mix of radio drama and some really incredible radio journalism—a lost art. Podcasting transformed into parasocial background noise. Most top "podcasts" today are just people talking. It's like roundtable discussions with no script, no sound design and often no real production of any kind. As with reality TV, it turns out that's where the money was all along. If it doesn't cost anything to produce then you can create endless hours at zero marginal cost. Why people listen to this stuff I honestly have no idea, but they do. There are still a few things I find worth listening to and I often find myself going back into the back catalogs of This American Life and Radiolab. But when you think about the "good stuff" you start to realize very quickly why there isn't much of it. Creating an engaging one hour long audio drama that really pulls you in is very expensive. It's hard to do that once, let along every week. It's expensive to produce, time intensive, and then you've got bandwidth costs on top of all of that. Some of the really iconic podcasts took months or even years to make, and they were almost always made at a break even or a loss. Now you can record two people having some beers for two hours, monetize it, and post it same day. You can do it multiple times a week. Someone else will pay all the bandwidth costs and send you a check.

ironmagma 3y ago
I am subscribed to 115 different podcasts but just end up listening to Dear Hank and John episodes on repeat. It’s a sad state of the podcasting world. The only other show I found that was really enjoyable to listen to was Hello Internet (actually one of the first popular podcasts) and it went on indefinite hiatus years ago.
morsch 3y ago
Interview and talk podcasts have always been popular. I'm not sure why that's surprising? It's an established format in all media, and in my experience podcasts aren't bad at it -- certainly much better than TV which these days seems to be universally terrible at it; there are some tradeoffs when compared to written formats. Individual talk podcasts or episodes tend to be as good or as bad as the people in them. This is also not surprising? Edit -- here's a somewhat tenuous Top 10 list from 2005, via Web archive via USA Today (of all places) via Wikipedia History of podcasting. A few of them are still going, 18 years later. They're mostly people talking, not radio drama or stone cold journalism: 1. The Dawn and Drew Show, dawnanddrew.com: Married-couple banter. 2. Engadget, engadget.com: Technology news and gadget reviews. 3. Reel Reviews, mwgblog.com: Reviews of current and classic movies. 4. IT Conversations, itconversations.com: Hard-core tech talk. 5. The Daily Source Code, live.curry.com: Adam Curry with podcasting news and the latest shows. 6. Coverville, coverville.com: All about cover songs, the good, the bad and the never-should-have-been-recorded. 7. Free Talk Live, freetalklive.com: Political talk radio with a libertarian perspective. 8. The MacCast, maccast.blogspot.com: All things Macintosh, by and for Mac nuts. 9. The Rock and Roll Geek Show, americanheartbreak.com/movabletype: One fan trails rock's less charted waters. 10. Tracks Up the Tree, upthetree.com: Music show featuring artists whose tunes are available online. http://web.archive.org/web/20060207133911/https://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2005-02-09-podcasting-usat-money-cover_x.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20060207133911/https://www.usatod... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting#Wider_notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting#Wider_no...

dnissley 3y ago

I maintain that there were never any consistently good podcasts[1]. There were and are many good podcast episodes, however. Because of this I've never really understood the whole "subscribing" deal -- I always end up subscribing to hundreds of podcasts that all had one or two good episodes, but basically almost never have a good episode ever again. It's also been my experience that most people who are especially into one podcast are in a parasocial relationship with the host(s). 1: For the purposes of this argument, I'll say this means >50% good episodes, but even setting the bar at 10% doesn't change much.

zerkten 3y ago
It's hard to evaluate your experience without knowing more about you and the podcasts you subscribed to. Can you share more? In my experience, repeat listening is going to depend on the content and style of the podcast. Some will naturally bring you along while others can't generate great output consistently. The pattern I see is guest participation in the great episodes. Guests can't sustain a podcast unless there is a strong pipeline. A podcast like Accidental Tech Podcast is consistently great for the fanbase, to the point where they'll pay for unedited versions. There have only been a few guests over the years and it's completely sustained by the creators. The Rest is History is completely sustained by the creators, but guests are regularly included. Sometimes I'm disappointed when they have a guest. CoRecursive depends on guests and has much more variability for me.

earthboundkid 3y ago

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