To scratch an irritating itch, I sent the following email to Chris Lydon from Radio Open Source, a podcast I often listen to.
Dear Chris and company:
I enjoy listening to your program. It’s entertaining, informative, and compelling. But I have one serious issue that keeps coming up with each episode—Chris keeps cutting off his guests in mid sentence to go to a commercial. This is a tremendous disservice to your listeners, and, for a podcast, this is completely unnecessary. In fact, it strikes this listener as asinine every time I hear it happen. You have all the time in the world so you don’t need to take breaks at pre-determined intervals.
Please, for the sake of your listeners and for your guests, stop trying to be a radio show. It is too limiting, and the quality of your show suffers because of it. You are better off as a podcast.
Thank you.
In case you’re not familiar with the show, the commercials are not actually there in the podcast, but the interruption of the guests still occurs. I’m curious to see what his response will be. Maybe he will think I am just another nut job, but maybe he’ll see my point, even if he isn’t free to act on it.
One reply on “Please stop trying to be a radio show”
Hi there. I’m the senior producer for Open Source. I’m not sure if anyone else has responded yet, but I figured I’d send you an answer. I actually would have responded earlier, but I was truly confused by your comment. Specifically: I wasn’t sure if you were being serious.
It’s not that we’re trying to be a radio show; we are a radio show. We broadcast live in Boston, and are syndicated on a few public radio stations around the country. We’re also, and proudly, a podcast.
If we’re ever asinine, it’s not because we’re fabricating a clock. We follow a real clock — a relatively standard one in the public radio world — with a five-minute news hole at one minute past the hour, and two minute-long station ID breaks at 19:00 and 39:00. Our web head Brendan then cuts these breaks out of the hour, rips an MP3, and uploads it for our podcast.
Anyway, we’re happy that you enjoy the show, and we hope that you’ll listen live some time (7 to 8pm, EST, Monday through Thursday):
http://streams.wgbh.org/wgbh/
Best regards,
Dave