By Morgan Pinder

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you will know that I’ll often post uni work that is relevant to the literature, podcasting and writing nonsense that you will often find here. This time my first assessment is a blog post. This blog post.

I was going to try not to do this assignment on podcasts, but it is basically all I do.

• I don’t watch TV or movies, I listen to Podcasts.
• I get on social media to talk about podcasts.
• I read books, but only so I can talk about them on my podcast.

I have a podcast problem. It started about 4 years ago.

I have always loved audio books, I grew up with storybook cassettes (I can still quote the entirety of the Lion King audiobook, just saying), then moved on to Amazon’s Audible app as an adult (all because I wanted that free copy of “The Chicken Gave it To Me” because I am an adult person who has definitely moved past my childhood reading list).

I think I knew about podcasts or they were at the very least on the periphery of my consciousness. I knew Ricky Gervais had one, and that BBC released their radio dramas as podcasts, but it wasn’t until Serial that I downloaded a podcast app. Serial definitely had a huge impact on the mainstream acceptance of the podcast as entertainment and has inspired a whole host of incredibly popular true crime podcasts, with true crime being one of the most, if not the most popular podcast genres (Bruzzi, 2016). Serial had me hooked, from there I went on to audio dramas like The Black Tapes and horror comedy podcasts like Last Podcast on The Left.

Then I discovered the often silly, very nerdy underbelly of the podcast world. I discovered the smaller podcasts that sprouted up in the wake of Serial and My Favorite Murder, and the indie podcasts that had been there the whole time but by virtue of not being true crime had only amassed a modest, albeit devoted following. It can be tough out there if you aren’t a crime related podcast as there is a huge swing in listenership towards true crime as a genre (Bruzzi, 2016).

I became a serial subscriber, I would, and still do subscribe to anything, listen to a few episodes and only delete it when the unlistened to episodes number in double, sometimes triple digits. I also began to engage with other fans of these podcasts and often the hosts themselves on Facebook and Twitter.

I work listening to podcasts, I walk listening to podcasts, if I could read listening to podcasts I would (and sometimes do if Librivox has a copy of the book up). There was a day about a month ago in which I thought I could listen to West Cork and parent at the same time, I was wrong.

“Oh, by the way, have I told you about my podcast…”

We started making The FrankenPod in December 2017, and released our first episode in on January 2018, and we have a bit of a following, but the most meaningful outcome of blasting another podcast into the 500,000 others out there (Lopez, 2018) that has surprised me the most is the online podcasting community.

According to Markham (2012) one of the most commonly cited reasons for podcasting community fostered through producing, promoting and creating, and that has certainly been our experience. Within a week of us releasing our first episode, I had an email from Nick who hosts Nick and Vince’s Podcast asking us if we wanted to come on their show and talk about Frankenstein.

I often interact with the podcast community in Facebook groups set up for podcast promotion, or to share podcasting resources such as Underdog Podcasts and Lady Pod Squad. Both of these groups also have Twitter hashtags that you can attach to podcasts as a signal to other “Under Dog” or “Lady” podcasters to retweet and promote, under the understanding that you will do the same for them.

Finding Your People

The Twitter interactions between podcasts can move in genre groups. As our podcast, The FrankenPod is about gothic books and cinema and our relationships with other podcasters have not really stayed within that genre, but it is easier to collaborate with people who are doing something similar to what you are doing. The special interest groups tend to interact more closely together but podcasters will often promote across genre. Twitter has been my main point of contact with other podcasters and those interactions have allowed us to guest on other podcasts and set up some wonderful interviews with other podcasters.

The most valuable part of these interactive relationships with other podcasters is the relationships that are forged (Markham, 2012). Aside from everything else I have met some amazing, generous and intelligent people who love what they do. Podcasting is like a long rambling conversation with people across the world, many of them alone under doonas with a microphone to block out the noise of the outside world.

It sounds a bit sad, but really it is a very beautiful way to nerd out with other people who enjoy the same very specific stupid set of things that you do.

Eat → Sleep → Podcast → Repeat

Podcasts not mentioned that should be:

If I’m going to go ahead and talk about podcast promotions I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out the independent podcasts I love who I haven’t name-checked so here are some of my #ff and episode release posts from the past few weeks.

Please check out these podcasts!

The film Nosferatu eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) which is used in the Tweet GIFs is out of copyright according to section 94 of the “Copyright Act 1968” (Australia Government, 2017) which states that copyright extends 70 years after publication took place.

References

• Australian Government 2017. “Copyright Act 1968”, Federal Register of Legislation, Amendments up to act no. 49 2017, section 94, pp. 133, Retrieved 11th April 2018.<https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C00180&gt;
• Bruzzi, S. 2016. “Making a genre: the case of the contemporary true crime documentary”. Law and Humanities, 10 (2), pp.249-280, Retrieved 4th April 2018. <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17521483.2016.1233741&gt;
• Lopez, R. 2018. Talent Agencies turn to Popular Podcasts for New IP, Developing Film, TV Projects and More, Variety, 1st February 2018, Retrieved 23rd March 2018.  <http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/podcasts-film-tv-development-1202684555/&gt;
• Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens 1922. Prana Film, Germany.
• Markman, K.M. 2012. “Doing radio, making friends, and having fun: Exploring the motivations of independent audio podcasters”, New Media & Society, 14(4), pp.547-565, Retrieved 29th March 2018. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444811420848&gt;