Over the long holiday weekend, my wife and I puppy-sat for Henry, a 4-month old golden doodle. And this got me thinking. Puppies and Podcasts have a FEW things in common. When you start a podcast, you probably have the exuberance of a puppy. Henry has a habit of BOUNCING when he walks – he’s very excited, and it’s very cute. But at some point, you …

Today I’m going to tell you three podcasting mistakes to avoid with your show. First one, pretty straightforward. Avoid the word “podcast” in your show title. Two reasons.One, if someone is consuming your show, they already KNOW it’s a podcast. Two: SEO. According to James Cridland and PodNews, there are 700,000 podcasts that include the word “podc…

It’s one of the hardest questions when you start a podcast. Should I do video, or just audio? Well, I think I’ve found a way to split the difference. I was helping a new client launch a podcast this week, and we were talking, as is often the case, about audio versus video. In a perfect world, we’d all have a video team of several people who can put…

Spotify for Podcasters, or Anchor, as it used to be known, is a free platform for hosting your podcast. But as we all know, nothing is TRULY free. I've long said that Anchor, or now Spotify for Podcasters, is a great tool if you're dipping your toe into podcasting. They won't charge you a monthly hosting fee, and you can kind of get the hang of you…

https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-podcast-consumer-2024-by-edison-research/ The Edison Research Podcast Consumer 2024 report, providing a comprehensive overview of the current landscape of podcasting. As we head into the holiday weekend, it's the perfect time to reflect on these insights and what they mean for podcasters and listeners alike. Podca…

In this episode of The JAG Show, we tackle the ever-persistent question: How long should a podcast be? The answer isn't one-size-fits-all. We dive into the nuances of podcast length and what makes an extended episode worthwhile. With personal anecdotes and industry insights, we explore scenarios where longer podcasts not only work but captivate. Fr…

WHAT WOULD A TIK TOK BAN MEAN FOR PODCASTING? Well, like most things in life, it’s all about knowing your audience. OK, I’m not going to get into all the international politics about TikTok, and their Chinese-owned parent company, Byte Dance. But as you may have heard, President Biden, depending on when you consume this podcast, is expected to sign…

This week's podcast addresses a significant issue within our modern media landscape, highlighting the incident where CBS cut off the final moments of a Billy Joel concert broadcast. This mishap, which occurred after a live broadcast of The Masters golf tournament, exemplifies broader industry challenges. Due to the golf event extending beyond its s…

It’s an election year, and there’s no doubt podcasting will play a role. Here’s an interesting one.Ted Cruz is hosting a podcast, 3 days a week, distributed by Premiere Networks, part of iHeartMedia. Now Senator Cruz, who’s up for reelection this year, isn’t being paid directly for his time, but get this. His Political Action Committee, or PAC, is …

OK, fine, I podfaded. Other client projects took priority, and it's been awhile. But today was the perfect day to bring back The JAG Show. Google Podcasts, as of April 3rd, is no longer available to listen to shows on. Users are going to have to go elsewhere. If you want to take your subscriptions with you, you can TRY. Here's Google's how-to. http…

I don't care who you are, what your podcast is about, and how many listeners you do or don't have. Do not do what Curt Schilling did in his podcast last month. So, quick background for those of you who aren't baseball or Red Sox fans, the Red Sox went 86 years without winning a World Series. They had a number of heartbreaks over the years, includin…

Google podcasts going away in 2024- here's what you need to know While Apple was the OG of the podcast space, podcasts were actually named after iPods, and Spotify was OVER aggressive, investing hundreds of millions, Google/YouTube have been more reactionary. In fact, The company itself said at podcast movement that they've been more about respondi…

Got my 2023 Podcast Movement Recap ready to roll, and of course, it all starts with YouTube. The best session I attended was from Jay Nachlis of Coleman Insights and Steve Goldstein of Amplifi media- their Thursday keynote was The New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube. Yes, a show on YouTube is a podcast. And you need to have a YouTube strategy, even …

I know it's been a minute, but we've got to talk about two things today - Stitcher and Twitter. For both, it comes down to the same old adage- fish where the fish are. Stitcher, one of the original podcast listening apps, has decided to shut down. Now, for hardcore fans of the app, there's definitely going to be a "who moved my cheese" moment as th…

Often times, I meet people at networking events, and all they hear me say is the word "podcast," and they ask "what's your podcast about?" And I explain that, as you can see and hear, yes, I have my own podcast, but most of my work is focused on building branded podcasts for businesses and nonprofits. Two thirds of the US population have listened t…

I had artificial intelligence write and voice this entire 3 minute podcast (minus the intro and outro of course). I used Descript to create a synthesized version of my voice. This required me reading 30 minutes of copy, taken, interestingly enough, from a Planet Earth II script. (Also, I had to read it twice because I had the wrong mic selected the…

Two of the best television shows in modern memory wrapped up this week - Succession and Ted Lasso. Today I'll tell you how some of the strategies they used can help your podcast. And oh, spoiler alert. Strategy #1 - Know when to get out. Both shows left us at a place where they could have continued on. Part of me would have loved to see how the Roy…

The Daily from the New York Times -one of the biggest, and in my opinion, best, podcasts out there is expanding. They're going to offer a daily 10 minute recap of the day's headlines. But in this week's rollout, they are doing something right, AND something wrong. Here's what they're doing right - they are promoting the show on their flagship podca…

Yes, I'm a 42 year old man and I'm recording this podcast while wearing a pair of my new Lululemon pants. And I found them the same way most people find podcasts. Look, we all know the pandemic changed EVERYTHING. From food delivery to media consumption to...PANTS. As a recent New York Times Op Ed said - the best things to come out of Covid are "so…

We've all been there as podcasters. We finish our interview, we sign off, and the guest sends us an email and says, "oh, can I add something?" What's important to remember in podcasting is that, in most cases, this isn't hard-hitting "gotcha journalism." We aren't out to GET our guests or catch them with their pants down. Usually, we are highlighti…

Two things that will be central to growing your podcast in 2023 are a YouTube channel and an email list. First, YouTube. Now don't be scurred. If you're camera shy, this doesn't mean you need to shoot video of your podcast. There are tools like Headliner and others that will take the AUDIO of your show, and either your show or episode artwork or an…

I grew up a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan. Every April, we thought, "this could be the year." Until it wasn't. But in honor of what used to be our national pasttime, today I'm going to tell you what podcasting and baseball have in common. When you start your show, it's April. You've got big dreams. You're going to be the next Serial, or the next Joe …

To paraphrase a great philosopher of the early 2000's.....FINALLY.....The Jag Show....has come back....to podcasting. First, apologies for the hiatus. I've spent much of the last six months on a passion project - the WJPZ at 50 podcast - interviewing alumni from a half century of my college radio station. Look for a case study on that show soon in …

What's better than one podcast producer's 2023 predictions? How about 5? I moderate this month's roundtable with Matt Cundill of The Sound Off Media Company, Catherine O'Brien of Branch Out Programs, Johnny Podcasts of Straight Up Podcasts, and David Yas of Pod 617. We agree on some ideas, and have pleasantly divergent opinions on some others. Find…

Hey everyone, it's been a minute. Gonna break down the last month or so of podcast news and look forward to 2023. First, a programming note. Yes, I've "pod faded" with this show a bit. That's largely because I've been dedicating a lot of time to a passion project, a show called WJPZ at 50. It celebrates 50 years of the radio station at my alma mate…

It's been awhile since we did a recap of news in the podcasting world - so I'm gonna share some headlines that have grabbed my attention over the last month or so: The biggest story is Edison Research's Spoken Word Audio report, released at the end of October, and surveying Americans ages 13 and up. Some of the key takeaways: 131 million Americans …

A great way to promote your podcast is in other podcasts. It's what's known as a "Feed drop." If you can work out a trade with a similar podcaster, you can promote each other's shows. The old adage is "fish where the fish are." It's a lot easier to land a podcast listener from another podcast than it is from a social media channel. They're already …

My wife and I are back from a week in Disney World with some friends, and a lot of the things they do there can apply to you and your podcast. Now I realize Disney has about a 90 year head start on you, and 50 for Disney World specifically. Nor do you have a multi-billion dollar marketing machine and 4 generations of super fans at your disposal. Bu…

TikTok continues to out-innovate (and out-grow) other social media apps. And podcasting could be their next feature. PodNews, via AudioMeans, reports that there is a new "bot scraping our feeds." Or, in English, another party is starting to look at our podcasts. And it traces back to TikTok servers. Details are scant so far, but this makes total se…

The big news in podcasting this week was Spotify canceling 10 shows from its Parcast and Gimlet studios, leading to a layoff of just under 5% of its workforce. And it's all because of...greed. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/spotify-cancel-podcasts-parcast-gimlet-1235234758/ These shows are Spotify exclusives. While it's true Spo…

I really don't want this to be a podcast where I talk about radio, an industry I left in 2017 after almost 20 years. But for the second straight week, we've got a radio company who's trying to break podcasting. Last week it was iHeartRadio, and their sketchy practice of buying podcast downloads as ads in video games. How sketchy was that? Well depe…

Is iHeart scamming the podcasting industry? That's the implication of an article this week that was widely discussed in the podcasting world. The story is from Bloomberg and written by Ashley Carman, one of the most respected reporters in our industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/inside-podcasters-explosive-audience-growth Ad…

Yesterday, I went to the North American International Auto Show, known to locals here as the Detroit Auto Show, or just the Auto Show. And it reminded me of a common question I get from podcasters - when should I release my new episodes? Now, whether you release, weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever, the key to growing your show is consistency. As y…

Did you see 16 year old Shane Hawkins pay tribute to his dad at the recent Foo Fighters tribute to Taylor Hawkins? Well, turns out how you heard about it and how you watched and reacted to it - can teach us a lot about podcasting. How did you hear about it? For me, it was a combination of social media post after social media post, and hearing frien…

Welcome to Season 4 of the Jag Show. We're going to start with what I learned this year at Podcast Movement, and how you can improve your show. The first thing you should know about is video. Your show needs to be on YouTube. According to Edison Research, 48% of the podcast audience has consumed a show on YouTube. So even if your show is audio only…

You may have noticed that it's been awhile since I've come out with a new episode of this podcast. And for that, I apologize. I've often talked about "PodFade" in this show - it's when after a certain number of episodes, a podcast falls down your priority list. Well, it happened to me. Today, I'm going to tell you how it happened, and what I'm doin…

In our May 2022 livestream, the 5 "Podcast Superfriends" assembled to talk about how Matt Cundill pushed through the usual podcast obstacles to get to the 300th episode of The Sound Off Podcast. We cover lessons learned, and how they can apply to our clients. What's changed since the show started? Should you "batch record" or do one episode at a ti…

For over a year now, three co-hosts and I have been working on a podcast for the Royal Oak Michigan Chamber of Commerce. We interview various members of the Chamber about themselves and their businesses. Once a quarter, we turn the tables on one of our co-hosts. This week, it's yours truly in the hot seat. Show Notes: Today, we turn the tables on o…

To watch this podcast as a video, you can do so here: https://youtu.be/hp4JmAZhTPE Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion. And while much has been discussed about the political and free speech ramifications of this move, the podcasting piece has largely been overlooked. Earlier this week, I asked, via Twitter of course, what this move would me…

I joined Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing on Tuesday for a presentation on how to repurpose LinkedIn Live videos as podcasts. While Brenda works mostly with LinkedIn, the tips here are applicable to video webinars of all kinds. After a brief intro on how important podcasts have become and the power of audio, we broke the presentation down into thr…

iHeart has launched a podcasting network for NFT's. More on that later. Here are this week's podcasting headlines: Wanna know which advertisers are investing in the top 5,000 podcasts? Podchaser has a new tool to track that. https://features.podchaser.com/api/? There's a new service to rate podcasts for kids - it's from Common Sense media and will …

Some hand wringing over Infinite Dial 2022 - a slight dropoff in podcasting. Monthly listeners went from 41% of the population to 38%. My take: it's nothing to worry about. The pandemic turbo-charged podcasting growth, and people are settling back in to routines. 109 million Americans still listen to shows every month, and that's more than pre-pand…

I've decided to try being a music radio DJ again - except in the podcast world. I read about Amazon's new "Amp" project that lets you create audio shows with music from Amazon's library. But when I tried it, I couldn't play music until I had live viewers/listeners. Not an easy ask for a program that's still in beta. Then I remembered that Anchor al…

One of the biggest frustrations for podcasters has always been NOT knowing how many people follow, or subscribe to, their show. Finally, that's about to change... James Cridland broke this in PodNews this morning. Next month, Apple will begin to add follower counts to your Apple Podcasts Connect Dashboard. (Remember, podcasting switched from "subsc…

Being good at your craft is better than being a big name celebrity. This was confirmed to us by no less than Beata Murphy, Program Director of KIIS Los Angeles. She keynoted our WJPZ Syracuse Alumni Banquet earlier this month and offered fantastic insight. A programming note: a student at the conference told me TikTok is allowing you to upload vide…

Jag: Can I find your podcast? First off happy Mardi Gras to everybody in Louisiana, I may be a native of Massachusetts and an adopted Michigander. But I really do miss y'all around this time of year. Laissez le bon temps rouler! Okay. Back to my main point of today's podcast. Can your podcast be found? Now what the word podcast is, can be different…

Do I need a QR Code for my podcast? Yes, it's a great idea to promote your show. For example, did you see the "bouncing QR code" commercial during the Super Bowl? It was for Coinbase, the Cryptocurrency exchange. The ad was a huge success - in fact, the website crashed when I tried to sign up. The pandemic has resurrected QR codes, which were dead …

Can you use commercial music in your podcast? Or movie clips? Or other snippets that are commercially licensed? No. You can't, and you shouldn't. This is a question I'm frequently asked by clients and potential clients. And I've heard every excuse in the book. Oh, it's only a few seconds, so it falls under "fair use." Oh come on, are Guns N Roses r…

Spotify has been all over the news in the last week because of Joe Rogan, but Rogan is a symptom of a much bigger problem. If you haven't heard, the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, has come under heavy scrutiny for promoting COVID misinformation. Several artists, led by Neil Young, have pulled, or are in the process …

On Thursday, January 13th, I was thrilled to present a podcasting "Professional Edge Workshop" to the Birmingham Bloomfield (Michigan) Chamber of Commerce. It was supposed to be an in-person workshop, but you know, Omicron. The good news is, we recorded it, and I'm presenting the audio here. If you'd like to watch the video of the presentation or d…