Is your podcast headed for burnout?
Is your podcast headed for burnout?
Vol. 4 - Podcast burnout, Nora Loreto on authenticity, and my 30th birthday!
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday! It’s my birthday (in 2 days) so I hope you don’t mind a bit of self-serving in this one. I warned you!
In this issue:
How your podcast can avoid burning out.
Nora Loreto says you're alive. Of course, you're good enough.
Indie feature: Alpaca My Bags
True North feature: Media Indigena with Rick Harp
Birthday fundraiser: Water First
FYI: There are currently 31 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 27 First Nations communities across Canada. One was recently lifted in Sachigo Lake First Nation as of October 12, 2022!
A fun fact about me is that I’m shamelessly addicted to reality television. Almost every week I have a virtual watch party with friends to catch up on the latest episode of The Bachelor (obviously including The Bachelorette and Bachelor In Paradise).
Despite the many reasons why I should quit watching this franchise already, I can’t help but follow all the drama around the toxicity of its format and sketchy production practices. And I’m not the only one. There are countless Bachelor recap podcasts out there that feel the same way — one of which was a long-time favourite of mine.
Hosted by a former contestant and her reality-TV-obsessed friend, this show exploded in popularity because the hosts were relatable, could provide listeners with insider tea, and for a while, shared pretty progressive commentary about it.
But recently, it all went downhill. The hosts got greedy, insensitive, abandoned their VERY engaged community, and they burnt out.
A couple weeks ago, they finally announced that the podcast — and all of its iterations (more on that in a sec) — would be coming to an end.
This podcast burnout story is something that my podcasting bestie, Erin Hynes, and I talk about at length when we aren’t working on our show. In fact, we predicted the demise of this Bachelor recap podcast coming about a year before it actually happened.
So let’s unpack how a podcast can avoid heading for burnout.
Quality over quantity.
The Bachelor recap podcast in question started out as exactly that: A weekly show where the two hosts reacted to the latest episode of their favourite TV show. It grew quickly, and soon enough their audience had created a massive Facebook group, and was discussing the podcast on Instagram and in subreddit communities.
They were sending in fan artwork to the hosts and reaching out to them on social media. Their audience even crowdfunded a gift to send to one of the hosts and her family when her dog passed away! The loyalty of their fans presented a lot of opportunity for the podcast to grow and sell ad space, and so it did.
The hosts started releasing a second weekly episode, outside of the recapping format, where they interviewed people they found interesting and talked about topics that were important to them. They also started inviting their husbands on the podcast who their audience also quickly fell in love with.
This evolved into a THIRD weekly episode hosted by their husbands as they recapped The Bachelor from their own perspectives.
Suddenly this one, independently produced podcast was releasing three episodes a week and each with a handful of pre- and mid-rolls. They were making BANK.
While the new episodes were great at first — people were genuinely excited to hear more from their favourite hosts — the quality of the show as a whole started to deteriorate.
Eventually, as a listener, I could tell that the podcast had turned into more than the hosts had bargained for. Episodes got longer, topics were half-baked and felt rushed, and recaps were all over the place and hard to follow. One the hosts actually admitted that she was barely paying attention to the show anymore, and as a result started sharing some pretty ignorant and insensitive commentary about contestants.
I started tuning in less frequently because the quality of the show had clearly deteriorated, and it had become an exhausting listening experience.
I can’t help but think that they ended up in a get-rich-quick mindset, something Spotify has been learning about the hard way. Turning out a lot of content is tempting when you see the demand and the monetary incentives to do so. But it’s not worth it at the expense of your podcast's integrity. And, as we’ve also seen with Spotify, it’s not always sustainable.
There is no “getting rich quick” in podcasting. Podcasting is a long game.
Treat your audience with care.
This is your sign that if your audience is screaming for an apology, don't monetize it.
At one point, fans started to reach out to the hosts of this Bachelor recap podcast about their concerns about the show, its downturn and consistent insensitive comments. They were actively calling for accountability in DMs, on the Facebook group and subreddit communities. After all, fans were dedicating between 3 to 6 hours of listening time per week to the podcast!
After months, we got some semblance of recognition, and it wasn’t good. The podcast dropped an “accountability episode” on their feed. It was over an hour long, included 6 ad reads, and it was filled with excuses. Totally tone-deaf.
It was clear that they could no longer commit to the level of care that their audience deserved. They had lost sight of the fact that it was only because of their podcast fan base that they reached the level of success that they did.
This was the final straw for Erin and I, and we stopped listening to the show.
No podcast will ever be big enough to abandon its audience. Every good podcaster knows that listening to your audience and using them as a resource will only make your show better.
Give yourself a break.
There’s no reason to push yourself to create content if it’s not fun anymore. If you’re not having a good time, neither will your audience.
The tone of your voice, the way you engage in conversation, the quality of production and so much more can give clues that something is going wrong behind the scenes, even if you think you’re doing your best to fake it.
If you burn out, your podcast will too. So why taint the quality of your show and let a bad version of your podcast live on the internet forever?
I think the saving grace for my former favourite Bachelor recap podcast would have been something as simple as some downtime. Time for the hosts to rest, catch up on sleep, reconnect with their friends and family, have bubble bath — time to do anything but podcast.
Rest would have given them the time to reflect and reprioritize. Stress can make you impatient, navel-gaze, and become a lot less empathetic, even if you don’t mean to be. It was obvious that’s what had happened to this show.
But that doesn’t mean going missing-in-action on your feed either. Treating your audience with care means keeping them in the loop when something isn’t working anymore. Dropping a short voice note on your RSS feed is a great thing to do if you decide that your podcast deserves a break.
Be sincere and honour the support your audience has given you all this time. Give them an unambitious and realistic time frame of when the podcast might return to their feed, but also be honest if you don’t actually know yet if it will.
Taking a break doesn’t mean your show will lose all of its listeners either, especially not if you’ve made an effort to engage with them. Mine and Erin’s show is literal proof of this.
After nearly burning out after four seasons, we let our Alpaca Pals know that we’d be taking six months off before launching our next season. We used the time to rework the responsibilities between the two of us and refocus our marketing efforts. Since our time off and launching our 5th season, our show has grown faster than ever.
Maybe you’re producing a show that you can’t quite keep up with right now. Look around to your network of trusted peers and podcasting pros to outsource your work for a little while so you can recuperate. I’ve done that myself and am now part of a feisty little squad of freelancers who can take over edits for each other when one of us needs a vacation. Having that network has been a game changer for my mental health.
I get it. It can be really hard to slow your roll in the midst of a lot of momentum. Success can feel fleeting, and when creativity is flowing it can be difficult to stay grounded.
I’ve been really excited writing this newsletter and have been tempted many times to do more with it. But at the end of the day I know that sticking to a bi-weekly cadence is going to be key for me to build something that’s sustainable and frankly, enjoyable to read. I can’t burn out, not this early. I love talking about podcasting too dang much!
One of the reasons why podcasts are so easy to love is because of hosts and the teams that support them who aren’t afraid to get vulnerable. Be authentic with your approach to podcasting and your audience will thank you for it.
Don’t let this wonderful medium consume you. Podcasters are friends, not food.
Thoughts from the ecosystem:
Nora Loreto says you're fucking alive. Of course, you're good enough.
I am SO excited to bring Nora Loreto to this newsletter. I was immediatey invested in her work after I listened to her episode of Take Back the Fight all about social movement organizing (are we surprised?).
Nora is a Freelance Journalist based in Quebec City who co-hosts Sandy and Nora Talk Politics, a podcast about Canadian politics that is wonderfully unapologetic. The show is filled with brutally honest commentary and maybe more importantly, emotion — something that seems to be lacking in news coverage today.
I chatted with her about the art of unapologetic podcasting, whether or not journalism credentials are key to making a good podcast, and how to stay authetic. Plus, we got into some pretty hot takes about the state of Canadian podcasts.
This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.
To me your podcasting style is unapologetically badass. How do you relate to that sentiment?
It means not giving a rat’s ass. That's very important to me.
There's too much pressure in mainstream media to sanitize yourself and to have no opinions. The people who get promoted [in media] are the ones who tend to be the most “not gonna challenge authority, not gonna be a problem”.
And I hear from new journalists that they're really struggling to figure out how to find their stride within a mainstream world that really doesn't want them to be themselves, where they really want to be themselves in their reporting.
That's a perfect segue into the world of podcasting because that's where people can thrive in their own unapologetic-ness or their bias even.
But you're a freelance journalist, why did you get into the world of podcasting?
I studied broadcast journalism and before I dropped out I had a radio show at CKYN (rest in peace) in Toronto. [Podcasting] was very natural because I knew how to edit [audio] and I could produce. So then the only question became, “well, what's my podcast?”
It didn't take me very long to land on Sandy [Hudson]. She's a very good friend of mine. We have a long history of debating with one another.
When I left Toronto, it was just a selfish way for us to continue to stay in touch. And we knew that we had the kind of rapport that would allow us to explore political questions in a way that there really was an appetite for.
And so here we are almost six years later and the podcast is a big success. It's helping people navigate Canadian politics.
And we're no longer the only show in town. There's a lot of really cool political podcasts — leftist political podcasts — that people can choose from. And I just think that that's so awesome.
Oftentimes I find that I'm wondering as a podcast producer, “should I have more of a journalist background?”
You mentioned dropping out of journalism school, so how critical do you think that journalism skill is to making a good political opinion podcast?
It is a really interesting question because journalism school doesn't really prepare you for the “journalism”. You learn the bare bones of reporting; what's fair and balanced and unbiased and all this kind of thing.
But you don't really learn the things that will carry you through understanding. Like why when a government talks about fighting the deficit, that's mostly bullshit. You don't really go into that level of political analysis [in journalism school].
I think that the technical side of podcasting is an art. To know where to cut someone off, to know what to take out, to know how to formulate it into a narrative; that has a little bit to do with journalism but not much.
The journalism side is not hard either, and it's an art as well. But it also has some very basic tenets that I think that you [can] pick up on pretty quickly.
How to ask questions: There are some people in the world that will never be good at asking people questions. And you've met them in bars. You've met them at parties.
And then there are people who are just naturally inquisitive and they wanna know certain things and they're not all journalists. In fact, the vast majority are not journalists.
Being able to bring that inquisitive spirit, to know a bit about what you're talking about, then you get into the journalism world.
A big difference between radio and podcasts is the allowance for bias. Let's be honest, biased podcasts are super popular. How much do you think bias makes a podcast successful?
I think that people being honest about their biases in general makes journalism better. I think that people want to hear honesty and authenticity. They know that [if a] person is biased in some way, it allows them to navigate the conversation better.
Podcasting [is] not subject to the CRTC. We're not subject to the Journalist Standards and Practices, and we can do whatever the fuck we want.
What I think is so fascinating is that there's a complete lack of discussion about what the role of radio is in the world of podcasting. There still of course is a role for a regulated broadcast over public airways, but CBC seemingly doesn't understand the difference between radio and podcasting because more and more they're throwing podcasts onto the air. It's taking a place of radio [programming].
Radio is taking the “right now” of what's happening, it's live, it's active. It's something that I can tune in and within three minutes, I know who's talking.
Podcasting's not. Podcasts are a commitment and it's not even just a small commitment. Sometimes it's a commitment of 20 episodes.
There's a complete philosophical difference.
I really think the CBC higher ups don't understand this difference because if they understood the difference, we would not be subjected to their podcasts on the airways.
At the heart of it both play really, really important roles and need to be served by different kinds of audio. And I think the fundamental for both is that they're extremely intimate.
One of the big things, especially for women in podcasting, is imposter syndrome. How did you get to a place of being so authentic on your show?
I do not have imposter syndrome. I don't understand imposter syndrome. I can intellectually get it when I read someone that writes about having it, but I don't understand how you can exist in this world and think you're not good enough.
There's a lot of people who suck in this world, but even if they suck it's usually not because they suck at the job that they're doing. They usually just are a sucky person.
There is absolutely no shame in doing something [when] you don't know what you're doing. That's not imposter syndrome, that's literally learning on the fly.
There's certainly things I'm not good at. I cannot steer a canoe to save my life.
Dont worry, I’ve got you in the canoe department. (Fun fact: I have my level 4 ORCKA Certification - very Canadian of me.)
I run very, very slow. And as a soccer player, that's something that is in the front of my mind all the time.
Rather than having imposter syndrome about soccer, I'm like, “fuck it. I'm gonna play as much as I can because I love this sport and I don't care how slow I am. I'm going to find other ways to be a useful member of this team.”
Sometimes you do just have to fake it until one day you look around and go, “holy cow, I've done it!”
If you struggle with it, interrogate what it is that you feel like you're not good enough at because most people who are exalted in this country for being talented are fucking talentless.
Everything about society is underpinned by class and class connections and you will hit certain barriers because of class and race, white supremacy and colonization in this country. And maybe you'll be able to get through it.
But if you don't get through it, it's not because you're an imposter. It's just because there are barriers that have been set up to create the social order that we have in this country.
If you're authentic and you're doing good work, people will love it. You have to ignore some of the voices that you might have in your head saying you're not good enough. But you're fucking alive. Of course, you're good enough.
Thank you Nora for this massive pep-talk. I’m fired up!
Check out this Canadian Indie: Alpaca My Bags
A podcast about how to travel in a way that’s better for people and the planet.
Ya ya, I know you’ve heard about my podcast a number of times in this newsletter already. Well, it’s my birthday which means I now get to put my indie podcast blatantly and shamelessly in front of your face!
And guess what? Our episode about the Hippie Trail — the orginal van-lifer’s route of the 50s and 60s — was recenty shortlist nominated for “Best Storytelling” at the Traverse Creator Awards! Wish Erin and I lots of luck and check it out below!
True North Podcast Feature: Media Indigena with Rick Harp
A weekly roundtable about Indigenous issues and events in Canada and beyond.
As a settler in Canada, this latest episode from Media Indigena was completely fascinating, especially since we’re back in election season in Ontario and only six days away from upcoming municipal elections.
Joined by Indigenous academics from across the country, Rick Harp and his guests revisit the 2019 Federal election’s first debate, an infamous campaign scrum, and whether the real solution to Indigenous political woes might be an all-Indigenous party. They also have an interesting discussion about election campaigns approach “Indigenous affairs”.
This is a MUST LISTEN to understand settler politics from an Indigenous perspective and its dynamic with traditional First Nations governance.
Opportunities:
Canadian podcast maven Katie Jensen, Principal at Vocal Fry Studios, is hosting a free virtual learning session about the basics of podcasting, in collaboration with Concordia University on October 26th. Register here.
Anchor has released a beginner’s guide to pitching your podcast to press. Read it here.
CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: The first ever podcast studies ICA preconference invites scholars to present a range of works focusing on podcasting as a cultural, aesthetic, and institutional communicative form. Find more information here, and submit your proposal by Friday, December 2, 2022.
Nominations are open for the 2022 Discover Pods Awards. Submit your podcast here. Nominations close November 5, 2022!
CALL 1-844-POD-AT-ME: Tink* Media has released a super fun new podcast hotline! Call in to discover a new pod and wait for the beep to leave a recommendation. As always, don’t forget to submit your podcast to their Podcast Swap Database!
What’s going on in Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
NEW SHOW(S) ALERT: Three new shows have joined Harbinger Media Network in their 10th wave expansion including: Thirty Wood (how radical books contribute to the work of political movements), Press Progress’ Sources (reports from Canada’s favourite investigative journalism organization), and Green Majority Radio (environmental justice news).
READ: Pacific Content Sound Designer and digital nomad, Ryan Clarke, just wrote blog piece about how living abroad has impacted his approach to sound design. Read it here.
CANADIAN INDUSTRY NEWS: Congratulations are in order to CBC’s Kuper Island team for being shortlisted for the Rose d’Or Audio Entertainment 2022 award!
CANADIAN INDUSTRY NEWS: Did you submit your podcast to the Canadian Podcasting Awards this year? If you still haven’t, SUBMIT YOUR DANG ACCEPTANCE VIDEO (or at least let them know if you don’t intend to)! The team is still waiting on some videos so that they can finally announce the winners! Maybe you missed the email? Check if you’ve been nominated here.
CANADIAN INDUSTRY NEWS: Is PodCamp finally coming back to Toronto? What the heck is this tweet all about??
GLOBAL INDUSTRY NEWS: Spotify has cancelled 10 exclusive shows and Gimlet is crumbling (recommended reading on The Squeeze). Kim Kardashian thinks she’s making the next Serial (recommended reading on Vocal Fridays).
GLOBAL INDUSTRY NEWS: Alice Wong, Founder and Director of Disability Visibility Project, released her first audio essay as a nonspeaking person for KQED’s Perspective’s series. It’s a commentary on voice, communication access, and care. It’s really cool and really whitty. Listen.
Birthday fundraiser!
My birthday wish is to see safe, accessible, clean drinking water across Canada! Join me in donating to Water First.
Many Indigenous communities in Canada have identified the need for more young, qualified, and local personnel to support solving water issues, independently and for the long term. However, there is a lack of locally available opportunities for young adults to gain the relevant skills and experiences.
Donations support education and training, and fund young Indigenous adults to become certified water treatment plant operators in 15 months.
Finally, a word from Joe…
Thanks for supporting Pod the North, I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks!
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See you when I’m 30!
Kattie @podkatt
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