Not Soup

Podcasting is, honestly, one of my favorite things.

It’s an amazing techology, and it gives a voice to anyone that wants one, but every once in a while (especially nights like tonight when I would rather be podcasting than working) I wonder if maybe those diverse voices are a little too spread out. For those of you that may not be familiar, I do a comics podcast called Comics Radar and a quick search on Podcast Alley shows 200 results for “Comic Books” (I think it maxes out at 200 results) and on iTunes you get a similar 200+ results. All manner of shows all manner of voices. Great, right?

Well, let’s take a closer look. Out of these 200, how many have podfaded? (podfade: v. to no longer be publishing episodes without announcing you’re no longer doing episodes) How many put out only 1 episode a month? I’ll admit, I’m guilty on occasion. A quick look through the top 25 (I’m ranked 33 for full disclosure) I see one duplicate feed, about 5 that haven’t updated in a month, a few that haven’t updated in 2007. one that hasn’t updated in 2 years. Well, there’s not really much you can do about a duplicate feed, or really those that haven’t updated in a year or so, so I’m not really talking about them. I want to look at the other portion.

The portion that puts out one or two episodes a month, maybe less. Again, I’m sometimes guilty myself.

And even for ones that are consistently putting out content, what are their subscriber numbers? I know from being in Farpoint that my numbers are fairly good, at least in my mind, and from talking to other podcasters numbers around 100 listeners per show or less aren’t uncommon. 

So, we have 2 groups, one with a great number of listeners that doesn’t consistently put out content and one group that is putting out content, but doesn’t have the numbers.

Why don’t these two groups merge? work together? and I don’t mean doing some large group podcast, there are already a handful of group podcasts, with a varying degree of quality and popularity. I mean almost like an audio magazine of sorts. Pick up any magazine, you’ll see a series of stories and articles each contributing there own portion of one whole. Why aren’t there more podcasters doing this? contributing their variety of talents to create one great comics podcast group rather than a bunch of good ones? And we can even go outside of the podcast itself?

For example, say I team up with somebody in California, and someone in New York, and someone in Detroit. And we all come together under the COMICSrCOOL banner. Well, maybe Mr. California is really good at doing graphics and Mr. Detroit is a web programmer, meanwhile, I love working with audio and making it sound as good as possible, and maybe Mr. Detroit has a bunch of contacts, or maybe he just has a really strong interview style. Each of them can contribute their own strength. Outside of that, when there’s a convention or tech gathering in California, COMICSrCOOL has a prescence there. Con in NY? COMICSrCOOL has a prescence there. Suddenly, COMICSrCOOL.com is growing in traffic, has a strong national audience and, if they want, can bring in more ad revenue and sponsorships than any of them could have individually.

We also have a third group, people that would be interested in podcasting, but don’t want to put the work into it. Don’t want to go through the hosting, the feed setup, submitting to iTunes, yada, yada, yada. Would this cut down that stepping stone? Make podcast creation even easier if I knew somebody would be readily available to help me create it. Podcasters are already an extremely friendly group, but having someone that has a direct interest in you succeeding is even better, no?

But surely there would have to be something they would sacrifice, right? granted they would be dividing revenue, but because of increased prescence, revenue is probably higher than it would be otherwise. The only thing I can see that people would really have to give in on would be ego. I know for me, I’d love to team up with other podcasters and help us all improve, but I would be hesitant to give up my Comics Radar site and podcast, but ultimately I would if I thought it would be for the best.

Granted, I’m talking about Comics Podcasts, because that’s where I see the majority of glut. But I’m sure there are other areas where people working together, would be stronger than the parts. What if Dragonpage, The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy, and The Secrets teamed up? Then you have one podcast about writing and marketing novels and interviewing people that have already done it. I’m willing to bet that these three podcasts have quite a bit of overlap in their audiences anyways.

Is there something I’m missing? Why does every podcast seem happy to operate out of its own little whole instead of trying to work together?