Listening now. Will give full feedback on this and the first episode (which feels so long ago already, doesn't it?) when I'm back home, but my quick first impression is: this is what we should be aiming for. Half an hour of solid discussion on one topic which we know is going to be interesting to our audience, with minimal rambling. Pad this out by an extra 15-30 minutes to briefly touch on other topics and we've got a great base for our main podcast, but we also shouldn't afraid to record these shorter shows when there's big news that we want to react to quickly. Also, there is so much swearing in this show, I had forgotten quite how much. x) We might want to have a warning on the podcast article, maybe even once to cover all future episodes. Not that I care, but I know others do. Oh, and I'm really happy with how I sound, finally!
I couldn't agree more with your sentiments about recording some mini casts when there is breaking news. I have no issues with that at all.
As for your thoughts about the show length, I still maintain that the podcast should be 60 - 90 minutes in length. I'd say 60 minutes is probably the average length of most podcasts but when there is a good conversation going, some of them run over by about 30 minutes or so. I don't want to stop a good conversation for the sake of keeping a show at 60 minutes.
As for your thoughts about the "rambling", you're never going to be able to cut that completely out of any podcast. This happens even in regular terrestrial radio talk shows from time to time. It's organic conversation and you will never be able to cut it out completely. Editing out all of these side conversations can sometimes remove context and make things seem awkward.
The show should always, in theory, be an introduction, bringing up news topics in brief, a main topic of discussion for the show, listener feedback, and an outro.
Pixel said:
Remember to post this up on Facebook and twitter. Get into the habit of using these platforms for promotion. This is a huge opportunity to show that we are a long running, reliable, active community.
I'd be happy to post the show to Facebook and Twitter. It sounds like there are only certain people that have access to be able to make those posts though. I'm not sure that I would be one them.
Claymore said:
Personally I really loved this half-an-hour format. It's just a really nice chunk of time that I find can easily manage to listen to. Anything longer and I find that I specifically have to set aside the right time to engage with it, or to break it up into segments to listen to. This is why I haven't had a chance to look into the first one yet. 1:33 is just a really long time, lol. So, can I selfishly make a suggestion that future podcasts be in these more bite-sized chunks?
One other minor suggestion is that, though I loved the free-for-all aspect, I felt that some awkward silences could have been edited out. Er, like the one after the Samuel Jackson / Barret talk, or when participants were waiting to see who would speak first.
I appreciate the feedback Claymore. I can't guarantee that every episode will be a half hour. As I was explaining to Flintlock above, the average run time for a podcast is generally 60 minutes, some run longer. I don't want to kill or a butcher a good conversation for the sake of time. Most podcasts were intended to be used to listen on a car ride (or whatever transit system you use) or at work, similar to the way that terrestrial radio talk shows work now.
As for the awkward silences, I don't really feel like I left any in there. Unedited, the show ran about 46 minutes with the intro, outro, and trailer inserted. I always remove a great deal of the silence that happens when we record. However, you can't remove all of the silences. Doing so would make the show sound awful. It would sound like everybody is basically talking right on top of each other. You have to keep some of those silences in. Also, the Sam Jackson conversation had a much longer silence originally and I edited out a very large portion of it. The joke was kind of odd and I originally was just going to edit out the whole joke and what followed. However, when I did, it just made what followed very odd and out of context a bit.
Lex said:
+1 on editing out the awkward silences, I haven't listened to this yet but I remember a few of them where we were just giving each other space to speak, I did assume they'd be edited out. If need be I can re-edit and re-up the thing.
There really aren't any awkward silences left. I removed the vast majority of it. You have to leave some silence between remarks. I have read many articles about Podcast editing and most of them say the same things about making edits:
1. Listeners don't want, and therefore, don't expect perfection. They want to hear the hosts make mistakes from time to time. It makes the conversation seem truly organic.
2. Don't eliminate all of the silence, just minimize long silences. I always eliminate the long silences. There will always be some silence in conversation. Even in a real life conversation with friends or on a terrestrial radio talk show.
Cthulhu said:
Re: the language, we may need to change the age rating on the podcast information, else Apple may get upset. We should probably flesh out that information (see other thread / poast from a couple days ago); we'll need a flashier title (should probably include Final Fantasy in the name / description for findability), and maybe update the logo as it appears in iTunes.
Also, are there other podcast aggregators / search engines? Spotify, for example? Google Play?
I'm certainly not opposed to renaming the podcast. I just figured that you would want to brand the show with the website so that folks knew where it was being hosted. It should draw in traffic to the site. We could rename it to TheLifeStream.Net Final Fantasy Podcast. It just seems like it is a mouthful. We can certainly discuss it.
As for the age rating, one of the podcast hosting services I used on a previous show provided the ability to mark a show as having explicit content. Does Bluberry offer this? If so, then we should probably check that box. That will tell iTunes that every show published has Explicit content.
There are other podcast services out there. However, I'm pretty sure the big 3 are:
iTunes
Stitcher Radio
Google Play store
EDIT: So I just finished relistening to the show and there really isn't an awkward silence after Flintlock's Sam Jackson related joke. It is an awkward moment, however. I think it is really due to the delay on the delivery of the punchline. As I stated above, I did initially try to just remove the joke and what followed but when I did, it just made the end of the show seem a bit off. So, I left it in and removed the a ton of the silence that surrounded that piece of the show.
