12 Tips to Improve Any Podcast: Mister Radio Podcast Audit

Mister Radio Audit

Niall: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Smarter Podcasting with me, your host, Niall Mackay. In this podcast, our aim is to make podcasts better. And in this episode, I’m going to give you another podcast audit. I started my first podcast in 2019 as a hobby. And from there, I went on to develop Seven Million Bikes podcasts, where we work with podcasters all around the world. to help them make better podcasts. In fact, we’ve worked with over 40 podcasts and produced over 700 episodes now. Now, in this audit, I’m speaking to someone who is a professor emeritus at Bergen College in New Jersey.

He’s been involved in radio, film, and television. Since the 1970s and he dabbles in podcasts as well as being a puppeteer. My guest today is the host of the Mr Radio podcast, which gives you a clue what the podcast is about, and my guest today is Marshall. Thank you very much for joining and agreeing to have your [00:01:00] podcast audited today, Marshall.

Marshall Katzan: Well, thank you very much for having me here.

Niall: So you’ve been involved in radio since the 1970s. What has been the biggest change that you have seen in technology? Because we, I mean, I was talking to somebody yesterday about how AI in just the last few years has revolutionized podcasting. What’s some of the big changes that you’ve seen?

Marshall Katzan: Oh, a lot of changes. So we, we, I started out recording on reel to reel tape and, uh, before that. I had a student who was recording with a wire recorder and he was one of the people who reported that the, uh, Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and he reported that. He, he did a recording on wire recording and he edited that with a cigarette ash. So, we’ve moved from editing with [00:02:00] cigarette ashes to, uh, having virtual AI edit for us.

Niall: One of the things that I learned recently which blew my mind was the phrase, the cutting room floor, because we talk about cutting stuff and I learned that the cutting room, cutting stuff comes from the phrase literally people would have to go through reels of tape and cut it and by the end of the day they would, the cutting room floor would be filled with these cuts and then they would have to be literally taped back together put back into the reel and then played and I was like Oh my goodness, when I edit, which I use the script, I literally highlight a sentence or a word, press delete on the computer, it disappears and we move on and that takes about a half second.

That blew my mind.

Marshall Katzan: The worst thing about that was when you cut some tape and you dropped it on the floor by accident with, uh, 20 other pieces of tape that were on the [00:03:00] floor, and then you realized you needed that piece of tape, that was a problem.

Niall: The other one that I thought was really funny but so frustrating was I know when I’m editing, like I’m talking about taking a sentence and then deleting it, right? But sometimes that completely changes the cadence of the sentence because you’ve cut it somewhere that doesn’t make sense. And then I can undo it, redo it, fix it.

And even now AI technology will allow you to change the cadence of the sentence or the ending of the words. So it sounds correct. And I heard the story where like a producer An editor would send the script to a producer like the transcript, and then he would be like, no, cut this out, move this here, change this around.

But when you do that, then it completely changes the cadence and the rhythm of the sentence. But you can’t heal that when you read it. And that would cause all sorts of problems as well.

Marshall Katzan: Yeah, that’s, that’s an important part. I, I don’t use AI for editing. I, I do it all manually. by [00:04:00] listening to it. And the cadence is very important. Uh, having, having some room tone in there to fill in spots that, uh, you may want to cut out. So yes, cadence is definitely important. And I’m not sure that AI is capable of doing that. Maybe it is, I’m not sure.

The only, I, go ahead, I’m sorry.

Niall: script adding a feature called Regenerate recently, which you can regenerate a world. And it will, and it’s not perfect and it doesn’t always work, but just that example, like if you were to cut a sentence so the last word doesn’t go up or down at the end or fit that cadence, the AI will actually regenerate it to fit into the sentence, which just blows my mind.

Again, it doesn’t always work. AI is not perfect, but the fact that it exists is just mind blowing. Well, let’s get into the audit. So we always start with the same questions. So I have a series of questions for you before we start. So number one is, What equipment [00:05:00] do you record with?

Marshall Katzan: Well, I, uh, if I’m doing something in the field, I have a Sony digital recorder that I, that I use. Don’t ask me model numbers, I I can never remember anything with regards to model numbers, but if I’m in the field, I will record with, with the Sony, uh, digital recorder, then I’ll bring it home as a file and I use, uh, A, uh, Vintage Mac Computer, OS, I think 10, OS, it’s Snow Leopard, so that, it’s pretty old. And on that, I have, uh, Pro Tools, and I have a program called Sound Studio. So I import the files. into either sound studio or pro tools. Then [00:06:00] after I do the basic editing for, for my, my programs, when I edit, it’s usually a, uh, a phone conversation. So I use a, uh, a line output. Into, into the computer, and that’s set up in my closet behind me. I take that finished file, I bring it to the computer I’m on right now, and I use Logic Pro to tweak it up.

Niall: Well, that answers my next question, which was going to be, what do you edit with? Which, so that’s, that’s awesome. Those are tools that I don’t know how to use at all, but going back. So when you’re recording a phone interview, what microphone do you use? Do you wear headphones, things, what other equipment do you use?

Marshall Katzan: Okay. So, um, I, when I first started doing podcasts, I wasn’t interviewing people. I would just go around with my. portable recorder, and I would interview, and I would record street musicians and maybe [00:07:00] talk to them and get a little bit of, of their audio on the portable deck. Um, so during the plague, I converted my closet behind me and I used my puppet stage as part of the sound. Deadening, and I bought a Shure SMB, whatever model, number, microphone for that, and I do use, uh, I use Sony headphones, don’t ask me the model number, so I, I have the Sony headphones, the, the Shure mic for my interviewing, uh, occasionally I’ll, I’ll use Zoom, but mostly it’s, it’s, uh, phone lines.

Niche

Niall: Nice, alright, so you’ve got some good equipment then, that’s awesome. So what would you say is your podcast niche?

Marshall Katzan: I wish I knew. I wish I knew. Um, I try to cover a little bit of everything. So initially it was street musicians. Then [00:08:00] I, when I decided, okay, let me call people up and interview them, I decided I’ll talk about anything. I’ll talk about politics, I’ll talk about education, I’ll talk about religion, science, industry, arts, and you know, I guess that’s my niche, a little eclectic, uh, this and that.

Niall: Alright, now depending on what research you read, there are about 250, 000 podcasts published every week. Some research says 400, 000. What makes your podcast different than all of those ones?

Marshall Katzan: I wish, I wish it was different than all of them. Uh, I, I, I think my podcast, maybe if I’m lucky, I have four listeners. Uh, don’t know what makes it different.

Niall: That’s all right. It’s okay. So what is the goal of your podcast? Then why do you make a podcast?

Marshall Katzan: I’m, I’ve always liked radio. I like [00:09:00] recording things. I like editing and I like talking to people. So I’m, I’m not making a million dollars on my, as a matter of fact, I’m probably spending a million dollars on my podcast.

Niall: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marshall Katzan: I, just enjoy doing it. I’m, I’m, uh, retired and this keeps me out of trouble.

Niall: So at the end of each episode, what lessons or values do you want the listener to come away with?

Marshall Katzan: Well, hopefully they had an enjoyable time and. Perhaps listen to something that they didn’t know about. I occasionally I will get feedback, uh, telling me that, uh, they, somebody never really knew about what I had been talking about. Uh, but you know, I, I look at the analytics and, and I see that people are listening to it for a minute. two [00:10:00] minutes. So I really don’t know how many people are listening, how much they’re listening to, or if it’s just a bot that is giving me the analytics

that nobody, nobody really listened to it, but apparently a bot has made it so that it looks like

Niall: yeah, yeah. So where are you getting, where are you going to for those analytics?

Marshall Katzan: well, I’ll look at, I’m on sound, I use, uh, SoundCloud, so they have, uh, they, they tell you how many people have listened to it, where the people are from, uh, now that, uh, podcasts have become videos, which I don’t understand, I started, I started doing YouTube videos, the podcast that I asked you to, uh, look at, listen to was originally just audio.

So [00:11:00] now we have to make, I look at the analytics in YouTube. Um, I occasionally look at the analytics in iTunes and then, uh, chartable and the variety of different. places that I go and look.

Niall: That’s cool that you’re doing that. What, uh, have you noticed any like trends then, or what have you been able to take away from the

Marshall Katzan: Well, the short, the, the shorter the piece,

Niall: Yeah.

Marshall Katzan: the more people are listening to it. I have some pieces that just music that street musicians would, would do. And, uh, that has more, downloads or listens than something that I do that I try to make it no longer than a half hour.

Uh, but the shorter ones seem to be the more popular ones.

Niall: right. Nice. Well, so let me just, in response to some of the things we’ve just talked about, I think, um, [00:12:00] the, the question, what makes it different? I think the biggest answer everybody comes to, and it took me a long time to come to this conclusion, is, and it’s a difficult one because it seems so egotistical, but what makes it different is you, because there’s only one of you.

And so I would almost even lean into that more, make it like this is a podcast that you’re presenting because people are listening because they enjoy listening to you, they enjoy what you’re producing. That’s what makes your podcast stand out because it is difficult to make your podcast different to 250, 000 other podcasts, but there’s only one of you.

So I would lean into that more in terms of making it stand out. The goal of your podcast. It’s amazing that you do it because you like it, right? You’re retired and you, you have fun doing it, which is really amazing. But you do look at the analytics. So you obviously are interested in that. Do you ultimately want people to listen for longer or do you want more [00:13:00] listeners?

Marshall Katzan: Well, uh, before I answer that question, I

just want to get back to what you just said about how the podcast is, is me and a good friend of mine. I, I. Forced him to listen to one of my shows and he says, you don’t sound like yourself. So I think you’re correct

that you really have to sound like yourself and the analytics, uh, your question was would I rather have people listen a long time or more people? I think I’d rather have them listening a long time

Niall: Now, and that’s great. And that’s, to be honest, from what I’ve heard, because all the charts are like proprietary, and so nobody really knows, you know, being top of Apple charts doesn’t mean that you have the most downloads. So, it’s really difficult. I read an interesting article because they base it also on engagement and growth.

So, you could have 10 listeners and you go to 100 listeners. So your [00:14:00] growth is off the chart. It doesn’t mean you now have 10, 000 listeners, but you could be number one in the Apple podcast charts because you’ve had this, they’re going to see, maybe it only happens over one week, but they’re going to see in that week that you’ve had this exponential growth.

They also apparently, again, it’s proprietary. So we don’t really know what they’re looking at, but they also look at engagement rates. And I think that is, I know on YouTube as well, it’s more and more important. They’re not looking at just How many people press play? It’s how many people press play and kept listening for more than 30 seconds, more than one minute.

I know on YouTube, which is a completely different medium because it’s video, but it blew my mind. So on YouTube, when you start to look at the analytics, it tells you how many people are listening after 30 seconds. And it literally says if more than 50 percent of people who started your episode are still listening at 30 seconds, That is typical.

So I have an episode recently on YouTube, which I do as well, was 57 percent of people were still watching after 30 seconds. And it was like, this is a better than [00:15:00] normal. And you’re like, Oh my goodness. So it on video, you’re expected to lose half of your listeners within the first 30 seconds. Podcasting is very different.

What we do It’s Seven Million Bikes Podcast. When we’re making episodes, and we’ve only started this in the last six months or so, and we’ve noticed a massive uptick in engagement, is we take the best clips, so maybe even just three or four sentences, and we move them to the beginning. So we cut them like the cutting room floor and we make what we call it internally is like the hook.

So we create the first 30 seconds. And if you go and look at any of the podcasts we work on on YouTube, we put like a filter over it. We add captions to make it really obvious that this isn’t the main episode. This is just the intro. Obviously on audio, we can’t add a filter and we can’t add captions. But we add music to try and make it obvious to them.

And we do just one sentence, just a quick little introduction so that someone listening to this episode gets a teaser. You know, we work really hard [00:16:00] on choosing something that is intriguing, even maybe controversial. We don’t give the answer away. We try and choose something to go right at the beginning.

So the listener hears it and they go, Ooh, I want to hear more of this. And so we’re trying to focus here to get that engagement. Cause I think that’s what helps be recognized in the charts or maybe featured more on the Apple podcast app. Again, it’s really difficult to know exactly what goes into being featured because they keep it secret, but we work hard on that on engagement.

And so it does take a little bit of extra work. If you have the time to do it, if you have the ability with your editing tools, which I’m sure you do obviously with using Pro Tools, just add a couple of little sentences at the beginning to try and hook people and get them listening for longer. Um, and I think that will help your engagement rates for sure.

Marshall Katzan: and, and you can probably do that for audio as well, just

a

Niall: Oh yeah, well, AI

Marshall Katzan: And, uh, I never thought of that. I think that’s, that’s a good idea. And I doubt [00:17:00] that AI could do that. Do you think?

Niall: is getting ridiculous. What you could do with AI, so like I mentioned, we used a script. You could So actually, yeah, you can, you can put it into the script now and say, uh, give me the highlights. Like anything, and I was talking to Sam Sethi just yesterday, who’s going to be on an upcoming episode. He says we shouldn’t call it artificial intelligence, it should be assisted intelligence, which I absolutely love.

Because it will help you find the answer, but ultimately you need to decide. Am I going to use this? How am I going to cut it up? Everything with AI these days just helps you do things quicker, but ultimately you still need a human being to be able to do it. So I think we do use AI to find these clips.

You can ask the AI like, find me the best clips or the most intriguing ones. Some, sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it does. But, um, for audio, yeah. I mean, so we do it when we make a video or an audio clip. What we do is we will make the video and then take the audio directly from the video. [00:18:00] So we’re not creating two different, uh, assets, we call them, or two different mediums.

We’re just creating one thing. So those clips definitely work, uh, for the audio as well. So,

Marshall Katzan: How long would these clips be? 10 seconds? 15 seconds? for the intro.

Niall: Each clip we try and make, the total hook we try and make no longer than 30 to 45 seconds. So it might just be three or four literally sentences. And that’s something I work with my editor a lot and she gets, she’s so good at it now because in the beginning she’d maybe send like a 30 to 40 second and I’d be like, no, no, that’s too long.

That’s like, I mean, I’d make fun of her. I’ll be like, that’s really boring. We need something that’s not boring. Sometimes she still does it. She’ll send something and I watch it and I’m like, so my biggest question is always. What value is the listener going to get from this? Like you want something that’s a tease that they listen to that little hook and they go, Ooh, I want to learn more about that.

So sometimes she’ll send me something and it’s the answer. And I’m like, no, no, you’re already giving the answer [00:19:00] away. You’re giving the house keys away. We just want to tease the listener. And that’s. Or that’s how we do it to try and hook the listener so that then they’re going to listen for longer because they want to find that answer and they don’t know when it’s coming as well, right?

So if you give that little tease in the beginning, you know, for you, it could be you’re about to hear one of the best street artists in Hoboken, New Jersey. Well, they don’t know when that’s coming, so they’re going to listen through to try and find out where it is.

Marshall Katzan: Interesting because, uh, the show that I asked you to listen to, and I don’t know why I asked you to listen to that show, but the artist was my mentor, and he, he worked for Walt Disney, and he said, he told me once, the, it’s, the hardest thing is to say something in 30 seconds. It’s easy to say it in an hour, but try to say it in 30 seconds.

So what you’re saying, I’m going to pick up on that one.

Niall: Awesome. I mean, I’m Scottish and I love to talk, so for me, to try and say something in as short a succinct way as possible is [00:20:00] one of the most difficult things for me, because I would rather try and say it in 30 minutes rather than 30 seconds, so completely. So the episode I listened to It was a walking jazz history.

I don’t know if that was the one that you said, but cause I

Marshall Katzan: Yes. Yes.

Niall: one. So when I do, let’s, I’ll go through these, this audit. One of the things I do mostly is I’m listening for audio quality because your content is your content. I’m not here to tell you how to do your content. And we do so many different genres that I could never give you a educated opinion on that.

But going back to one of the questions I asked when I said, what is your niche? So one of the things was. One of the biggest things that people say in podcasting is you need to choose a very specific niche and niche down on that. And so in your intro, in your about section, it says that you interview about anything politics, education, religion, science, industry, all the arts.

Now, I would give [00:21:00] advice if you want to make your podcast more successful, choose just one of those things because you want people. One of the biggest things about podcasts is there’s so many podcasts and go and go into Spotify or Apple podcast and type in everything and anything and you will see about a thousand podcasts that are about everything and anything.

And it’s one of the things I coach people on the most is don’t do a podcast about everything because then it becomes about nothing. But in your case, because you have such a background in radio, if you want to make your niche you, then you can cover all those topics, but I would change your about section to say, this is a podcast by Marshall Katzman who’s been involved in radio since 1970.

Have a couple of things in there about you specifically. Um, even your title, I would change it to Mr. Radio. by Marshall Katzmann or with Marshall Katzmann. So people see that right away, like make it more about you. So if people know who you [00:22:00] are or they want to get to know who you are right away, they see your name.

They look at the about section because you’re thinking about when people are scrolling on their phone and they’re searching for something, they’re searching for a religion and then your podcast comes up. What makes yours stand out? So right now, Mr. Radio, and then you look at the about section and it’s about everything.

If they’re looking for a religion, They’re going to say, ah, no, I want something more specific. What was the other thing you said in there? Uh,

Marshall Katzan: Politics,

Niall: science, industry. So all of those things, if someone’s looking for one of those things, they’re going to see, ah, this is about everything. I want something more specific.

But if you put in Mr. Radio by Marshall Katz, when they say the about section, I’ve been in radio, I like to talk about all these topics, blah, blah, blah. I listen to, did you just walk by?

Marshall Katzan: I saw her go by.

Niall: back, let me just redo that bit, then I’m going to cut that out. Did you go up behind me? Oh, I’ll just cut it out then.

I just need to know so I know [00:23:00] the screen doesn’t cut you out. It doesn’t matter, I’m just going to redo it. Um, what bit was that? So, I love radio. I listen to radio every morning. To be honest, I listen to the podcast version of the radio show. But they talk about everything and anything. I join, I listen to it every day because I love their personalities.

So that can definitely work, but you’ve got to lean into it. Like the radio show I listen to is called The Matt and Jerry Show. It’s about them. You know, it’s about them. So you join for the personality. So I would, I would suggest your niche be yourself. I’m not suggesting that you choose one of politics, education or religion.

Make it yourself, but then really lean into that. So even your artwork, make it. Bigger, your picture was quite low resolution when I looked at it, make it a high resolution picture, use your iPhone, get the best picture you can, have your face bigger, I’ve literally just actually redone my artwork, which [00:24:00] is, haven’t changed it in years, and for the first time I put my picture on it, which I had never done before, because I didn’t really want it to be about me, but the more I’m doing this, you realize that people listen to podcasts and radio because they like you.

So I’m kind of leaning into that. So I’ve just changed my artwork and put my picture on it, which is not something I naturally would want to do, but I’m going to, I just changed it last week. So I’m going to track the listeners and see if it makes any difference. It might make no difference, but so to go, or the other question was as well, when I looked through your Spotify, How often do you post your podcast?

Marshall Katzan: It depends. Uh, I would say, well, during the plague, I was doing it more, uh, on, uh, you know, a couple of months, but, uh, now, now I’m working on a sort of a documentary. So that’s been keeping me occupied. So I, I really, I’m, I’m [00:25:00] not, I don’t post every. You know, every Monday at 3 a. m. in the

Niall: yeah, and that is the biggest piece of advice to grow your podcast, get more listeners, is consistency. And I also like to say not just consistency in terms of posting, consistency in terms of audio quality, consistency in terms of what you talk about. One of the podcasts that I know of I don’t listen to it because they always change their format.

One minute he’s doing like a documentary style piece. Then the next he’s doing, it’s just him. Then the next one, it’s a panel of four people. And so I never really know what his podcast is about, even though I know it’s good quality and he’s a good presenter. So I would say aim for consistency in everything.

If you can aim for consistency in terms of publishing. I saw when I looked, it looked like it was around every two weeks. If you can try and do a regular schedule of Monday at 3 a. m. every two weeks, something like that. Um, it is hard work. I know that myself from doing podcasts. [00:26:00] For my main podcast, my most successful one, I’ve done seasons.

So I’ve recorded maybe 10 or 12 episodes. I don’t have like a fixed amount. of episodes. Again, it’s just based on how much time I have. I don’t make any money from that podcast either. So it’s based on how much time I can give to it. But I’ll do a season of 10 or 12 episodes. I’ve taken breaks for three months before, because I just don’t have the time or the energy to make any more podcasts.

And then I’ll come back with another season. Sorry, I’m going to sneeze.

Excuse me. So I’ll make a season of 10 or 12 episodes, take a break sometimes for up to three months and then come back and I don’t lose any listeners from that. So I would just look at your consistency of, uh, when you’re podcasting,

Marshall Katzan: So maybe, uh, record podcasts, have a bunch of them, and then once a week.

Niall: [00:27:00] absolutely

Marshall Katzan: of, instead of uploading it, waiting a couple of months, and doing another

Niall: hundred percent and even get on a schedule. So this podcast that we’re doing, Smarter Podcasting, I’ve been terrible with this, been really bad at publishing. I was doing publishing whenever and wherever I could because I would. Wasn’t publishing consistently. And partly was when I first started, uh, I was going to aim for every two weeks.

And then I listened to Adam Shively, who’s an amazing business, podcasting, business coach. And he was on this show and he said, Oh, you should publish every week. So I was like, all right, I should do every week. But then that became too much. And then I ended up not publishing at all. I’m now back on a regular cadence, but it’s every two weeks.

Cause I can manage that with all the other podcasts that I make and work on. So. Try and choose something that you can fit. If it’s only once a month, do once a month, but make that a regular day to day time that you’re going to publish. Um, so going into the quality of it, um, there was a few things in here I think you could definitely [00:28:00] do better.

So on the walking jazz history, one of the things I could hear at just even in the at 20 seconds was mouth noises. And that can happen when you have a really good microphone. So if you have a Shure microphone, if your mouth is a little bit dry, maybe if you’ve eaten some food before, you can hear that, like, I don’t want to even do it into the microphone, but that kind of like mealiness from your mouth, which it does come from really good microphones and I’ve noticed that.

So look out for things like that. Have a, have a glass of water before you start. Um, I thought, right. So the introduction for the guest for me was too long. It was about a minute. And, uh, if you remember before we started this episode, I said, tell me three things about yourself. So that’s my way of introducing someone is just to one, two, three, then give the name and it gets the audience intrigued as to who it’s going to be.

Normally the listener really, uh, sorry, the guest, like yourself, really enjoys it as well. I found that your introduction was so long. I found myself tuning out [00:29:00] and it was too much information to take in. So for example, like I said to you, and I sent you the prep form, um, How do I introduce you? I think I even said in the prep form.

How do I, give me three things, but then you sent me a link to your resume and when I looked at your resume, I was like, oh my goodness, this is so long. I mean, so intriguing, but I hear it, not just on your podcast, on lots of different podcasts where they will almost read the guest’s resume, you know, they’ll be like in 1970, they went to this college of this, in 1975, they won an award and they’ll go on for ages and it just really loses.

Again, we’re talking about trying to get listeners to listen for longer. So my advice would just be do three bullet points that really sum up the guest and then straight into it. And then there was again, I told you a couple of things at one minute, I could hear something, I think being dropped. Maybe I’m not too sure exactly what it was.

Uh, you, there was a point where you could hear papers being moved around. So again, background noise like that. And one of the problems that a lot of people [00:30:00] have, and it’s really difficult to overcome was that the guests audio. was really bad as well, which is really difficult because we as podcasters have the Shure microphone and we have the closet and everything set up for a good podcast.

And then we invite guests on and then they use the laptop microphone or a terrible microphone. And so, and then I’ve, I’ve edited a podcast before where the guest was outside recording and I was like, Oh my goodness, cause you could just hear the wind going by and their microphone and things like that.

So it’s really common thing. You can prep for it by just You know, giving the guest a little bit of coaching before, you know, be somewhere quiet. Even right now, you’re wearing iPod headphones. Those are perfect. Those are so much better than using your laptop. So give them little coaching points like that.

Like, if you have any type of headphones, put them on. AirPods, no, anything like that at all is gonna, it’s gonna help as well.

Marshall Katzan: Well,

Niall: Yeah,

Marshall Katzan: alert,

that, that, uh,

that guest, uh, is deceased, but that was an interview that I [00:31:00] took a microphone and put it on the, the, uh, the, the receiver part of my, uh, Telephone and recorded it on an audio cassette. Yeah.

Niall: what it sounded like, yeah, that makes sense. Um, there’s another bit where you cut to the audio of a female speaking and I don’t know if that’s the part you’re talking about, but the quality is so poor you can barely understand or barely hear what she’s saying.

Um,

Marshall Katzan: was from, that was from a VHS tape

Niall: Right.

Marshall Katzan: That

Niall: That makes sense then as well. And then there was a part where the music was too loud while someone was speaking, so just making the music, making sure the music level was ducked down when somebody’s speaking. ’cause it made it really ha hard. Ma read Me Read, made it really difficult to understand what they were saying and I think this maybe comes from your radio background, but there was a part that I found out the music played for too long in between people speaking.

’cause for me [00:32:00] podcast is all about people talking and I know some people. Wanna tune in for music. Maybe it just needed a bit of a, uh, preparation or saying like, you know, we’re gonna listen to music for a little bit if you wanted to play that for so long. ’cause when I listen to a podcast, I’m expecting to hear people talk.

And then this music played for quite long in between people speaking. So that kind of made me tune out a little bit as well. There was a part where you were talking and there was a buzzing sound that was going on as well. So again, maybe in some sort of post production that, that could be helped. Um, and then at six minutes, it cut to a speaker with really bad audio as well, as well.

So just kind of overall some quality issues. And I think for me, audio quality is more important than the content because I would turn off a podcast as soon as I hear things like buzzing, papers dropping. And using things like Pro Tools and Assure SMB, you obviously have amazing equipment and audio editing software.

So all of that can be fixed in the pre and post production as well. But overall, I [00:33:00] mean, you tell, you can obviously tell you have a background in radio. Uh, the episodes were really well researched as well, which I know takes so much time as well to go and do that research and then present it. And it was really well presented.

So just a couple of things on the quality there to look out for that can. Elevate it. I find that with Elevate now, I used to love that.

Hold on.

Marshall Katzan: I’m still here.

Niall: Something is playing right now and I have no idea where it’s playing from.

Marshall Katzan: I don’t hear it.

Niall: Oh my goodness, my Spotify just started playing out of nowhere and it was the Jordan Harbinger show. All I could hear was somebody speaking. So sorry, let me, I’ll cut that out because I was obviously so confused. What was the last thing I was saying? Um,

Marshall Katzan: Audio quality.

Niall: yeah, that’s right. So for me, audio quality is more important.[00:34:00]

For me, audio quality is more important than the quality of your content, because if I turn on a podcast and I hear things like papers being rustled, things being dropped, I can’t hear the person, I’m going to turn that off right away, which is a real shame because it means no matter how good the quality of your content is, you’re going to lose listeners.

So if you want to keep listeners listening, get more listeners for me. The audio quality is the number one thing and that’s why when we work on podcasts, we do our best to make it sound as good as possible. But again, I’m just one person that’s giving advice. You can, you can probably talk to somebody else and they’ll tell you the complete opposite to what I’m saying, but I hope that helps.

Uh,

Marshall Katzan: Oh,

very, very much. And especially the, uh, the, the hook, the 30, the 10, 15 second hook at the beginning, that’s a, that’s a, an idea I’m going to have to incorporate.

Niall: Awesome. Well, so send me your new episodes when you’ve, When you’ve got them so I can hear these changes, [00:35:00] let me know any other changes you make in terms of like the cadence or the rhythm of the podcast, how often it comes out, the consistency, uh, keep me updated. I mentioned about changing the about section in the artwork to make it focus more on you, which I know for me is just such a weird thing to do, but I’ve been podcasting for so many years now.

I’ve started to learn that. Yeah, like I mentioned, people come for you. So you do have to kind of lean into that a little bit, but I’m sure as a radio presenter that you’re used to that as well. So keep me updated and thank you very much for letting me

audit your podcast.

Marshall Katzan: Thank you. I enjoyed this. And I learned a lot.

Niall: Perfect. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Smarter Podcasting with me, Niall Mackay, the podcast guy. Thank you very much to Marshall Katzmann for being a guest today. If you want a podcast audit, then just send me a message. Make sure you go back and listen to our past episodes as well.

We want to help you make the best podcast. And please don’t forget to rate, review, subscribe, turn on notifications, all of [00:36:00] that good stuff, so other people can find this episode. I hope you got good value out of it, and if you did get good value out, value, and if you did get good value from it, and you think it’s worthwhile, the best thing that you can do is share it with another podcast.

So thank you very much for listening to this episode, so thank you very much for listening to this episode of Smarter Podcasting. Have an amazing day. Thank you, Marshall. Cheers.

Marshall Katzan: Thank you.