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Sign me up, I have an idea for a podcast: Video

In this session from 2018's Radio Alive Conference, a panel of podcasting experts delve into the differences between podcasting and radio, including how to train a breakfast radio host to slow down and tell a story that goes for longer than three minutes.

The typical newbie podcaster experience includes coming up with an idea, heading to JB HiFi, grabbing an H4 Zoom and taking to social media to pester your friends to listen.

However, the radio professional who wants to get into podcasting has a very different path, according to Jaime Chaux, head of digital at Commercial Radio Australia.

“Usually what happens is the radio professional or team that wants to give it a go has a world-class recording studio three meters that way, and has access to a marketing or social media person a phone call away,” he explains.

But aside from the added benefits of top-of-the-line recording equipment, do radio hosts really have any added advantages over a chancer starting up shop in their living room?

Jay Walkerden, head of Nova podcasts, straddles the two worlds of podcasts and radio every day. “There are some definite differences, but there are some big similarities too,” he says.

When you look at a breakfast show, “it’s actually about great content, excellent storytellers, people who are engaging to listen to, and so if you drag that from what we’ve known about radio for a while… that’s an absolute help”.

Timing, however, is different between the two mediums. Walkderden explains that the three minute “beginning, middle and end” that dictates breakfast talk breaks are very different from a podcast, where a story arc might be dragged out across ten episodes.

“It’s actually giving the presenter or the broadcaster a bit more of an idea to go ‘Okay, you really need to flesh this out a lot more in a podcast than you would do in the three minutes of radio.'”

Grant Tothill, head of SCA’s Podcast One Australia, says there is a difference between podcasting and radio, despite those who think there isn’t.

Although simply uploading a radio show as a podcast “is one way of going about it”, Tothill explains: “If you understand what podcasting actually is, the way people listen and the approach that people take, it’s a far more intimate approach to telling your story or communicating.

“Quite often we have a lot of radio people who come in and it’s about take six or eight that they finally get the tonality or the rhythm right.

“It’s not one to many, it’s very, very personal. That takes a fair bit of work and craft to get that right.”

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