Harsh Critique of a Particular Episode of a Famous Podcast

Recently I struggled through an episode of an extremely popular podcast, which I shall not name, and this was BY FAR the worst podcast listening experience I’ve ever had. Ever. By far. (btw, the show is no longer publishing episodes)

The host, who is famous, is someone whose expertise I really appreciate and I find value in almost every single piece of content he puts out.

I’m posting my evaluation below for the purpose of helping all podcasters produce good audio.

NOTE: The episode switches back and forth between the “announcer guy” and the host (famous person).

Here are my observations and professional opinions: (feel free to comment below)

1. The announcer guy’s voice was WAY louder than the hosts voice. This is a major issue which causes listeners to “ride the volume knob” in order to be able to hear everything. But after a while listeners get tired of having to do all that work and they just turn it off.
2. The hosts parts were recorded in a reverby conference room and the audio quality was OK/barely passable.
3. There were LOTS of loud distracting thuds and table noises. Nasty and jolting.
4. Some participants in the room were asking the host questions but they sounded like they were 50 feet away; you could barely hear them, if at all. Sometimes the host would answer one of their questions with a one word answer, but since you couldn’t hear the question his answer made no sense. This was very annoying.
5. The announcer guy had ZERO energy and didn’t sound like he cared; his recording was full of loud distorted plosives;” and he had that “lazy millennial voice vocal fry.”
6. At one point the announcer guy abruptly broke in while the host was speaking with a VERY loud “Psssssst…,” which literally scared the bejesus out of me! The reason he broke in was to ask listeners to send in takeaways from this episode so the host could use them as content on his social media. This is a great example of a show/host doing something that is good for themselves in the name of “engagement” but in the process annoys 95% of the listeners. Annoying on two levels – interrupting the episode as well as milking the audience for more content for the host to use.
7. At another time the announcer guy asked the audience, “What is your favorite podcast platform?” and, “What platform are you listening on right now?” Again, I think this annoyed me because they are blatantly just doing market research on the air when they should be just doing a show. And before asking this, the announcer guy literally said that he could ALREADY get this info by looking at the shows analytics but nevertheless he wanted to hear from you – implying that, “We are too lazy to look up the answer so we need you, the listeners, to do our work for us.”
8. Over the course of this 27 minute episode the announcer guy mentioned three times that he’s been working with the host for 5-6 years. OK, we get it, and no one cares.

I mean no disrespect with this critique. I’m simply making professional observations which could potentially help many people’s podcasts sound better and be much more enjoyable for the listeners.

In a perfect world I would like to post a link to the episode for you to hear for yourself, but I don’t want to get into any drama with anyone at that show. And I would LOVE to be able to approach them and offer to help them avoid and solve all their audio issues, but we all know, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

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