Talking To Yourself

Last month, there was an article at The Verge about people who broadcast to nobody. Specifically, it was about the gamers who stream their play on Twitch and don't get a single viewer. Why, the article examined, would someone stream their game play and commentary on Twitch for years and years with zero response? Why would you go through all of that just to be subjected to what the article called "one of the most demoralizing things you can experience online," having no audience? Why would anyone keep experiencing that kind of rejection?

The answers are varied. Might as well stream if you're playing. Practice. Self-improvement, working out how to be more extroverted. Making the occasional human connection. The thrill when you get that first viewer. They're all adequate reasons for someone to broadcast to an audience of nobody.

The same thing applies to podcasting. At Podcast Movement, the enthusiasm of the assembled podcasters had an undercurrent of anxiety, and a lot of podcasters seem nervous about the size of their audience and how to grow the base and whether they can ever expect to make money on it. Add to that the lack of solid one-size-fits-all answers and the inability of those who have achieved success to distill what they've learned into rules that will work for everyone and you can easily arrive at the conclusion that it's all pointless, that doing a show that doesn't pop right away and become the next "Serial" or "The Daily" is an exercise in wasted energy and a recipe for a bruised ego. But that leaves out one element that should always be there, whether you're podcasting or doing a radio show or streaming on Twitch.

Fun.

That's the answer I give about why I do a daily podcast even though I'm not monetizing it. Why bother writing and recording and editing and uploading and scheduling when there are so many other things to do every day? What's the point? The point is that it's fun. It's fun to spout off, to put the puzzle together and post it for anyone in the world to hear, if they so choose. Whether they do or not isn't even an issue for me. I do it because, to me, it's a fun challenge to have content out there on a regular basis. I'm not expecting to change the world, nor am I expecting to build an audience of any size. If they come, that's nice. If not, I don't really care too much. It's fun. That's all.

Of course, if you're on the radio, "it's fun" isn't quite enough. Ratings count. Revenue counts. Your job requires that. But it should also be fun. How many people get to talk on the radio? You know the answer. It's a privilege open to a relatively tiny number of people. If it becomes a burden, you should consider another line of work. (Maybe quitting in the middle of a show like John Lanigan did on Thursday is a little extreme, but if you're just not happy talking about Trump every single day, you can understand why he'd do that.) That's one of the things I like about podcasting: You can talk about anything, and it doesn't matter if your Program Director or consultant tells you that you have to do nothing but pro-Trump screeds or your audience will abandon you. You don't even HAVE a Program Director or consultant. If you want to talk about travel or Manchester United or, I don't know, radishes, you can go ahead and talk about travel or Manchester United or radishes. No rules.

That might also mean no audience. But, again, if you're expecting to get rich from podcasting, we're not there yet, not for the vast majority of shows. There are just too many podcasts, the friction of learning about, finding, and listening to shows is still an issue, and it's still all a work in progress. You CAN break out and create a success, but if you're contemplating getting into podcasting, whether it's all you do or a side project or something to add to your radio gig, ask yourself: Am I gonna find this fun to do? Is talking in public something I love to do? Does it matter if nobody hears it? And if you do a radio show, and the pressure of having to keep up the ratings gets hard to bear, ask yourself what you can do to being some fun back to what you do. Because if you're having fun doing something, it not only shows in the content you produce, it enhances your life, whether there's an audience or not. It's about the pride of creating something, and the joy of just expressing yourself, whatever the topic. Don't look at the download count or the viewer count if that'll dissuade you from doing what you like to do. Maybe it'll lead to fame and fortune, maybe not. Just have fun first.

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Fun is what you'll have if you use Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, to find material to talk about, whether you do a podcast or a talk show or a morning show or Twitch stream or YouTube videos or sidewalk rant. Find it all by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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My podcast is "The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," a quick (two minutes or less) daily thing, and you can get it at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Spotify, too. Google Podcasts? Click here. You can also use the RSS feed and the website where you can listen in your browser, or my own website where they're all embedded, too. And if you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, just say "Alexa, play the Evening Bulletin podcast."

You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

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It's been a long week and it's been really hot here in Southern California, which is my excuse to close this one with a big fat "I got nothin'." See you next week.

Perry Michael Simon Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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