“The structure of the podcast tends to be very produced, very scripted. There are different segments. We know what’s going to be spliced in where, but we try really hard not to be too scripted so that it just comes across like us talking.” Les Howard, Host – The Signal

 

Picking a format makes your show more consistent. You want to find a good structure to start with, one that you can adapt and modify as the podcast grows. There are several common components that most fancasts use. Pick some you like, combine them with your own original segment ideas, then organize them into a Show Doc, which we’ll discuss later.

 

Common Fancasts Segments

Plot Summary

A brief reminder of the show or movie you’re reviewing. Keep it short and sweet. If somebody listens to your podcast reviewing a thing, odds are they watched the thing, so you don’t need to offer a beat-by-beat breakdown of the thing right up front. Feel free to summarize key events as they come up in the main discussion, but most listeners have everything fresh in their minds already. This should be, at most, a reminder. Too many fancasts spend 15 minutes or more summarizing the episode, when 30 seconds is more than enough.

This is a great place to let your creativity shine. I wrote rhyming episode summaries, like this one for the Once Upon A Time episode “Darkness on the Edge of Town”:

The Spice Girls of Evil are helping the Dark One. Their plan for redemption is a cleverly stark one: Hunt down The Author and give him some notes. Take the bad stuff, but leave the fur coats. Storybrooke’s moved on from their Frozen folly, minus the scroll which still serves as a trolley. Chernabog’s looking for somebody evil. Does the Savior he hunts even come from good people? Once has returned. It’s time to get down. Let’s get lost in the Darkness on the Edge of Town.

 

I mention key plot points (the bad guys team up and enact a plan, something carries over from the Frozen arc, etc.), drop in a running joke from the podcast (Spice Girls of Evil), then get on with the discussion our listeners came to hear.

Writing a new rhyme every week was a fun challenge. Whenever I got stuck, I’d turn to RhymeZone.com for assistance. You can search for rhymes, organized by part of speech or syllable count. You can even search for near rhymes or slant rhymes that give you more options when you’re trying to find a good rhyme for “orange.” Porridge? Door hinge? Lawrence? Orange Lawrence. I kind of like that. Anyway, it’s a good site.

RhymeZone also serves up synonyms, antonyms, and a reverse dictionary. It’s a great reference site if you’re a writer, even if you aren’t writing poems for your podcast.

 

Main Discussion

“They need a spirit guide to walk them through the show.” Stephanie Smith, Host – PotentialCast: A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Podcast

 

This is the meat of the episode. I broke it up into two sections to give the hosts a breather, but many podcasters keep it all together.

There are a couple of approaches here. Do a free-form discussion based around key plot points, or have each host come up with a list of topics they’d like to talk about, before opening things up for a group discussion. If you go with the second option, take turns so nobody dominates too much of the conversation.

You’ll see how we organized our discussion points in our sample Show Doc.

 

Overall Rating

“We’ll give ratings for each of our shows. Things like ‘Watch It Now’ or ‘Watch It Soon.’ When the listeners hear our opinions are divergent, the listeners are like ‘Ooh, can’t wait to hear them talk about that’ because it’s very different. But we won’t force it by taking different sides. If it’s natural, great.” Kevin Bachelder, Host – Tuning Into SciFi TV

 

Once you wrap up your discussion, it’s a good idea to summarize your feelings in some quantifiable way. It puts a cap on the discussion, and oftentimes will get the listeners back on your side if you went too negative.

We used to do something called an “arbitrary scale.” I would combine a random number with a random thing from the episode, then we’d both rate it on the scale and allow our chat room to weigh in with their ratings.

For example, in the Season 2 episode of Gotham titled “Unleashed,” Theo Galavan, a villain, is shot with a rocket launcher by Penguin. Hence, my arbitrary scale for the episode was “272 Globs of Galavan.” Our live viewers would often suggest arbitrary scales during the recording. Revealing the scale each week made the chat room explode with surprise and delight.

You might prefer a more consistent rating metric. Stars or thumbs up/down or A-B-C grades. However you rate the episode, always err on the high side when picking your rating. If the show hits a rough patch and you dislike several episodes in a row, consistently low ratings will anger your listeners who are still enjoying the series.

When you justify your rating, keep things positive. I would generally pick three reasons I liked it, and maybe one reason I didn’t, but only if I felt pretty strongly about it. You can go negative without serious consequences if the overall fan consensus is negative, but be careful. The one person who liked the episode might be the same person you get an awesome voicemail from every week.

 

News

In today’s anti-spoiler culture, this section can be tricky. You should report on big announcements and rumors, but you don’t want to spoil key plot points for your listeners. When Once Upon A Time or Gotham went on hiatus, we’d often do a special Spoiler Party episode to speculate on all the big news.

 

 

“We break our show into two halves. The first half is what we call the ‘Water Cooler,’ and that is spoiler free. We tell folks that. There are some folks who are sensitive to casting news, so we will say we have some casting news coming up. Then we have the back half of the show we call ‘The Back Porch,’ and we tell people if they listen to that part, be prepared for there not to be any spoiler warnings.” Kevin Bachelder, Host – Tuning Into SciFi TV

 

If you’re going to get into spoiler territory in your news section, put it as late in your podcast as possible, so your listeners get the most value out of your podcast before they have to turn it off. You might think you can ask them to skip ahead, but that’s a pain and a lot of users will just bounce. Make it clear you’ll be discussing spoilers. Say it plain: “If you don’t want spoilers about (the thing), stop listening.” Don’t be cute with it, because cute is confusing and the last thing you want is to ruin a listener’s experience with an unclear spoiler warning.

 

“We stopped doing spoilers because, you know, I don’t want to be spoiled as a fan. The one thing we’d do is episode titles, which some people do consider a spoiler. I do think if you’re going to feel spoiled by a title, you need to get over it.” Les Howard, Host – The Signal

 

During the run of Gotham, two lead actors had a tabloid moment. We struggled with how to cover it in the News section. It was everywhere online, so we had to address it, but we didn’t want to sit in judgment on the actors or their personal choices. We didn’t aim to be the TMZ of fancasts. Maybe you do, but I’d advise against it. If you do want to go the gossip route, that’s fine, but its a decision you should make in the planning stages before you launch your podcast.

Making snarky comments about an actor’s personal life might seem fun or funny in the moment, but people don’t come to you for hot gossip. They come to hear you discuss the characters, themes, and plot of their favorite piece of fiction. Save your critical voice for the content of whatever it is you’re reviewing. If a story like this breaks, inform your listeners, then move on. What if you get the opportunity to interview the actor? You don’t want a clip where you speculate on their birth control habits floating around, right?

 

History Lessons

One of your jobs as a fancaster is to educate and inform your listeners about the influences behind the show or movie you’re discussing. Especially for shows based on popular properties like comic books or novels, you want to position yourself as a subject matter expert. For Gotham, any time they introduced a character from the comics, I’d devote at least one of my discussion points to teaching the listeners about that character’s history.

 

“Start planning as early as you can. We had ten episodes out before the show even aired one.” – Derek O’Neill, TV Podcast Industries

 

“If none of us are familiar with the source material, we will have a guest on to explain the character or storyline to us.” Morgan Glennon, Host – Supergirl Radio/Legends of Tomorrow Podcast

 

While we folded history lessons into the main discussion, many podcasters devote a segment to explaining the lore to new fans. My friends over at DCTV Podcasts devote a dozen or more episodes to character history, often launching their podcast as soon as the show is announced by the network. These “Year Zero” specials grab potential listeners early, establish you as the expert, and make your show more visible when people search for a podcast after watching the series premiere. When they hit your feed, you’ll have tons of content waiting for them. When they binge your history lesson episodes, it will boost your numbers and make your show easier to find.

 

Listener Feedback

 

“Don’t expect the first time you (ask for feedback), that everybody is going to flood in there and do it. You have to keep asking, every week.” Kevin Bachelder, Host – Tuning Into SciFi TV

 

Including listener feedback is crucial to the success of your show. It’s social proof that you aren’t just a madman with a microphone, spitting your thoughts into the void. As discussed in our chapter on the Café POV mindset, your listeners want to be part of the show. Make it easy for them to weigh in.

 

“If you aren’t getting feedback, ask a specific question.” Stephanie Smith, Host – PotentialCast: A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Podcast

 

There is a danger here. You need to keep the feedback segment moving, or listeners are likely to tune out early. If you have the time, consider trimming down voicemails[5]5 in Audacity, or editing e-mails down to one or two key points. Bottom line, unless it’s a special occasion like an all-feedback episode or a season finale discussion, feedback shouldn’t take up more than ten to fifteen percent of your total run time.

If you cut feedback for time, find some way to let people know you read it. Shout out the listeners you didn’t have time for at the end of the segment, or post a blog on your website with feedback you couldn’t get to on the podcast. Even when somebody’s feedback doesn’t make the show, they shouldn’t feel like it was a wasted effort. You want engagement. Make sure you reward any engagement you get, even if you can’t fit it into the podcast.

While we saved listener feedback for the end of the episode, I always liked including one e-mail or voicemail in the middle of the main discussion. It gives you a little breather where you don’t have to think and/or talk, and it gives listeners who shut the podcast off after the main discussion a taste of what they’re missing.

 

Reoccurring Segment

Create a branded reoccurring segment that appears in all or most of your episodes. My friends over at Supergirl Radio love Lena Luthor’s fashion sense, so much so that they discuss her fashion choices almost every week. They also have a running gag about how Snapper Carr never snaps.

When Gotham premiered, there was a lot of speculation about how and when the Joker would show up. Executive Producer John Stephens said there would be many possible Jokers introduced, but that they might never get around to revealing who it actually was. We knew this would be something our listeners would be looking out for, so we introduced a segment called Look At This Joker, where we called out any potential Jokers, references to the Joker, or general Joker chatter circling the show. We’d start with an improvised theme song, then dive in with our thoughts and theories. This also gave me an opportunity to further educate the listeners about the various versions of the Joker through the years, so that when Ace Chemical Plant showed up, our listeners spotted it immediately. We also compiled notes on every “Look At This Joker” segment onto a page of our web site, which garnered us thousands of hits every month from Gotham fans researching their own Joker theories.

Whatever reoccurring segment you decide to go with, make sure it’s sustainable. When we brought back Legends of Gotham for the final season, the Jeremiah character was Joker in everything but name, so we had to create a new branded segment, “Light The Knight,” which never quite worked as well. Consider waiting until later in Season 1 to establish a reoccurring segment, so you can feel out the tropes of the show and find a topic with staying power.

 

Creating A Show Doc

Now that you know what segments you’ll include in your show, it’s time to organize them into a template, or Show Doc, you and your co-hosts can work from to plan your podcast every week. I suggest using a collaborative editor like Google Docs, so that everybody involved can add their notes as needed. This also helps you reorganize the show, or cut a segment if the podcast is running long, without having to say anything about it on-mic.

 

“If you create your notes about an episode or whatever thing you’re reviewing in Google Docs, (you’ll have) a search engine for future reference. I have been able to pull some random quote or factoid from an episode seasons ago because I took the time to make detailed notes when the episode aired.” Rebecca Johnson, Host – Supergirl Radio

 

I’ve seen many different types of Show Docs. Some people like spreadsheets. I always favored a basic bullet point outline. We have an actual example[6]6 from one of our Legends of Gotham episodes. You might find it hard to follow, as it turned into a Frankenstein document over the years, but this is the basic format:

 

  1. Opening – “Custom line pulled from the most recent episode.” Welcome to Legends of Gotham, where we talk about Fox’s hit series GOTHAM, set in the world of Batman. I’m Bill Meeks…
  2. Episode summary/Main Discussion Part 1
    1. – Our rhyming, riddling episode summary
    2. A. Host #1 Point[7]
      1. a. Host #1 Sub-Point
      2. b. Host #1 Sub-Point
    3. B. Host #2 Point
      1. a. Host #2 Sub-Point
    4. C. Host #1 Point
      1. a. Host #1 Sub-Point
    5. D. Host #2 Point
      1. a. Host #2 Sub-Point
  3. – Look At This Joker
  4. – Featured Voicemail (Cast, Crew, or Listener)
  5. – Commercial Break/Patreon Read
  6. Episode summary/Main Discussion Part 2
    1. E. Host #1 Point
      1. a. Host #1 Sub-Point
    2. F. Host #2 Point
      1. a. Host #2 Sub-Point
    3. G. Host #1 Point
      1. a. Host #1 Sub-Point
    4. H. Host #2 Point
      1. a. Host #2 Sub-Point
  7. Final Rating/Arbitrary Scale[8]8
  8. News/Speculation
    1. 1. RATINGS[9]9
    2. 2. News Story #1
    3. 3. News Story #2
    4. 4. Discuss next episode’s trailer
  9. Listener Feedback
    1. E-mail: legendsofgotham@gmail.com[10]10
    2. Twitter: @LegendsOfGotham
    3. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LegendsOfGotham
    4. Voicemail Number: (424) 274-2352
    5. Voicemails
    6. Letters
  10. V. Show Close[11]11

 

This outline worked for our podcast. Use it as a jumping-off point for your own Show Doc, or go in a completely different direction. Some people like mind-mapping software or index cards. The important thing is finding a way to organize your thoughts before you hit record or go live. It will keep your episode on-point, and your listeners will be able to tell you have a plan and that their ears are in safe hands.

 

“If you have a guest, a good (show doc) will help them follow along because they will know what to expect.” Rebecca Johnson, Host – Supergirl Radio

 

Now, where do you get all those points and sub-points to add to the doc? You’re going to hate this word, but to get those points, you’ll have to do your homework.

 

Doing Your Homework

 

“If time allows, watch the episode at least twice. Once for enjoyment, the second for notes.” – Derek O’Neill, TV Podcast Industries

 

Anything you review has dozens of threads to track: Characters, business names, plot points, references, and foreshadowing to name a few. Some viewers don’t bother remembering all these threads, although many do. If you’re a fancaster, tracking threads is part of the job description.

 

“If I’m listening to a podcast, and the hosts are talking about anything, but it’s obvious they do not know what they are talking about, I hit unsubscribe almost immediately.” – Nathan Beatty, Host, Creativity in Progress

 

Every week, you take a test proctored by subject matter experts. You need to learn the material frontwards and backwards, just like when you were in school. You’ll have to take notes, study, and bring it all together for the final exam.

You need to watch what you’re reviewing more than once. As Derek O’Neil suggests in the quote above, twice is the bare minimum you should be watching things.

For your first watch, give it your full attention. No playing on your phone. Watch it as a fan. Ride the highs, brace for the lows, and enjoy the show. You love this, right? Put on your fan hat and geek out.

 

My actual notes for the Gotham episode “Smile Like You Mean It.” Click for a larger view.

 

For your second watch, jot down anything that sticks out to you; Quotes, questions, favorite moments, thematic elements, and thoughts on the production design are all on the table. If you think it, write it down. As you go, scribble a star or other marker next to the points you’re most excited about. Draw arrows to connect ideas. When you’re done, go back through your notes and pick a number of topics you’d like to dig into, then add them as the main points in your Show Doc. I suggest listing the topics you’re most passionate about first. For serialized shows and films, this means you might lead with the ending or cliffhanger. Next, comb through your notes for quotes, plot details, or impressions that match each topic and add them as sub-points.

 

You’ll note that my “Lee is totes infected” note from the notebook became a point titled “The Twinkie Is Sick” in the actual episode. You’ll also note that I spell amoung like I’m from England.

 

Once you transfer your notes into the Show Doc, add an opening thesis statement, or tease, for each topic; something bold and clear. For example, there was an episode of Gotham which featured an entire community getting destroyed. My thesis statement for that topic was “Let’s start at the end. Everybody in Haven is dead! But who did it?” This tells the listeners two important things right away:

  1. The topic (Everybody in Haven is dead!)
  2. What I thought was important about the topic (But who did it?)

Now, the listeners are leaning forward, and because I asked a question in my thesis, they think I have the answer, or at least a theory. Make sure you have an answer, or at least a theory if you tease with a question. If you don’t deliver on a tease, you’ll teach your listeners not to trust your teases.

Some fancasts post live threads on Twitter or Facebook as they watch an episode. It’s a lot of fun, and a great opportunity to build relationships with your listeners. The downside is that you tend to miss a lot. It’s hard to pay attention when you’re making a snarky comment about an actor or searching for the perfect GIF to describe how a big reveal made you feel. If you live tweet, give it another “fan watch” before taking notes, since you’re bound to miss key details as you jot things down.

If you have a co-host, be open to changing topics, or at least rearranging them. Sometimes you and your co-hosts will pick a similar topic. If you each have a different take, keep both, then put them together in the Show Doc for a natural long-form conversation. If you agree, one of you needs to volunteer to change your topic to add more variety to the discussion. Do it. Since your co-host is discussing the topic anyway, you’ll still get to chime in.

Preparation is key to a successful fancast. By doing your homework, including reviewing your material multiple times, you’ll commit key facts to your long-term memory using repetition. After I watched an episode twice for a podcast, I’d never watch it again, yet retain most of the important information. I don’t have a great memory, but I still know most major and minor details from Gotham and Once Upon A Time, including the episode number and title those details appeared in. It’s all because I took the time to watch the episodes twice when they came out.

Do your homework.

 

Keeping The Ball In The Air

 

“Be prepared. Things will go wrong, so try not to get overly hung up on your mistakes.” – Derek O’Neill, TV Podcast Industries

 

In an ideal world, you’d have enough free time in a day to watch the show, prepare your Show Doc, record your podcast, then edit it down until it’s absolutely perfect. In the real world, you won’t always have time for that.

So, how do you ensure a high level of quality when you don’t have time to edit? What if you live stream your podcast to Facebook or Twitch? To keep your podcast sounding professional, you just have to keep the ball in the air.

Picture a podcast as a ping pong game. One player serves— PLOK. The next player hits the ball back— PLOK. While the two players keep up that rhythm— PLOK, PLOK, PLOK— a simple game looks like a dance, each paddle swing as graceful as the Dance of the Little Swans. Then, a player misses the ball. The trance is broken. The ball bounces across the court— PLOKLOP, PLOKLOP, PLOKLOP. A player, probably you, runs awkwardly away from the table to retrieve it.

The entertainment value in a game of ping pong is the streak… How long can the players keep the ball in the air? As the minutes pass without a mistake— PLOK, PLOK, PLOK— the audience locks in to the players’ rhythms, heads turning back and forth, until it’s hard to tell where the performance ends and the audience begins. PLOK, PLOK, PLOK.

As a podcaster, you need to keep that ball in the air. Every time you miss your “swing,” you break the rhythm you’ve established with your audience. Here are several common distractions that will make you miss the ball, along with several strategies that will make that little trot out to retrieve the ball a little less awkward.

 

Radical Agreement

The #1 way to keep the ball in the air is by maintaining your commitment to radical agreement. If you’re maintaining your connection with your co-host, building off their offers, and avoiding the negative, you’ll find yourself in a PLOK, PLOK rhythm you can maintain for hours at a time.

 

Mistakes

It’s so easy to let a little mistake completely derail your show. Whether it’s a forgotten fact or a curse word or getting halfway through your sentence before you realize you don’t have a point, making mistakes always sucks. It’s also easy to get flustered and frustrated, but you shouldn’t hide those feelings from your listeners.

When you make a mistake, acknowledge it. Lean into it. Make it a running gag. Laugh it off. At the end of the day, you’re only talking about a TV show or movie or whatever. If nobody got hurt, than the worst you’ve done is make yourself look silly. There’s no shame in looking silly, especially for a podcaster.

 

Plan B

When you take the time to rewatch the episode, write notes, and prepare a Show Doc, you’ll feel confident you can keep the ball in the air when you start your episode. On occasion, you’ll find your topics weren’t as rich as you thought, and you’ll be left scrambling to fill the last ten minutes of your thirty minute show. This is why doing your homework is so important. If you keep your notes handy during your recording session, you’ll have pages of potential discussion topics ready to go. Simply grab the notebook and flip around until you see something interesting. If you wrote something down, odds are you can vamp on it for a minute or three.

 

The Comments

Live streaming your podcast is a good idea. Instant feedback can only help you grow as a podcaster. As discussed in an earlier chapter, your engaged listeners are your greatest asset, and they’ll be there for you any time you go live. That being said, it’s important to balance serving these super fans with producing a quality show to attract new super fans.

It’s easy to get lost in an ever-streaming comment feed, particularly when those comments call you out by name. If you look at the chat room or comments while you’re in the middle of a thought, it’s also easy to forget what your point was. This is another place where a co-host is invaluable. As you speak, your co-host can listen to what you’re saying while keeping an eye on the comments and calling them out, when appropriate.

Don’t look at comments when you’re locked in a discussion. Scroll through them between topics to break things up, or use a bot to let listeners vote up comments to read and discuss.

Never scold your listeners for leaving a saying something distracting. You want interaction when you live stream your episode. If you scold somebody, they’ll feel like they’re hurting a podcast they love, and you might never hear from them again.

 

Co-host Etiquette

Sometimes, you’ll fall out of sync with your co-host. Maybe one of you got distracted by the chat room, or maybe you were so busy thinking about your next point that you forgot to listen to theirs. However it happens, the best way to reconnect with your co-host is to ask them a question. A question shows your co-host you’re still listening, and care about what they’re saying.

Never interrupt your co-host, unless you’re making a factual correction so your conversation doesn’t go off-course based on bad facts. Always strive to build off whatever it is your co-host just said. You’ll fall down off-topic “rabbit holes” on occasion. When you do, make sure your co-host finishes their thought before you transition back to the topic at hand.

If your co-host shuts you out and you can’t seem to engage them, bring the topic back around to something you know they’re passionate about. Mention a great moment from their favorite character, or reference a theory they came up with that turned out to be true. When your co-host shuts down, it’s because you did something to sever your connection with them. Rebuild it as fast as you can.

 

Be Absurd

You can’t always act absurd, but it will buy you time as you figure out how to fix a podcast recording gone bad. In moments of desperation and utter chaos, I would say outlandish things. Sometimes I’d make up parody lyrics for a song from Frozen. Maybe I’d show off my baby cry. One time I accused my co-host of murder. These tangents, and my co-host’s reaction to them, always gave me more than enough time to refocus and figure out where we were going next. Most of the time, they were the best part of the show.

Suggesting you go off-script with absurdity might seem antithetical to what I’ve been preaching so far in this book, but no matter how much you plan, sometimes those plans will fail. If you’re prepared to get a little absurd, a failed plan will never get in the way of keeping the ball in the air.

<  The Café POV | FEED THE TROLLS >

 

  1. 5 Just make sure you don’t edit them down so much that you end up misrepresenting the listner’s opinion. Edit, don’t remix. ↑
  2. 6 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HPPZoY7iHLjoqHqwEZBkpdrl9GLpbOxcohupbzAfSFo/edit?usp=sharing ↑
  3. 7 Find some way to visually identify everybody’s points at a glance. With two co-hosts, I’d simply bold my points and leave Anne Marie’s alone. If you have more than two co-hosts, or a special guest, I suggest using color coding. Make one person’s points red, another’s blue, etc. ↑
  4. 8 For the arbitrary scale, I’d usually come up with something during the podcast and type it in here. Even if you use a standard rating system, it’s a good idea to add it to your doc so you can read it off and signal the main discussion is over. ↑
  5. 9 We always led our news segment with the ratings, an idea I stole from one of my favorite fancasts, Radio Free Skaro. ↑
  6. 10 I suggest putting all your contact information in the doc so you can read it off without stumbling over or forgetting things. ↑
  7. 11 I always improvised this on the spot, but feel free to document what you want to say to wrap. ↑
  8. 12 That’s a citizen of the internet for you Zoomers. ↑