I recorded my 52nd podcast episode earlier today. It marked my first anniversary as a podcaster – something I never really saw myself doing prior to the first one I recorded. However, I must admit that I feel as if I have now completed a major step into my ‘new’ post-newspaper life. I can remember that it was this time last year we were pretty much close to wrapping up our final issue of the Similkameen News Leader.
It was both a scary and an exciting time for us. It was also a sad time for me in particular. I think that maybe one of the reasons why I finally chose to jump into the podcasting arena was to give me something different to do. It was also something that was so different to what I had been doing although it contained elements of my past two careers and a hobby all intertwined together. Plus, and probably more importantly, podcasting gave me an outlet and a distraction to put my focus on while others things were coming to an end.
The intertwining parts are kind of cool, now that I think about it. The podcasts include elements of both my radio and newspaper careers. They involve me researching and writing notes as well as recording the final product. The hobby element is webcasting that I have done for a total of seven of the last nine hockey seasons for the local Junior B team. During them I find myself doing a whole lot of adlibbing which also has some of my radio experience attached to it. The podcasts are virtually all adlibbed with minimal notes to follow.
I prefer to do most of that kind of stuff with that kind of style. I like to think it sounds more ‘real’ as opposed to slick, polished and bordering on fake. That’s not to say I don’t have standards in what I do, but I just would rather adlib something than put hours into a well-crafted product. Part of that is because I think my product is not-so-bad in the first place. To be able to adlib my way through 52 weeks’ worth of them I think is pretty awesome.
What’s even more awesome is that people are listening. There are over 100 direct downloads per month of my podcasts. There have also been almost 1,000 direct feed hits monthly of the podcasts as well. I couldn’t tell you where that stands in comparison to similar programs because I don’t follow those stats. For all I know I have either a hit or a dud. It’s not too important to me at this point as I’m just having so much fun doing it.
So to celebrate my first anniversary as a podcaster I recorded an episode that looked back at the Top 10 Most Downloaded Episodes from my channel. It was fun for me to sort out the data to see what they were and I think I was a bit surprised that the top few included an episode I had only recorded two weeks ago. I guess it was nice to see that it wasn’t all old episodes on the list and that there was a cross section. As for how long I plan to keep recording weekly podcast episodes is concerned, who knows? I guess I’ll keep doing it as long as I still see some fun in it. You can find my podcasts on Podbean at “Ninja on the Loose” and they are all free to download.
It was both a scary and an exciting time for us. It was also a sad time for me in particular. I think that maybe one of the reasons why I finally chose to jump into the podcasting arena was to give me something different to do. It was also something that was so different to what I had been doing although it contained elements of my past two careers and a hobby all intertwined together. Plus, and probably more importantly, podcasting gave me an outlet and a distraction to put my focus on while others things were coming to an end.
The intertwining parts are kind of cool, now that I think about it. The podcasts include elements of both my radio and newspaper careers. They involve me researching and writing notes as well as recording the final product. The hobby element is webcasting that I have done for a total of seven of the last nine hockey seasons for the local Junior B team. During them I find myself doing a whole lot of adlibbing which also has some of my radio experience attached to it. The podcasts are virtually all adlibbed with minimal notes to follow.
I prefer to do most of that kind of stuff with that kind of style. I like to think it sounds more ‘real’ as opposed to slick, polished and bordering on fake. That’s not to say I don’t have standards in what I do, but I just would rather adlib something than put hours into a well-crafted product. Part of that is because I think my product is not-so-bad in the first place. To be able to adlib my way through 52 weeks’ worth of them I think is pretty awesome.
What’s even more awesome is that people are listening. There are over 100 direct downloads per month of my podcasts. There have also been almost 1,000 direct feed hits monthly of the podcasts as well. I couldn’t tell you where that stands in comparison to similar programs because I don’t follow those stats. For all I know I have either a hit or a dud. It’s not too important to me at this point as I’m just having so much fun doing it.
So to celebrate my first anniversary as a podcaster I recorded an episode that looked back at the Top 10 Most Downloaded Episodes from my channel. It was fun for me to sort out the data to see what they were and I think I was a bit surprised that the top few included an episode I had only recorded two weeks ago. I guess it was nice to see that it wasn’t all old episodes on the list and that there was a cross section. As for how long I plan to keep recording weekly podcast episodes is concerned, who knows? I guess I’ll keep doing it as long as I still see some fun in it. You can find my podcasts on Podbean at “Ninja on the Loose” and they are all free to download.
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