Time waits for no one.
Time is money.
Men talk of killing time while time quietly kills them.
You get the point. We’re time-challenged. The last thing we want is a podcast that is a time-waster.
So to state the obvious: your podcast should be as long as it can maintain interest.
I have favorite podcasts that run two hours plus. But those are rare birds, hosted by people I could listen to all day. And I’ve found plenty of podcasts that “lose me” inside 5 minutes.
NPR presented some data at Podcast Movement a few years ago that listening began to erode at something like 25 minutes.
Edison produced research recently that shows the majority of some 2 million podcasts are 40 minutes or longer.
BUT they also released data that showed one-third of listeners are “put off” by podcasts that exceed an hour in length.
Our years of collective audio production and storytelling has informed us that “tight is right.” That is, a 45-minute podcast cut to 35 minutes is generally better.
Our advice, designed NOT to waste your time, is this: shoot for 30 minutes or less.
