The Podcast Pep Talk

By Brian Baltosiewich

If you are considering starting your own podcast, The Podcast Pep Talk will guide you through the process, from "finding your voice," to equipment, marketing and shameless self-promotion. Includes interviews with Adam Carolla and John Oliver, and stories and knowledge from 15 years in the podcast trenches. This book is a must-read for anyone thinking about launching a podcast.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Baltosiewich
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536558081

Book preview

FOR TERRA

It’s been quite a journey. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

FORWARD

John Schuster

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I met Brian nearly 20 years ago. He was the heir-apparent to what might be the worst job in the history of radio. I was leaving. He was my replacement.

Actually, worst job in the history of radio is pretty harsh. It wasn’t so much the job, but the boss. In fact, the job seemed pretty cool. Color commentary for a local college hockey team with an impressive community cult following. Unfortunately, the coach and the play-by-play guy were pieces of work.

The coach talked in largely incomprehensible coach-speak, while the play-by-play announcer had failing eyesight and uttered some of the most incredible celebrity yarns I’ve ever heard: he invented talk radio, he passed on signing Elvis, hired Larry King, was basically a silent partner in the Rat Pack alongside Sinatra. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Sounds kind of fun, right? Well, except play-by-play guy and hockey coach had one thing in common: hair trigger tempers and the remarkable ability to unleash lethal barrages of verbal ammunition. Not surprisingly, they didn’t always get along very well-and when that happened, poor Brian always seemed to be square in their crosshairs.

Outbursts from high-strung egomaniacs are nothing new. In the entertainment business, some are even immortalized on YouTube for our repeated visual enjoyment. If you want to check out the best of Bill O’Reilly unhinged, or any behind the scenes show with Keith Olbermann, see what those poor staffs were subjected to and realize that when it came to what Brian tolerated, they got off easy.

Brian tolerated a lot. For a long, long time. I suppose it helped to make him patient, since in one capacity or another he’s spent most of his career enduring the quirky nuances of on-air talent once he transitioned to other opportunities within the electronic media realm.

But it was more than Brian’s patience that made it clear he comprehended the structure of media far more than most. If anyone bothered to pay attention, they’d realize this guy knew his stuff. He understood the industry, instantly recognized how, why and what worked and applied that to the everyday rigors of whatever gig he had. Those abilities were often not as appreciated as they should have been- but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm or lessen the quality of the results he consistently achieved.

Brian is something more than all that. He was, and really is, a visionary. He can recognize trends and see the writing on the wall. That’s not always easy when surrounded by folks who are conveniently oblivious to the future. Folks who want to continue believing everything is just fine. That everything will always be the same.

In retrospect, it’s easy to suggest anyone could have seen the changes in traditional media that created this unstable upheaval, and they could have recognized and prepared better for the wave of technological advancements that would undercut the monopolies once enjoyed by newspaper, television and radio.

But when you work in the dungeons of electronic media—and I’ll use Brian’s experience in radio as the example here—this is what you hear from a management equipped with proverbial blinders: Radio is fine. Always has been. Always will be. When TV was invented, they said it would destroy radio. They were wrong. The medium only got stronger. When they invented 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs, they said nobody would listen to the radio any longer. They were wrong. Radio was as necessary as ever. Satellite radio? So what? Mp3 players? No big deal. This is radio, and radio will never die.

Brian knew better. He recognized the change in demographic, a youth movement that barely knows radio in its terrestrial form exists. For those reading this, take a moment and do a quick experiment. How many people do you know who listen to the radio? And how old are they? Radio may not be dead, but its days of dominance are a thing of the past.

Eventually massive cutbacks in the industry reflected radio’s downturn, and when that happened, Brian recognized something else. The Internet is a world of potential, but most of it is crap. That holds true for voice content as well. Anyone can do a podcast, to be on the modern equivalent of radio. But not everybody can do it well.

So Brian had an idea.

For me, creativity tends to happen in the bathroom. For Brian, it happens at Chinese restaurants. I suspect he ordered something healthy while I likely opted for the General Tso’s Chicken, which probably explains the creative outburst I would experience hours later. Back on topic, Brian pitched this crazy notion about a podcast network made up of radio personalities who had lost their jobs as a result of all those harsh company cutbacks.

I didn’t need to be able to read the idea. The concept was so