Several weeks ago the PiB class was discussing the critical elements that make a successful podcast, and someone commented that “Content is everything. Audio quality doesn’t matter if the content is great.” I’m don’t necessarily agree. Poor audio quality can turn a great podcast into a great podcast that no one can bear listening to. And if you’re a company that’s publishing podcasts that sound bad, you could even hurt your brand.
For example, I’m a follower of the popular blog Read Write Web. Read Write Web (RWW) is ranked among Technorati’s Top 10 blogs in the world, and is widely respected among the tech crowd. This past week, RWW announced RWW Live, a new podcast covering news from the previous week. On first listen, I was surprised at the poor quality of the audio. Granted, the conversation — a roundtable made up of four people — was happening remotely between individuals. But I’ve heard plenty of podcast interviews performed remotely that sounded much better than this. At one point the show host had to ask one of the speaker to repeat himself because the audio was so garbled.
I’m sure RWW Live will improve — it’s only their first podcast after all. But I am still surprised that RWW didn’t do more up-front preparation to create a better sound. It’s one thing to hear this from an amateur podcaster, but another thing to hear it from an established, top-notch publisher.
