On Thinking About a Podcast

Over the weekend, I was at Philcon, a science-fiction convention held just outside Philadelphia.

This is not my Philcon recap post. 😉

Over the weekend, though, since I had some free time and I was feeling under the weather, I worked on some novel research reading. First, there was a book I’d tossed in my bag, and then I got on my phone and did the mobile internet thing…

…And I had an epiphany.

Over the past two or three years, I’ve thought from time to time about doing a podcast. However, there were some factors working against a podcast…

1) A lack of subject and/or focus. The closest I came to figuring out what to do with a podcast was to present my personal favorite blog post of the week verbally. While that plan had some appeal (it’s cheap content, and verbally the material would have the cadences that pixels-on-a-screen lack), I also thought it was utterly pointless. Someone who’s reading the blog is already getting the material, and a “best of the blog” podcast would be as scattershot as the blog itself. As for other podcast subjects I could think of no niche that was uniquely me; the world doesn’t need another Doctor Who podcast, and there are other subjects where I don’t feel like I know enough or are passionate enough.

2) A lack of web space. If I’ve run out of room on my server and will need to migrate in the next six months, I certainly didn’t have the room to host mp3 files which are much bigger in size and bandwidth than text. 🙂

The epiphany I had was threefold.

First, I realized that there is a subject that interests me, that no podcast (that I am aware of) has dealt with in any detail, that would be interesting (at least to me) to cover, and that would benefit from being a podcast rather than a series of blog posts.

Second, I really only have to do it for me. In terms of time, it wouldn’t amount to much of an investment beyond writing the script, recording, and cleaning up the audio in Audacity. Given the subject, I don’t imagine that it would have much of an audience, but that doesn’t actually bother me.

Third, since I’m migrating to a new server in the new year, I will have the server space for a podcast.

I’m still not sold on doing a podcast when I launch my new website, though I do have a subject and an approach in mind if I do. At the very least, it would be fun. It might even provide the necessary impetus to write that novel. 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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