2019-03-12 08:31![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grok_mctanys
grok_mctanysI get through a fair amount of essays, articles and opinion pieces on the internet. While I quite enjoy reading the ones that come in text form, and watching the ones in video form, I'm generally not a fan of podcasts. This is despite the fact that a reasonable proportion of the video pieces I "watch", I mostly just listen to while I also do something else. (*cough* minesweeper *cough*)
This is something I first noticed when a long-form blogger I try to keep up with started making podcasts on a regular basis, and, after listening to the first two or three, I pretty much stopped paying attention to what they were doing. That's when I noticed that I'd previously done something similar to a video maker who'd switched to making podcasts too.
I've had a think about the why this is, and I've come up with a couple of reasons.
The first is bandwidth. Podcasting is a really low-bandwidth way of getting information across. It's much faster to read 1000 (or however many) words than it is to listen to someone say them. The speaking part of videos is similarly slow, but it's made up for by the visual information that's available. Even if I'm not watching a video 100% the time, if I notice that something visually important happened that I missed, it's easy to rewind 10 seconds and absorb a large amount of visual information really quickly.
The second, which is possibly more important, is that written pieces and videos seem to be better scripted and edited than podcasts. People seem to put a lot of effort into making their point in the best and most concise way possible when they write or video themselves. But when it comes to podcasts, it seems like a lot of people just switch a microphone on, ramble for a bit, and post the result. It's not quite directionless, but it's not nearly as well focussed as written or videoed pieces tend to be.
Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me? Do you prefer podcasts over other media? Do you have tricks to make podcasts more listenable?
This is something I first noticed when a long-form blogger I try to keep up with started making podcasts on a regular basis, and, after listening to the first two or three, I pretty much stopped paying attention to what they were doing. That's when I noticed that I'd previously done something similar to a video maker who'd switched to making podcasts too.
I've had a think about the why this is, and I've come up with a couple of reasons.
The first is bandwidth. Podcasting is a really low-bandwidth way of getting information across. It's much faster to read 1000 (or however many) words than it is to listen to someone say them. The speaking part of videos is similarly slow, but it's made up for by the visual information that's available. Even if I'm not watching a video 100% the time, if I notice that something visually important happened that I missed, it's easy to rewind 10 seconds and absorb a large amount of visual information really quickly.
The second, which is possibly more important, is that written pieces and videos seem to be better scripted and edited than podcasts. People seem to put a lot of effort into making their point in the best and most concise way possible when they write or video themselves. But when it comes to podcasts, it seems like a lot of people just switch a microphone on, ramble for a bit, and post the result. It's not quite directionless, but it's not nearly as well focussed as written or videoed pieces tend to be.
Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me? Do you prefer podcasts over other media? Do you have tricks to make podcasts more listenable?
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