1) Podcasters who don’t Levelate their podcast before releasing it - particularly when they’ve interviewed a guest / guests (usually a Skype call) and the difference in voice volumes has you constantly reaching for the volume control while listening.
2) Podcasters who take ages to get to the point of the episode. Why spend half an hour or more of your hour long show to get to the point? Why waste bandwidth and your listeners’ time?
3) Podcasters who constantly repeat themselves during a show.
4) Joint hosts of podcasts who constantly interrupt each other. One show I recently listened is hosted by a husband and wife who constantly talk over the last few words of each other & constantly interrupt each other. They’re not the only podcasters who do this.
5) Podcasts without consistent “album” id tags. It’s a pain when the same regular podcast gets spread around into different folders on an MP3 player.
6) Podcasters who say “listen to my next show because it’s going to be great…” Let the listener decide whether that show is great… besides, does that mean that the show we’re listening to now isn’t “great”?
7) Podcasters, who, when interviewing a guest, always turn what their guest says towards themselves. Sorry, but if you’re interviewing someone then your show should be about your guest… leave your self-ego massaging to a show when you’re on by yourself.
8) Badly edited podcasts. I’ve lost count of the number of times I listen to various podcasts and the final word of a preceding sentence is overlapped with the first word of the next sentence by the podcaster.
9) Podcasts that use “lossy” intros and outros. There’s nothing wrong with podcasters using the same “brand” music for intros and outros, but some podcasters are obviously reusing the intro and outro mp3s over and over, not realising that mp3s are “lossy” and thus over time lose quality. Save your files instead as WAV files.
10) Hearing podcasters typing away on their keyboards in the background. Fair enough if you’re looking up something on the web to relate to your listeners, but not if you’re simply surfing away or scrolling through your script and making amendments or whatever you’re doing. Not willing to give your podcasting your full attention? Then don’t expect your listeners to give you theirs.
Bonus Peeve ► Podcasters who constantly use the word “awesome” :-( Listen up podcasters, you’re in the communications medium… feel free to improve upon your vocabulary :-) ‘nuf said!
