What’s the difference and why should you care?
An episodic podcast can be free form and topical driven by each episode. Whereas a season podcast is a set number of episodes that tell a story and come to a conclusion (i.e, season finale)
Both have their own unique production challenges.
Every episode of a season podcast is usually planned in advance.
The two important production factors are:
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- How the story’s edited to unfold throughout all the episodes within the series.
- Who, how and when to record the content that you’ll piece together.
With this understanding, editing is more complex as well. When it comes to listening habits, season podcast audiences mirror the habits of a T.V miniseries.
An example would be Tiger King.
Which means that the audience will either get hooked and finish it now or they ignore it completely.
When it comes to an episode podcast, you’ll have a lot more leeway to tweak and improve on.
The next question is, should you interview or talk? Depends, does your audience think your interesting? Are you excited to talk day in and day out on a particular thought?
I meet and chat with dozens of founders trying to build their own podcasts. The biggest struggle they have is production, because the right production system frees you to test ideas and tweak. Whereas the lack-there-of costs more with time and money.