I recently have been provided with the opportunity to co-host a 2 hour radio show at my local community station.  I’m debating the merits of this over a podcast.  I know radio is supposed to be as dead as a can of Spam and you’ll get more listeners with a podcast but there’s just something about a live radio broadcast.  Are podcasts just preaching to the choir?  Is a radio show a waste of time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere?  What do you guys think? 

Sitting in for a friend who does a psych/prog/experimental industrial show tonight at 8pm.  I'm feeling out of my element to a degree.  Send me your positive waves.

Hey Zorchman, thanks for responding!  Check out the Tricks and Tips discussion I started in this group!  It helps that my station is well established in my area and that my time slot (3-5 PM Saturdays) is so perfect.  I play every request I can, I use fun slang and talk real fast and act like a madman to get people to keep listening and to tune in again.  I've been on the air for something like 15 years now, so people know where to find me!  I won't be on the air this Saturday (the 31st) but I'll be on the week after.  See you on the radio!-Matt

I hope I get to tune into your show this week, Matt.  What kind of stuff do you do to keep people listening live?  Is it just the absence of recordings that force people to tune in live, or you got some tricks you'd like to share?  I found that ticket give-aways work really well, recently.

I'm probably too late to respond to this, but I gotta say, the rewards of broadcasting live are amazing.  Just being part of an actual community (your city) instead of the bogus "cyber" ghetto is reward enough.  I know that I'm talking to people at work, or in their cars or just doing whatever, and that they are real people, not just hipsters on the infonets.  I meet people all the time who never knew that they were rockabilly (my shows' theme) fans until they tuned me in!  My show is underwritten by local businesses and I can promote local shows, record fairs and other events. My show is not archived, so people better not miss it!  That urgency to be there and tune in works for me too; who's going to be upset if your podcast is a few days (or hours) late?  Being on the radio means being ON TIME motherfucker, and of course it's not going to be perfect, but what does being perfect have to do with rock & roll? (Or music, or life?).  My two cents, anyway.  hope you made the choice that's right for you!

HAHAHAHA!  True, gotta take what you can get. 

The screamin' Soul Preacher said:

Zorch Radio said : "To me, podcasts/pre-recorded radio are like watching a DVD of a concert instead of going to one. Or pretending to eat. Or solo-sex."

 

I do agree boy but, unfortunately, you sometimes have to deal with what you got...

I mean : when you're looking like the creature of Frankenstein, you're a total misfit, a stupid jerk, a troglodyte, a potential (?) serial killer no-one dares to approach, a bloody asshole sweating beer and gin, solo-sex is still better than no sex at all ! Believe my own experience ! ;)

Zorch Radio said : "To me, podcasts/pre-recorded radio are like watching a DVD of a concert instead of going to one. Or pretending to eat. Or solo-sex."

 

I do agree boy but, unfortunately, you sometimes have to deal with what you got...

I mean : when you're looking like the creature of Frankenstein, you're a total misfit, a stupid jerk, a troglodyte, a potential (?) serial killer no-one dares to approach, a bloody asshole sweating beer and gin, solo-sex is still better than no sex at all ! Believe my own experience ! ;)

Oh, and by the way, I completely agree: uploading recordings of your live show is an absolute must.

To me, podcasts/pre-recorded radio are like watching a DVD of a concert instead of going to one. Or pretending to eat. Or solo-sex.

It's just not the same.

Not just because of the rush, but also because of the skills required. Combining writing, directing, rock and roll,blending production with songs on the fly, creating production to perfect transitions, riding live posts and outros, programming a non-stop, escalating show that NOBODY wants to turn-off: It's a completely different league when it's live.

But then again, we ARE talking about Vaudeville vs Hollywood...

It's not that we're ASKING people to stop what they're doing every Thursday at 7pm Pacific time, we just have to figure out ways to make people WANT to stop. 

Thanks Dave, for the info'....

Friday nights I'm The Big Mix sidekick from 6:30 - 8pm Central on 91.1 FM.

 

http://www.wdbx.org/

 

We trade off picking songs.  Stan is more Rat Fink / black leather jacket and while I like that too, I sneak in more oddball stuff.

Go for it DD! As someone who does a radio show, (and has no competence whatsoever, re: podcasting), I'm grateful for the opportunity to be on air and give some time to bands I think are deserving of the airing. The station makes the live stream available as archives for two weeks beyond a show's original air date so the at will or whim aspect for listeners is there, too. Listen when you want to. (I wish your station, there in C'dale, had archived streaming; I don't think they even do Playlists, do they? Does your co-DJ have a website or blog where he posts them?)((I know this because my nephew has a show there.)) Good luck Dave!

Do the live radio! It's all good experience whichever way you look at it. If you get confidence and some presenting skills out of it, it will help with your podcasting anyway.

Go go go !

I'll ask my co-host about recording the live broadcast.  He's the seasoned veteran (~ 10 years) and tech guru.  I spin the CDs and vinyl and he does almost everything from a laptop.  I’m glad I didn’t record last weeks show.  I tried to do a Joe Meek tribute set and it all went horribly wrong.  I wanted to abort the mission and nuke from orbit.  In spite of that, I feel pretty positive about this weeks show; lots of kill my girlfriend / dead lover songs in honor of VD.  Hmmm …that’s not a bad idea for a VD theme – social diseases!

“A sailor travels to many lands, any place he pleases, and he always remembers to wash his hands, so he don't get no diseases”. – Pee Wee Herman

Ooops, if I had waited to reach "conscious competence", I would have never podcasted...(well of course, many think I should have never started but that's another discussion...).

 

I have never had the opportunity to broadcast live but I believe this is the REAL thing : fun, dangerous, thrilling and exciting !

And you can hear this ! When the hosts have fun, I believe the listeners have fun.

(That's why I record my stupid shows LIVE as if it was a live radio broadcast...for the better and the worst !

But, since it's a podcast, I'm able to cheat afterwards, equalize some volumes for example if necessary.)

 

So, as a show "producer", I'd say you can't beat live radio !

 

But as a listener, I'd say this to the radio show hosts : "PLEASE, PODCAST YOUR GREAT SHOWS so I can listen to them when and where I want, even if I live on the other side of the world !!!"

That's why Howie and Michael (and other great DJs and hosts) rule : they do both, record live on air then podcast the show !

As Mr Kaiser said : win-win !

 

 

DammitDave said:

I have reached the point of conscious incompetence with relative ease.  Once I reach conscious competence (maybe in a year or two), I'll consider doing a podcast on a regular basis.

I have reached the point of conscious incompetence with relative ease.  Once I reach conscious competence (maybe in a year or two), I'll consider doing a podcast on a regular basis.

I'm with Howie. I do about 5 hours a week live on various shows and it gets podcasted after the fact. Of course, for the first 3 years of RadiOblivion, I did it strictly as a podcast. But, you know what they say: once you go live, there's no going back. Granted, I get about 99-point-something percent more listeners to the podcast versions (of all the shows), and I do agree with Kopper that you can't expect folks to alter their schedule for a radio show (we ain't all Howie Pyro. That cat can pull in the big numbers!), but I see it as a win-win situation.

So, just do both.

Howie Pyro said:

my show, INTOXICA,  is a live broadcast which relies totally on the chaos that that brings, and i record it and post it as a podcast...sometimes i get these morons complaining that it is edited bad or some such podcastian blather & i have to explain that THIS IS A REAL RADIO SHOW! not something put together in mommy's den...no offense to all the great podcasters out there!!! just the whiners..

For now, I’m “helping” with the radio show.  I have no life to speak of really that would get in the way.  Maybe an occasional band outing and there’s talk of starting another local band but that’s about it.

I think the two options are very similar to a band doing a live show vs. a studio recording for an album release.  Live is more immediate and disposable.  Like a 3 minute rock and roll song that is meant to be entertaining and then gone.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory (to quote the great philosopher Faron Young).

As it is, the radio show is more spontaneous and organic with the two DJs playing off each other.  It has a tendency to take on a life of its own, which can be great or meh.

If I were to do a podcast (or to a somewhat lesser extent, a solo radio show), I’d want to make it better crafted, like a studio album.  That would take a lot of time and resources.  To be honest, there are so many great podcasts, I don’t know what I could do that would be in the same league.  I'll gladly assist with the show for the time being at least.

Yeah, this is a tough question. I hosted The Wayback Machine for over ten years on KDHX in St. Louis and LOVED it. But it was a LOT of work... I put a ton of time into show preparation, research, not to mention money buying records and CDs, promoting the show, you name it. But that's the way I am. I don't do anything half-assed. I typed up playlists and posted them online, sent them to labels requesting promos, etc. It was a real thrill for me to play this crazy-assed music on the airwaves. I'd sit there at the station while doing the show and just get a huge rush off of the thought that this stuff was going out over 50,000 watts and anyone in their cars could just flip it on. And that thrill never really wore off, even after almost 11 years.

It wasn't until family responsibilities started getting in the way of the show, or, more appropriately, vice-versa, that I decided it was time for a change. I was finding less and less time to put into the show and I could sense that the quality of it was diminishing because of it, and it was causing friction at home (never a good thing). I brought in and tried out a couple cohosts towards the end, thinking that would help, but it just didn't really click, and after a few months of this I just decided to pull the plug. The only reason I really had to do that was because it was a WEEKLY show, and two hours long at that. I'm way too much of a perfectionist to just go in and wing it every week. So, because I had less and less time to dedicate to the show and keeping it great (not just good), I pulled the plug on it. At the time I was also podcasting (Savage Kick), so I still had that avenue for expressing my musical tastes, and I stuck with it.

So now I don't have a radio show anymore, but I'm still podcasting, and I'm still running this site and all that. I find podcasting a LOT different from terrestrial radio, of course. But it takes a lot less time for me to prepare for and do my podcast than it did years ago with my weekly show. Plus, I think more people hear the podcast than heard the radio show. It's more convenient for people to "tune in" to a podcast whenever it's convenient for them rather than expecting them to tune their radio to your show at a specific time every week. I discovered that was just way too much to ask of most people.

So while I totally enjoyed doing the radio show and would do it again in a heartbeat (if my schedule allowed), I'm enjoying the podcasting thing because it's so much easier and less strain on my personal life.

Hope this helps! Let us know what you decide to do. You might even try to do both.

my show, INTOXICA,  is a live broadcast which relies totally on the chaos that that brings, and i record it and post it as a podcast...sometimes i get these morons complaining that it is edited bad or some such podcastian blather & i have to explain that THIS IS A REAL RADIO SHOW! not something put together in mommy's den...no offense to all the great podcasters out there!!! just the whiners..