YR1566 Disorderded Lesbian

Part of this is just the state of podcasting today. There’s not an audience for fringe podcasts like there was in 2005. Mainstream podcasts rule the day. They’re slickly produced and come out on regular schedules; and both qualities appeal to listeners. The other problem is that you want to have your cake and eat it, too. You want a much larger audience but don’t want to do the work necessary to appeal to more people. That was part of my frustration with Eat This Hot Show and why I said I only wanted to bring it back if we put some work into the production-end of things. That’s what has to be done to capture an audience these days. A more improvisational and haphazard approach worked in the early days of podcasting but you’ve got to be slickly produced in the 2020s, if you’re trying to build an audience. It’s a head-spinning situation because solid production requires money. You need an audience to get money but you need production to land a large audience. In my case, not even solid production can get my audience back. I’m proud of the last six shows I put out but the audience figures haven’t budged. Back in the day, I’d have thousands of listens to each show. Now, I’m lucky if I break 200. 200 plays isn’t worth all the effort I put into my show. It sucks that ETHS imploded again ‘cuz that show actually has a discernible market that could grow. But it’s a difficult show to navigate without a producer, without a unified vision of the work that needs to be done to expand the audience, and without a common appreciation of boundaries. There’s a reason why co-hosts on “The View” and “The Talk” are often at one another’s throats. Walking that fine line between lively debate and ad hominem attack is precisely what makes a show in that genre exciting to watch but often painful to host.