Podcasts aren’t a new invention by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, there are still some news/talk radio shows and stations that haven’t even begun to harness the medium.
Over the course of my time with Barrett Media, I’ve written several different iterations of “if you aren’t on YouTube, you don’t exist to users under the age of 35” columns.
I never thought I’d have to write a similar opinion piece about podcasting, because it just felt natural that radio — especially a spoken word format like news/talk — would need to be told such a message.
But here we sit.
There are still stations in major markets, owned by major companies, that have dreadful podcast strategies. One station in particular started publishing its shows in podcast form this year. In 2025, a popular, major market news/talk radio station wasn’t making its content available on demand.
Other stations I see don’t portion out their content, or even the hours of an individual show. They just slap together each segment from a three-hour show and say, “Hey, at least we did it.”
“Hey, at least we did it,” isn’t a winning strategy for literally anything, let alone one from an audio medium talking about another audio medium.
We live in an age where if you’re not putting what listeners what directly in front of their faces exactly when they want it, they’re setting out to find other content. So, can you, your brand, your show, your station, or your company afford to have a “Hey, at least we did it,” strategy when it comes to podcasting in 2025?
No.
Here are just a few things that you need to be doing with your on-demand audio (I always think it’s weird to call radio shows repurposed into digital audio as “podcasts.” They’re not podcasts, they’re on-demand audio. Few radio stations are actually producing “podcasts.”) to be set up for success in 2025.
Publish Full Hours
This is potentially the easiest podcast strategy to pull off. Take every segment, smash them together, and publish them. It couldn’t be much simpler.
Additionally, this is just a pet peeve of mine because it feels self-explanatory, but remove any traffic, weather, and local news or local sports updates from the podcast. They couldn’t be less useful to your on-demand audience, and it’s a really easy reason to tune out.
Furthermore, if you’re not going to include the rejoin music in your podcast, also cut out the host talking about how much they love whatever song they’re bumping back with. It ruins the immersion of the listener.
Publish Individual Interviews/Benchmarks
If you have interviews or daily/weekly benchmarks, portion them out on their own. Don’t make listeners wade through 36-48 minutes of content if they’re only interested in a 10-15 minute interview. Because if it isn’t easy, people aren’t going to take the time to find it.
Also, it makes your content easier to share for your interview subjects, hosts, and social media team if you’re able to direct someone to a contained interview with an easy to decipher title that clearly spells out what you’re about listen to.
Don’t Number Your Episodes
No one, not one singular person, cares about how many episodes your podcast or show has had other than you.
Listeners don’t care. Flat out, plain and simple. Is that harsh? Yes. But they don’t care. Moreover, they’re never going to remember content from your show by what number of episode it was. Just because Joe Rogan does it doesn’t mean you should. If I were to ask even the most ardent Joe Rogan Experience listener what the episode number was when Donald Trump made his appearance last year, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. And 30 million people watched that show on YouTube. They sure as hell aren’t going to remember your episode number. (It was episode #2219, by the way.)
It also hurts the discovery of your show. Short episode titles, with searchable keyphrases like brands and names, help immensely.
Do a Week-in-Review/Best of Podcast
You’re proud of your work, right? Then toot your own horn! Tell your audience what you thought was your best work of the week.
Maybe they’re just catching up and have been busy. By, again, hand curating content for them is always going to be appreciated.
Plus, there are alterior motives to doing a week-in-review or a “best of” podcast. First, it’s sellable. Secondly, it’s easier for producers and programmers to find content in a pinch should they ever need to put together programming for an encore presentation, best of, or whatever else you’d like to call it in a pinch. It’s an archive of your best work. You’ll never know when that will come in handy.
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If you’re not doing these things, you’re likely missing out on a sizeable portion of your potential audience. I’m guessing — and this is just a generalization — that your audience and revenues aren’t so big that you couldn’t use a little extra of each? Then put the effort into doing on-demand audio correctly.
It doesn’t hurt anything to take these extra steps to take care of your listeners. Not everyone wants the same thing. So by super-serving your audience, all you’re doing is building goodwill.
I’d also like to point out that this isn’t an industry or format-wide problem. There are some brands and companies who absolutely crush this aspect of the medium. But there are plenty of others who still act as if its 2005 instead of 2025.
The game has changed. You might think that stinks. And maybe it does. But if you hate change, you’ll sure hate extinction more.
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