002 Podcast at BBC Stuart Thomas Head of Programmes BBC England PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST with Neil Mossey

Podcast Producers share experiences to help everyone start their own podcast, and keep going.

This is the chat which kick started the Podcast Producers Podcast:
Stuart Thomas, Head of Programmes BBC England, with his insight on launching a podcast at the BBC - MULTI STORY.

Podcast at the BBC 002 PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST Neil Mossey | Stuart Thomas BBC England


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002 Podcast at BBC Stuart Thomas Head of Programmes BBC England PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST with Neil Mossey

"A collection of surprising stories from around the country, presented and produced by Becca Bryers."
MULTI STORY series link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06m8h7g

FOLLOW STUART THOMAS HERE: https://twitter.com/stuartthomas

This was a chat over a coffee that didn't stop, so I asked Stuart if it would be okay to record our chat on my phone. I'm sorry about the sound quality, but I wanted to share this to help you get your podcast started too.

In this episode, Stuart talks us through
- the number of levels on which a podcast title has to work (as a spoken phrase... text in a logo... as a URL... as something descriptive but unique and which hasn't already been taken...)
- titling podcast episodes
- and some of the decisions made during the editing process.
What length should a podcast be?

He also talks about the podcast production landscape, and some of his favourite podcast series.

Here's the article I mention: 12% of podcasts don't get past the first episode
https://blog.pacific-content.com/podcast-success-a-long-game-fd6522b72752

Please leave a comment to say hi -- it would be great to hear from anyone watching this! Also if you have any questions, I'd be happy to help.

All the episodes of The PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST PLAYLIST are here on YouTube

PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST series on iTunes

PODCAST PRODUCERS PODCAST on Google Podcasts

Podcasts mentioned in this episode:
THE TOBOLOWSKY FILES
http://stephentobolowsky.com/the-tobolowsky-files/
THE WEST WING WEEKLY
https://thewestwingweekly.com/
THIS AMERICAN LIFE
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/
RADIOLAB
https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/radiolab
SLOW BURN
https://slate.com/slow-burn
SONG EXPLODER
http://songexploder.net/
HERE'S THE THING, WITH ALEC BALDWIN
https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/heresthething
TWENTY THOUSAND HERTZ
https://www.20k.org/

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My WeAreTheProblems blog
https://neilmossey.blogspot.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/neilmossey

Thanks for listening!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, welcome back to the Happy Hut for this the second ever episode of the podcast producers podcast with me Neil Mossey.
Thanks so much for clicking on this - it's really good to have you there and man did I learn so much from making episode 1.

I'm going to get to today's interview as quickly as possible and it's the thing that kicked me off on this whole journey. It's a chat with one of my best friends, Head of Programmes at BBC England: Stuart Thomas. He's talking about a podcast at the BBC. The whole point of this podcast is that it's for podcast producers to share their
experiences to help anyone with how to start a podcast and I just wanted to tell you about how things are right now.

I'm so glad that I'm on the second episode. I found out this week - there was research - I'll try and put a link into the description - but the figure is this:

12% of podcasts never make it past the first episode.
The number of podcasts at the moment right now at the time of recording has been put at about 675,000 podcasts.
That figure will obviously have grown by the time you see this - but 12% of them never make it past the first episode.
6% never make it past the second episode.
So if I can get past this one, we're home and dry and we're in the top four-fifths of all podcasts - just for numbers of episodes alone!

I'm telling you this so that you can get your podcast past episode 2 as well, so let's
all hold hands and get through this one. This whole scheme, this whole project, started with a chat with a very very close friend of mine.

His name Stuart Thomas and he is currently Head of Programmes at the BBC in BBC England. I’ve known him... it feels odd talking to you about him like that because I've known him since we were at university.

We ran a college radio station together - UKC RADIO 999 kilohertz, “it’s the killer that hurts”, and since then we've both had careers in the broadcasting industry and I wanted to talk to him about just podcasts generally.

I didn't know that he's the executive producer of a brand-new podcast which has just been launched and we were talking about this and we didn't stop talking about this and I knew that this was going to be the start of my journey to share experiences of people who have made podcasts.

So I got my phone out - I would never record a podcast on my phone just with the just the normal handset microphone - I would never do that, but I wanted to do it just to get this thing started.

So firstly I apologize hugely for the audio quality of what you're about to hear - this is the chance that is the reason why I am making this podcast, so I hope you enjoy it. There's a transcript of the conversation on the blog and there's a link to that in the
description. My chat with Stuart Thomas, Head of Programmes at BBC England, executive producer for a brand-new podcast called MULTI STORY.

You can't just put a radio programme out as a podcast, and expect it to do well because with a few exceptions of, you know, The Archers and stuff you just won't.  And that's really just it's not really podcasting - that's catch up radio, which I think is a different thing.  Sorry, this is really obscure, but you know Groundhog Day?
The film? Yeah.
You know the the guy who's really annoying who interrupts Bill Murray on the pavement, on the sidewalk,
Yes!
And he ends up punching him?
Yeah yeah yeah.
That actor is called Stephen Tobolowsky, and he's - he's got a podcast - and it's just,
I don't know if it's real or not - it's just him reminiscing...
Right
But it sounds like it's really intricately written.
But it's just him talking in a... and it even starts with him just talking to someone else like he's being interviewed and then without any warning he just carries on with the
story.  And the story is just like this half hour radio play.  But narrated by him.

So, you know you've got that whole other strand - where it's like an audio book.
Yep.
I love that.
It's also the niche fandom kind of thing, isn't there.
So like every football club has got multiple podcasts in a way that they used to make fanzines - people now make podcasts about them and they do really well, the football ones.

I'm sure I've bored you with my favourite fan podcast which is The West Wing Weekly, you know presented-
Is it still going?
Right, so The West Wing Weekly - every week they go through an episode of The West Wing. They started with episode one, series one, and they're now up to - they're half way through series five. And it's this guy who actually has got another podcast, called Song Exploder, so he's kind of the podcast guy...
And then the other presenter is Joshua Malina who would played Will in The West Wing so he was you know he's got a part in it! And so they get on... they get on you know all of the stars of The West Wing have been on it... Aaron Sorkin's been on it numerous times, and they spend at least an hour sometimes an hour and 20 minutes talking about 44 minutes of television!

So the conversation about the episode takes longer than the episode.
And they came to Britain to record one in one of the theatres, here in London, I think earlier this summer and I was desperate to go and the tickets sold out in about ten
minutes and that's from British fans of a podcast about The West Wing.
And they filled a theatre in ten minutes - I mean it's just you know - and they've filled, they've done a few live in America, and you know, tickets just go straight away.
And is that one episode per episode of West Wing?

So one episode, per episode, so it's a weekly podcast and y'know as I say they're up to, say, 22 episodes per series, so 22, 44, 88, so they must be up to about 95 episodes of this podcast - about two years they've been going - and it's you know - it's great! And if you're a fan of The West Wing hearing it pulled apart, you know they get the Director on... they might get one of the actors on... sometimes they just talk themselves... in various week-to-week...

And your - a podcast you've just launched...
Yep.
Multi Story.
It's called Multi Story.
Not like the carpark.
It's like "Story" - s - t - o - r - y.
And is that one word, or hyphenated?
Two words actually.
No hyphen.

We debated this. There are many many debates about it, yeah.
Tell me about the debate - is that because of the searchability?

Yeah well the original title was gonna be "Home" because the first episode was all about home, and it was supposed to become homely and about stories about England - "England's your home" - you know, wherever in England is your home.
It was called Home for a very long time.
And then, relatively close to launch, I suppose one or two months beforehand - maybe a couple of months beforehand - a lot of people started to tell us that it was a terrible name, because you type Home into Google - you know you're never gonna get your podcast coming out, if you type home into anything.
It's just utterly unsearchable. And the other title we kind of flipped around with a lot was Multi Story, and then we went around a million other different names after that and then we came back to Multi Story in the end as the one that kind of stood out as, it kind of does what it says on the tin... it's a bit of a play on words... and hopefully it you know will stick with people.

But yeah it took quite a long time to get there and now it just feels like well it is Multi Story, that's what is. It feels like the name of it.
And did you change that just before release?
No, it was a few... it was it was probably six or eight weeks beforehand that we settled on Multi Story, because then we had to get logos done and all of that.
But it was yeah, it took us a while to settle on that.
It was probably the the most difficult bit of the entire process, was settling on a name that we were happy with.

Right, because it's not just a title, is it.
It's like the whole thing, the thing that it will be referred to as... the thing that will be forwarded... it'll be the thing that you say in it...
I hadn't really thought about that.
And then you've got the whole URL, SEO, negative checking... and other things like that.
Even simple things like "Would you want your URL to be bbc.co.uk/home?
Well that clearly will take you somewhere else, like the homepage!
So, none of it worked. It just didn't work.
I found this with - there was one that I wanted it to end with "UK".
So, for instance something like "Podcast Producers UK" is PodcastProducerSUK!
[Laughter]
That's not right, is it.

So it has to work... saying it, as well as URL as well as text in a lozenge.
And there's a little bit with Multi Story, having to say "story", as in "Not the carpark".
But that could be a bit of a catchphrase.
"Multi Story, Not The Car Park"
And is it weekly?
So it's weekly, but we've made it for ten weeks. So the first series - hopefully there'll be more - the first series is 10 programmes. One released every Wednesday for ten
weeks.

And is it based in one region or is it--
No, so the concept is--
It'd take me 5 seconds to look it up, it's just it's good to ask you.

The concept is - I suppose it's good to explain where the concept came from.
Which is, the concept was we've got 40 radio stations across England.
Their job is to tell stories about what's going on around them.

But so many times you hear one of those stories, you think goodness this deserves a much wider audience than just Radio Cornwall or Radio Devon or Radio Cumbria you know this would, you know, everyone would find this an extraordinary emotional story.
And, look, if we're telling stories across 40 radio stations every day... surely we could find three a week to pull out... and re-tell for a podcast audience across England,  about just tell you what life is like around England and so that's what we decided to do.

And we piloted it and at that point it was called Home, you know the pilot, and the
entire pilot was was branded as Home... and largely taking stories from local radio... and either editing them to be more podcast-ish... or maybe even retelling them completely. But the basis being the local radio story that originated them.
So the first story on the first podcast is just this extraordinary bit of audio of a
farmer from Lincolnshire who's got the most extraordinarily broad Lincolnshire accent which you would never have heard on radio or television before.

He's called Farmer Wink, and he goes on the train to London because he's only ever been to London in the middle of the night, once on the back of a milk lorry.
And he's never been in the daytime.
He's never been underground.
He's never been on the train.

He's certainly never been on a fast train. So they take him to Lincoln station, he gets on the train and they just follow his day as he goes to London.
And that was the kind of thing - the concept of the podcast is that story is just a brilliant listen and doesn't matter if you didn't live in Lincolnshire it's an amazing listen if you're anywhere in the country or the world actually.
It's like you know, "and how could we reflect life outside of the big cities better by telling some of these stories".
Some of them actually come from big cities.

One of my favourite ones, being a transport anorak- I think, I genuinely think it's a great listen as well - is Radio London going round the Lost Property Office at Transport for London.
Now you might think well that's been done a million times before but they've just did it really well and it wasn't about the Lost Property Office.
It was about the guy who works there... and how he ended up there... and his story - and it's just fascinating.

And then some really clever questions like how long does it take between the launch of a new product and it appearing in The Lost Property Office. And he went "well it's
something we measure every time".
So a new iPhone comes out and they're like you know three or four days later the first one will arrive at the lost property office.
And they're like how can this happen?
How can someone have got this new phone and they've gone in, they've been showing it off to all their mates... they've been down the pub...
"Look, I've got the new iPhone!" and then they've got on the tube that night and they've left it on the tube.
It's like and that we love it, they love it, you know it's like they count down how many days it is before each new product launch - before they get one in to the office.
That's such a great detail, I've never heard before.

Just like interesting bits of audio, interesting stories, interesting tales.
Some of them may cry, some of them make you laugh. Some of them are just interesting, you know.
So it's repurposing - if you like - local radio for a younger podcast audience and telling it in a podcast way, so it's all hung together my Becca, who's the producer and
the presenter, and she tells us stories in between each of the three main bits of audio and it's presented in a very podcast-friendly way.

So you've got these stories...
Yeah.
They don't have to fit a "28 minutes dead" (slot), do they?
It's true.
Or a 3 minute package?
I wonder whether if we have been too harsh on some of the durations, if I'm honest.
I played, or I asked, someone who's very well respected in the radio industry to listen to the first episode and he said "I would have taken so much more of Farmer Wink - should've let it run even longer"
We were really conscious about the overall length of the episode.
How long is it?
They're running kind of 30 - 40 minutes, and maybe we should have been less worried about letting it run long.
I've faced this with my stuff which is - "do you let the moment run long and be rambly" But it's interesting, because it's authentic - and you're kind of listening in on this totally authentic, round the houses, tributaries and coversations that go off to dead ends.
Erm, even leaving in "erms" and "ahs" and "you know",
OR... do you tighten it up?
So you keep more listeners on board.
And it's a really-- there's no right answer.
No there isn't.
That's what's really interesting.

Going the "saggy" route is actually more compelling - if you are along for the ride, you really like it.
And I think you know the TFL conversation - The Lost Property Office - is probably one of the longest segments on any of the ten podcasts, and we've debated whether it's too long... and there are bits you could take out...
but actually, every bit of it is so interesting.
It's like - and it's not just me as a transport anorak who thinks this - it, you know, we all keep listening to it again.
"Yeah we could take that bit out, but it works really well with that bit"
Actually, it's just a really interesting conversation.
I've listened to it, you know, multiple times and I can listen to it again.
And I think now about all of the ones we made so far - is that they're just interesting conversations and they're worthy of listening to more than once.
Which therefore you know should mean that they've got a place.
But the duration thing's interesting - and also you know what makes it a podcast, as
opposed to radio.

And there is this kind of you know less formal use of language and things like that.
But maybe we should be doing that in radio and we'd have more listeners rather than thinking "well this is where you do it for podcasting, and this is the way you do it for radio."
Maybe it's successful in podcasts because actually that's what people wanna listen to.

You've got the kind of contemporary podcast, haven't you, that works on that day or that week, but that kind of only works then.
So, kind of news-based, current affairs type podcast.
And actually, although we're-- we tell a lot of news stories, actually the stories we're telling on Multi Story, are timeless.
So the idea is that - those ten episodes will sit there forever, and hopefully more and more people will find them at some point and enjoy them, and it will become a growing thing.

You know the West Wing podcast that I love, they record one every week and occasionally there'll be contemporary references around an American election or whatever, you can sit and listen to them you know sometimes I miss four weeks, eight weeks, I'm gonna get back into it and listen to four in a row.
But you could start tomorrow listening to episode one series one, even though it's two years old. And it's it's you know just as relevant as it is now.
And people have said about Multi Story that it's the kind of podcast that will grow slowly, so once there are ten there, that's almost where you want to start really publicizing it.
And in fact we're looking at a spike around week five because we think you know once you've got five episodes up, people like to binge these things - they like to,
once you've heard one they want to hear another they don't want to kind of - people don't want to wait these days for anything. So you know once we've got five there, we're going to have a bit of a push with publicity and then I think once all ten are there, hopefully it will you know grow by word of mouth that there are these interesting interesting bits of audio that are worth listening to.

What are your favourite podcasts?
What are my favourite podcasts-
Sorry, it's very formal of me to ask this.
[laugh]
So in terms of American podcasts, I love This American Life and I love Radiolab you know it's kind of the obvious American podcast - I'm just gonna
get my phone out to show you my...

This would be a feature of the show where:
"May I see your podcast catching software please?"
I use PocketCast. And as you can see - The West Wing Weekly is at number one.
Sorry, I interrupted, so you use Pocket Cast.
Yep, and then so I've got West Wing Weekly...
Multi Story from the BBC.

Serial, which obviously in many ways started the podcast revolution with series one.
Series 2, take it or leave it. The new series really really good - series three's coming out now weekly, really good.

Slow Burn, the first series told the story of Nixon's downfall, over many many hours. I don't know, I can't remember how many episodes there were now.
Many many hours of telling the entire story of Nixon's downfall which was fascinating and they've just, series 2 was about Clinton Lewinsky with lots of detail I didn't know about, which is fascinating.

Song Exploder is great, so this is from the same guy as the West Wing Weekly and
they just pull apart a song and how it came about.

I really like Here's The Thing.
It's Alec Baldwin interviewing people in New York but it's just - he's brilliant and
he's got such an amazing voice and it's really interesting.
And he's really interested as well, he's really into it.
Have you heard it?
I love it.
My favourite bit though is when he--
He's so intense.
-- when he talks then he'll cut to a sponsor and he'll be just as intense.
Yeah.
"If you need software..."
Oh he knows how to sell.
[laugh]
But he's just - I love it.
And you would think, being a big Hollywood actor he would want to have his say all the time but he really does want to hear and engage and I love that. I really love it.
That's good, because it explodes his archetype doesn't it?
It explodes the assumption that you would have of Alec Baldwin.
Yep.
So this is something else that the medium can do, I guess.
It's like - it means you can go long--

You will love this one.
So have you heard Twenty Thousand Hertz?
No.
Oh my goodness, Twenty Thousand Hertz is about noise and so there's a whole
one about jingles... Sonic branding... the THX deep note... so you know [IMPERSONATES THX DEEP NOTE]
A whole 30 minutes pulling that apart. How it came about.
"Quite randomly" is the answer.
And is it hosted by one person?
Yeah, he interviews people who were involved so he interviews the guy who invented it.
But things like the different beeps on computers.
So it's like a mini-documentary?
Yeah - Muzak - the history of Muzak.
Disney - the sounds at Disney theme parks - you know it's about how sounds in everyday life came about - it's absolutely brilliant.

If you had to basically so you've got the bandwidth to download one podcast, you know the next episode, which one?
West Wing Weekly.
It's always my first go-to podcast of the week, yeah.
Do you have a second one?
At the moment, Serial, when that's finished it will probably be This American Life.

This feels like a regular question as well - do you listen at normal speed, do you--
Yes.
Or do you speed it up?
No I listen at normal speed.
Is that heresy to--
I used to to have that setting on that takes the gaps out so it doesn't speed it up
but it takes all the pauses out. And I hated it, and it just you know ruins the flow of what you know someone spent you know maybe I'm just an audiophile.
But someone spent hours - you know there are people credited with sound design on these things, and you're like speeding them up or taking the gaps out.
Right, so you're poring over, "shall we leave in this clip, shall we not..."
And then someone's just bang bang bang take out all your breaths and your pauses, and no I left that there for dramatic effect cause someone's just died in this story and you're getting bang straight into the next thing because you haven't got three seconds to hear a pause. So no, I'm afraid I turn that off.

When you're recording on location obviously you need to do things correctly and to do a risk assessment but essentially this is a way of getting into places and communities and like you said earlier - that you know people you wouldn't hear from - like so a really obscure Lincolnshire farmer.
It just feels like you can get into a niche situation more easily than perhaps a broadcast machine might.
Yeah I think you can be less worried about whether your audience will, you know, " Who am I doing this for?"
It's not like if you're listening to Capital and the song comes on you don't like you
can press flick and you'll be on Heart, or Smooth or you know Radio 1 or whatever.
You've made a commitment to listen to a podcast.
So I think at the point that you're listening if a moment comes on that you don't love you can fast-forward it or you probably just, I think you'll probably just listen through it.

If you put too many of those in, then they're not going to listen to the next one, so you've got to have some compelling element - but there is a different commitment to having listened to a podcast because you've either gone and found it and streamed it or you've actually downloaded it - you've made some kind of commitment.
It's like renting a film - you know there's just a bit more of a commitment to it than - not that people rent films any more.
It's like you're either with us, or you're not.
Yeah.
And there's something quite wilful about that.
Yeah.

Because I'm trying to do this in a way that is platform agnostic.
And it might not be possible but I think there's a way of doing it so the easy way to do it, is to go to a podcasting company - there are many of them - and and you pay a monthly subscription - right - and they host it, and they distribute it and that's great.
My fear is what happens if that company goes bust, what happens if they double their rates?
It just feels like you're handing over your brand and your life's work, potentially.
To a company that may or may not be here in 5 years time.

I'm also a tightwad as well, and want to do it for free!
[laughs]
And the idea I've got is to - apparently there's a way you can host in Google Drive.
Right.
And then you just point a blog to that as an "enclosure".
So this is like beyond me, but that is then found by an RSS feed, and it spots it as a podcast.
So we'll see!
We'll see if it works.
Do you see the blank look on my face?
Nodding sagely.
Yeah yeah.

And it just struck me that there's no established way of making a podcast.
Distributing it or even structuring them.
Yep.
And I'm genuinely interested in talking to people who've actually gone through that experience.
Do you think that might fly?
I'm sure there must be a hundred podcasts who've done that already, I've yet to find one.
What do you think?
I think you're right - there is no set way of doing it.
Lots of people want to do it, and are trying to do it.
I haven't heard anyone telling the story of how we do it.

I think there's an American podcast about it's all about the business side of it - how to make huge amounts of money out of it, which I don't think this is.
I think this is about the practicalities - if you want to start Tottenham Hotspurs
podcast in your bedroom - how would you actually do that?
Not how would you make a million pounds by setting up a business to monetize it.

And now I'm looking around this cafe wondering how many of these people on laptops are currently editing podcasts, or looking up how to make podcasts...
Look, he's got headphones on over there must be what he's doing.
He's on Pro Tools, I guarantee it.
It's a bit of, everyone's trying to do a podcast and the numbers are extraordinary.
But you know you can't just talk for an hour and expect people to listen - it's got to be - there's got to be a reason.
It's like YouTube, isn't it.
How many million minutes a day get uploaded to YouTube and how many actually get watched.
You've got to - you know - it's got to be a concept, a reason, for watching something.
And you really kindly said that maybe I should speak to Becca.
You definitely should talk to Becca.
She's actually made the thing - she would understand what you talk about when you're talking about encoding, uploading...
See you've added more terms!

If you made a personal one - personal podcast - what would it be about?
I don't know. Trains maybe?
I could do with a train podcast, actually.
Of course, when I was growing up I did used to listen to national railway roundup which is a monthly half hour radio programme on County Sound which they actually syndicated to other commercial radio stations.

And it used to end - the programme used to end - this half hour monthly programme - "National Railway Roundup" - and it would end with a recording of a train coming and it was in stereo obviously... which was really modern in the eighties... and so on the right hand side - so it'd be silence, and you'd hear birds tweeting and on the right-hand side you just begin to hear something coming - and this train would come - and then go past you in the middle and then it would go off, and you'd hear it go right into the distance, on the other speaker, or your other earphone depending on how you were listening, and then it was silence again.
"National Railway Roundup's back... in a month's time."
And that's how it would end!
Brilliant!
Loved it.
I've probably said too much.
[Laughter]

So that was it my very first chat for the podcast
producers podcast - thanks again to Stuart Thomas, Head of Programmes at BBC England.

The podcast that he was talking about - MULTI STORY - is just a thing of beauty. Really really gorgeous, currently ten episodes, the host Becca Bryers she's also the producer as you heard - she manages to just guide us the listener through I think her personal journey of putting these stories together from around the country from around all the different local radio stations in England and she themes it I think in a very personal and vulnerable way.

I really urge you to take a listen it's called Multi Story, two words not like the carpark - so thanks again to Stuart.

You've helped me get this thing off the ground - I really appreciate it - just by just by talking and if you've got to this part of the episode it'll be lovely to hear from you - just to hear that someone somewhere managed to make it to
this point.

If you're a podcast producer you know the value of a subscription - on YouTube I'm trying to get to 1,000 subscribers I'm about 290 in - I don't think I'm ever going
to hit the thousand but if you could hit subscribe there's a there's a link at the bottom and a thing in the corner and my face at the end of the video.

If you're listening online as an audio podcast please feel free to subscribe in your pod caching software - just send me a message it would be lovely to hear from you and if I can help at all by linking to your show let me know - because I think we can really help each other out and share our work with each other.

So well this is it. There's no turning back now we're gonna have to head for episode 3!
Can you please help my dad get 1,000 subscribers - just click on his face thanks bye!