10 — Creation of Grumpy Old Bears podcast episodes – Grumpy Old Bears

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In this episode of The Grumpy Old Bears, we discuss a response to a listener’s question about how our show is created, especially the time it takes for an episode.

So welcome to this episode number 10 of the Grumpy Old Bears podcast. Unfortunately, we still continue with just the two of us — Sgt. Fred and Mr. Bear — since our other co-host, Matt Cox, is still toiling under the burden of overtime and working long hours every day and week, due to the resurgence of the travel industry. We hope to have Matt back with us soon, as we do miss his grumpiness and comedy (especially Mr. Bear).

Listener feedback

We recently got a question from the audience from an in-person listener that stopped me in the market and asked about podcast episode production — especially for a hobby podcast done for fun, with no expectation of monetization (like GrumpyOldBears.com). The question was “How long does it take you to go from idea to clicking “publish” on your media host?” And what was interesting is that this is the exact same question that we had answered on another podcast called Podcast Reporter, with the question-of-the-month being asked by Dave Jackson of the School of Podcasting show. So we thought we would share that with our audience on this episode before we dive back into the grumpy world of politics and sham-demics, planned-demics, scam-demics and sorrow for the 75,000 deaths caused by the jabs (we cannot even call them “vaccines.”

So here is my answer to that question in a detailed way (note: the content was repurposed from a podcast post that was recently published in another podcast show called The Podcast Reporter)

==Repurposed content: answer to listener’s question==

This is Sergeant Fred, podcaster for 4 podcasts, and my flagship podcast show is PODCASTREPORTER.COM; the other three are 2030podcast.com (which is played on the noagendastream.com), as well as The Struggling Biz.com, and the newest one, Grumpy Old Bears.com.

To answer your question, I have to classify a majority of my podcast episodes as either short-form (i.e., microcasts that are typically less than 10 minutes in length) or long-form (which are usually 30 minutes or longer in length — these are usually either for interviews or as a dialogue with my co-host MATT COX on the 2030podcast.com and grumpyoldbears.com shows).

For short form micro-casts, it takes me about 1 hour from the generation of idea to the final click on publishing. And I can do this only because, with your help from 2006, I have created HABITS in my workflow to be very quick about this.

The steps in my short-form micro-cast are:

– Write the notes (usually ending up in show notes) with the details of the idea and theme and topic;

– Record the solo episode monologue on my portable recorder (either Zoom H4n or Zoom H1n).

– Access the recorded mp3 file from the Zoom recorder’s HCSD card and transfer it to my working directory;

– Edit the recorded file in Audacity to get a final mp3 audio file;

– Add the music and intros and bumpers to create the final mp3 file;

– Export the final file as mp3, ready to send to my media host, libsyn;

– Upload the final mp3 file to libsyn and copy the link of the audio file to my post as the audio media file, then save the post;

– Review the audio of the final mp3 file in major break points to ensure that all the content is there;

– Usually (i.e., 95 per cent of the time), the final audio is fine, so I can then review the show notes and make any minor corrections or links; and then

– Schedule in the WordPress time stamp or hit PUBLISH and make the episode go live.

Now, for the long-form content, the time is usually 2 to 2 1/2 hours overall (but not longer than 3 hrs);

– the steps are the same, but the preparation of notes, questions, themes and topics require more time — and I do collaborate for 10 minutes or so with my co-host to ensure that we will cover all the points adequately (with no dead air);

– Exception: the recording takes longer, because we do perform 5 minutes of audio testing while I have my co-host on the phone and get my recording details ok;

– We do a double-ender, and so we then record the content of the show’s episode — he on his recorder, and myself on my recorder as I speak to him on the telephone;

– We both then save the final file from each of our ends;

– Matt then sends me his file and uploads it to me in my box.com account for him;

– I save my file locally and prepare to edit it in Audacity;

– I quickly receive Matt’s mp3 file and I download it, and then import it into another track on Audacity;

– I edit the audio in post, synchronizing Matt’s content with mine so that it sounds as if we are next to each other in the same room and the quality is acceptable;

– I save our audio content, and then I add the music, the intro, the bumpers, etc. to create the final audio;

– I save and take the final edited audio content of the recording and then upload it to libsyn;

– I get the final audio link and then import that into the WordPress Post audio link field and then save the post;

– I review the final audio and check the shownotes (for corrections, links, etc.);

– If all is fine, then I click PUBLISH or SCHEDULE the final post to have the episode go live when it is supposed to.

Since I do both micro-casts and long-form episodes (such as many of the episodes for GrumpyOldBears.com) with a co-host, this process seems to work well for the both of us.

So we hope that you found the answer to a listener’s question interesting. We are still hopeful for the quick return of our other co-host, Matt Cox, so we can really go into grumpiness and have an interesting, educational, entertaining and continuous episode in this podcast show for you.

Thank you for your attention, and we’ll see you next time.