Producing a Podcast

The role of a producer starts well before the show is taped. It starts when the idea for the show is conceptualized. It involves a large amount of preproduction effort, so by the time you hit record, there are no (or very few) surprises. With a deep understanding of the goals of the show, the producer helps create a picture of what the final podcast will be.

If you are hosting an interview style show, you don’t want to have two people sit down and start an off the cuff conversation without any preparation, because you don’t know where the show will go and you might be left with tons of unusable audio or hours upon hours of editing to make the show listenable.

So let’s roll back the curtain and take a look at some of the producer’s preshow duties.

Booking a Guest

When the topic for a show is decided, your first task as a producer is to do research on the type of guest you are looking for. Why are you going to have them on the show? The producer may conduct many pre-interview calls as they start the search for that one specific type of person who will make the episode successful.

These pre-interviews allow you to get a feel of their personality, and to get an idea of the story they have to tell. There are no set parameters, but it is recommended to spend about 30 minutes with a guest for the pre-interview. You don’t want to burn them out and make the actual interview sound like they are rehashing your call.

So who are we looking for? You might say it is someone who jumps “off-the-page”. That aunt or uncle at dinner who’s always taking over the conversation — their personality is so big and they’re so funny and captivating that the entire table hangs onto their every word.

You are looking for a guest who will make listeners want to keep listening. So you need to also be listening, not just for the answers but to the overall performance. It’s like being a casting director, you don’t just listen to see if they know their lines, but can they captivate an audience. If the person on the phone doesn’t meet your requirements, you may want to continue your search. But always leave the door open to call them back. You may not find a better option.

There are three traits to a good guest that you can use a guide when booking:

They have a pleasing voice.
They have great personality.
And they tell the type of story that you’re looking for.

A great voice can bring a listener in, much like a great voice actor. Remember this is an auditory medium. But the great voice gets you only so far. You need to find out about their story and storytelling abilities. You need to be prepared with questions that allow the guest to elaborate, avoid yes or no questions. You may be asking them about a specific moment in their life, or a longer narrative on a subject. If the guest is the only person available for the show, but doesn’t know how to tell the story, you will need to prepare the host with the right questions that will help the guest expand on the topic. For instance, they might talk in bullets or focus on aspects that aren’t relevant (which can turn listeners off), so the host will need to bring them back and keep them focused on the topic.

You should look for people who speak in detail and who can reenact the dialogue. But also, be mindful of the way you or your host asks questions in order to provoke them to elicit interesting responses. For example, if you close your eyes and walk me into this room, set the scene. Where am I? What are you doing? And if they’re just like, “yeah, I mean I just walked in and then I looked around and I was like, Oh hey, that’s that guy.” If the descriptions are vague and they can’t give you any more, they can’t make the listener see what they’ve experienced at that time.

You need to gather a lot of background information for these interviews. The story the host wants to tell will be shaped with the questions they ask. So, the producer does an advance of that by acting like the host and outlining the story which will help the guest understand the direction of the interview. What is the takeaway? What is the big climax? Is there a narrative structure of a beginning, middle and end? You want to clearly define where are you in the beginning. How do you change, what thresholds do you go through?