Editing Rules for Podcasts
November 1st, 2006 by 
adminDo you know that a 30 second ad usually involves several script changes, hours of taping, and many more hours in the editing room as the footage is cut, trimmed and retooled to perfection?
Nothing in the professional broadcasting world is done in one take, and presented in its pure form. Even news shows will have taped segments, and newscasters are given “talking points”. Why? Because professionals know that viewers have very short attention spans, and if you actually drag them through the whole thing, they’ll change the channel.
Unfortunately many amateur podcasts will upload their segments and then proceed to bludgeon their audience with long-winded interviews, laborious “talkies” and scripts that assume that people have nothing better to do than wait for them to get to their point.
Be crisp. Be straightforward. Be smart. Those are the rules of broadcasting, because the listener is not forgiving. If you bore him, even for five seconds, you’ll lose his attention…and eventually, lose him. He’ll never download you again.
To edit your podcast, start with this question: what is this episode’s “net takeaway”? In other words, what is the one thing you want your listeners to remember and to feel? Studies show that at most, people will remember three main points. Anything more than that and it’s information overload. So edit out what doesn’t contribute to those points—or if there’s just too much valuable information, break it down into more than one podcast. Hey, that shouldn’t be a bad thing—that at least takes care of the other segments!
There’s another rule in communication theory, and that’s people will remember things better if they’re blocked together. For example, if you’re interviewing someone on how to make beautiful scrapbooks, then don’t have her jump from one idea to another. Organize her ideas into three groups, let’s say Choosing Materials, Choosing Photos, and Choosing Layouts. Even if she does jump from one topic to another, edit her in such a way that her interview’s divided under those ideas.
Notice something else about those categories? They’re parallel: they have similar wording or structures. That’s another neat editing trick. Try to create triads of similarly phrases. It’s catchy…and memorable.
And here’s another trick to editing—you don’t need to use all the quotes. It’s possible to summarize sections of the interview (especially if the resource person tends to meander) and just use some of her best quotes. News feature programs do that all the time—out of a one-hour interview, they may just use about 20 minutes of footage. The rest is summarized, analyzed or reworded by the interviewer. That way, the listener only gets the “gold”. Everything else ends up on the editing room floor…and you should use the same rule.
Editing follows the simple maxim: less is more. Too much information, buried under too much junk, gets ignored. Prune your material, leaving behind only what is most interesting and useful. You may have shorter podcasts, but they sound packed and concise, and that’s what listeners want.