Podcast Listeners Prefer Deep Dives Over Short Form Content

After reading Ashley Carman's latest article, we're diving into the rising trend of long-form podcast episodes. With podcasters like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Stephen Bartlett regularly releasing 3 to 9-hour conversations, it’s clear that listeners are staying tuned for extended content. But why are long episodes becoming so popular? 

Join us as we explore how listeners engage with long-form content, why podcasts allow flexibility in how we consume media, and the editing secrets behind successful lengthy episodes. 

Read the article: Podcasters Ditch Short Episodes in Favor of Four-Hour Conversations

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

Hey guys!

Alban: 0:00

Hey jordan

Kevin: 0:01

What's up Jordan?

Jordan: 0:02

All right. So this week we're going to be trying something a little different with our quick cast

Kevin: 0:06

Oh yeah.

Jordan: 0:06

Yeah, we're going to be diving into a topic for about 10-ish minutes.

Kevin: 0:11

Right.

Jordan: 0:12

And then we'll see how it goes.

Kevin: 0:14

All right, one topic, 10 minutes. Everybody knows the rules. Let's go. What are we talking about?

Jordan: 0:26

All right. So I'm always excited when I see a new article from Ashley Carman, and her most recent one from the Soundbite newsletter is titled Podcasters Ditch Short Episodes in Favor of 4-Hour Conversations, and this actually reminded me of our discussion a couple episodes ago about, you know, if our podcast is like long or the quick cast or snap cast or anything like that, and this was really interesting. It kind of like goes through like how there's this trend of long form podcast episodes being favored by podcast listeners, and it says here that you know podcasters like Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman and Stephen Bartlett and they have like episodes that are three hours clear up until like eight or nine hours long, and it's just wild that listeners are staying tuned for this and it seems like these are really big shows and the listeners aren't tuning out, you know, and they're treating it more like an audio book where, like, they pick up the episode later.

Alban: 1:28

I think audio book is one good thing to kind of consider. Okay, it could be replacing audio books, and I think this is something audible saw years ago when they started advertising more than anybody on podcasts because they saw, hey, they're kind of similar ish content, we want to get more people into audible. And then they added podcasts into audible because they saw, hey, they're kind of similar-ish content, we want to get more people into Audible. And then they added podcasts into Audible because they went, oh, it's a similar audience.

Alban: 1:50

But lately, and when I was reading this article, the thing that kept popping to my mind is not audiobooks but talk radio, the idea of listening to something almost all day during the workday. And there were people who were talking about listening a lot. A guy at work, dave, his brother, listens to talk radio or podcasts all day while he works at a sign company, and so he just kind of got them on in the background when I did construction or when I mowed lawns. Both of those were jobs where you kind of have something on all the time, and my feeling when I'm listening to this is like I don't think there's people listening to a nine-hour Lex Friedman podcast sitting at their desk watching the whole thing.

Jordan: 2:37

Yeah.

Alban: 2:37

But the idea of, hey, you work at a job where you're using your hands, you're washing dishes, you wanna listen to something? Yeah, the idea of listening to a nine-hour podcast during the entire workday that sounds much more reasonable to me. It kind of maybe shifts my mental model for what's happening. It's not like they're listening to back-to-back TikToks all day. That would be unhinged. This is a way to put something on and have a conversation in the background and have something that's kind of with you through the day.

Jordan: 3:06

It's so funny.

Jordan: 3:07

I was served an ad that was just so bad and it was for I wish I could remember what the company was, but it was for one of those companies that will like shorten content for you to consume.

Jordan: 3:21

The woman in the ad was just like I read nine books a day and I feel so knowledgeable. And dah, dah, dah dah. And I was just like you can't possibly retain that information if you're reading nine books a day. And it's just like this silly thing where it just like condenses all this information down into a thing and so you're just consuming as quickly as you can nine books a day. And what I think people are finding is that when you get that kind of like just constant short form content coming at you, it's so hard to really let it like sink in. And I think that people are discovering that these like deep dives, these extensive things, it gives you more time to kind of like chew on the content and fully grasp it, and so I think that that's why people are really preferring this to just that short term content, short form content this to just that.

Jordan: 4:11

Short-term content, short-form content, yeah, and remember that a 10-hour- podcast episode is really only an hour when you listen at 10x, especially for you, kevin's.

Alban: 4:27

Just like this girl in the ad I listened to 10, 10-hour podcasts a day.

Jordan: 4:28

I feel so knowledgeable yeah.

Kevin: 4:30

When I read this it harkened back to the discussion we had about, like, the reasons that we love podcasts, and one of the main reasons is that it's one of the only medias that you can engage in that is respectful of you and your life. If I think about watching a movie, one of the things I'll often do is I'll say, like well, how long? How long is that movie? Because do I want to sit here for two and a half hours Like I don't want to watch? I don't know what's a really long movie.

Jordan: 4:57

Like.

Kevin: 4:58

Avatar or something. They're Titanic Like three hours.

Jordan: 5:01

Come on, I don't have three hours for that.

Kevin: 5:03

But I might find an hour and a half movie or something. But podcasts I don't ever think about that because I can queue up whatever podcast I want to listen to and then I can go do my thing. And I know I can just hit pause when I'm done doing my thing, when I'm done walking the dog, when I'm done with my jog, when I'm done driving to wherever I'm going, and then next time I'm back in an environment where I can listen again, I can pick right up where I left off. But for movies it doesn't feel like that. For a TV show it doesn't feel like that. I don't want to watch half a movie, I don't want to watch half a TV show. But podcasts are more like books in that way, whether it be a book you're reading or an audio book.

Kevin: 5:40

And I have to think that, even though some of this content that Ashley is referencing in her article she mentioned a lot about how many YouTube views, and I think she's just doing that because YouTube views are public, so she can quickly find long episodes that have been posted to YouTube and see how many views they have I don't think she's necessarily saying this is the primary place that people are listening, but maybe it is, but I think the listening habit would be the same, so it would be.

Kevin: 6:05

The content that she's referencing is audio first content with a video component. That also seems to work well on YouTube, but I imagine the listening habits probably mirror those more of a podcast listening experience like an audio first podcast listening experience. So a lot of people will like I've gotten into Ubers all the time when the driver is using YouTube as their playback source for whatever they're listening to, but they're not watching the video. In fact, most of the time it's like on the lock screen but it's playing a podcast or something and so it does have a video component, again YouTube just being the distribution platform for that. But they're using it as an audio first experience and you get that whether it's on YouTube or Pocket Casts or Apple Podcasts, true Fans or any other podcast app.

Alban: 6:49

Yeah, this is in the piece. It seems likely that many listeners and viewers are keeping these programs on largely in the background, only intensely tuning in during peak moments of interest, and that sounds right to me. Mostly, lock screen on just audio. Maybe they're popping in to watch video for a second, but a majority of this is audio in the background. I get the attraction because I listened to a lot of things throughout the day audio books, podcasts, music but I'm definitely not ever watching nine hour videos. Um, I guess people will remember that Lord of the Rings marathon that I did once in my life.

Alban: 7:31

So maybe there's a one time a year I'll watch a lot of video, but besides that, I think that it's pretty. This is probably mostly happening in the background.

Jordan: 7:39

Yeah, yeah. I think another important point that the article makes is that Ben Gilbert, from the acquired podcast, says that having a long form podcast does not mean you're not editing it. Like you still have to be really intentional with editing your podcast. And so he's saying, like he says, it's not important to ship every good minute, it's important to ship only great minutes, and if you're actually intellectually honest with yourself, that's how to release a really good product. So he's saying you know, we have this episode that's three hours and 38 minutes and on Apple Podcasts the consumption rate is 70% for that particular episode. And the reason why he has such a high consumption rate is because he's actually putting out good content.

Alban: 8:24

Yeah, yeah, I think that was a great point Jordan about Acquired. And these three four hour podcasts are actually heavily edited. I was shocked to hear the in-depth histories are the result of nine hour recording sessions and a month of research. So the answer isn't hey, go ahead and just record a ton of stuff and throw it all up onto YouTube and that's the success.

Alban: 8:49

It is long content can work, but there really needs to be a point to the content. If you are really engaged with your audience or your listener or the guest or something like, there's something real there and you're cutting out the fluff, you're doing a lot of research, yeah, it can go as long as it needs to, but even after a month of research, nine hours of recording still got cut down to three to four hours. So a ton of work and still over half of it was pulled out. And I can tell you we often record for twice as long as our episodes here turn out to be. Not because you just go off on a tangent or you just have like a, you misspeak a little bit or you just have kind of an awkward interaction. Um, I think it's good to be honest with yourself and say all right.

Alban: 9:40

I can clip that out. I'm not going for the marathon on purpose. I'm only going to end up with a marathon podcast if it's valuable for my listeners.

Jordan: 9:47

Yeah.