Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Reviewing Your Podcast with a Critical Eye

In This Practice

• Becoming an objective reviewer

• Examining the quantitative and qualitative aspects of your podcast

• Learning to listen to your work as a listener would

You are a podcaster. You care about your work. You've poured your heart and soul into the script, carefully enunciated every word during the recording, agonized over the decision on various effects and aural enhancements, and spent meticulous hours in post‐production. It is a thing of beauty, worthy of both recognition and praise from your peers — nay, the entire world.

Hold on a minute, hotfoot. You may have missed a critical step in this process: listening to what you have done.

“But wait,” you exclaim in frustration. “I just spent the last three hours of my life editing this file. Trust me, I've listened!” And we'd agree with that statement. But we'd also argue (and we'd win, ’cuz we're the authors and we RULE) that the ears you listen with differ at each one of the various stages of production.

In this practice, we discuss a new set of ears (and eyes) that have to be utilized after all the other ears (and eyes) have been satisfied. These are the ears and eyes of the Self‐Critic, a persona you will need to adopt and modify over time as the goals and objectives for your podcast change. The Self‐Critic has to be detached, clinical, and even cold. He's not a very nice person and is all business. Those other eyes and ears utilized in other stages all work for this guy, ...