Unauthoritative Pronouncements

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First World Podcast Problems Stan Alcorn wrote a really brilliant piece about why audio isn't as omnipresent in our online experiences as video is. He conducts interviews with many people responsible...

I wrote this a couple weeks ago about a great article I had read. I've received a lot of positive feedback about it. However, all the detailed feedback I've received is about the part of the article where I describe technical limitations. I haven't received any feedback about the part where I discuss the issue of creating in-points for new listeners.

I am not sure why that is. I think it is just as much of a problem when you're trying to get someone in to a podcast with 100+ episodes.

One of my favorite podcasts, Bionic is up to episode 77. If you go back to the start point the hosts's recommend, that's episode 51, which is now 1,636 minutes of podcasts to listen to. How can I get anyone to start with Bionic when I have to tell them they need to devote 27 and a half hours to listening to this? That's more than a full day of podcasts to listen to now. That doesn't even go all the way back to Episode 1 (which Myke and Matt don't really recommend). This isn't like television, where there are seasons of TV, rather than 1 episode per week.

If you go with a show like Back to Work then you're looking at 157 shows. Even if you assume a bas level of 60 (which is insufficient) then you will spend 157 hours of your life trying to catch up to the current point.

No one wrote in about this. I think that's because this is the harder problem to solve. Where do you insert your catch-up episodes? Where are the recaps? The clip shows?

It's the kind of situation that comic books find themselves in more than television shows do. People will binge watch 24 hours of programming, no problem. They don't seem as inclined to catch up if they are more than a season behind though (more than 24-26 hours behind). How can podcasters bridge that gap?