Streaming Analysis American Life Podcast
Before we start to work on video content, we’re going to look at, and create audio content. Your first analysis will be to listen to a popular podcast and write up an analysis that answers the following 5 questions:
- What’s the audience and how does the caster appeal to/create for that audience?
- From listening to one or two episodes of the podcast, what are the tropes and trends you notice? In other words, how is this podcast structured?
- Think about the production value and the use of sound. What does the podcast do to be not just listenable but entertaining?
- How does the podcast use time? This relates in ways to 2 and 3 above, but it’s important to think about any places where the cast either drags or moves too quickly (and, relatedly, how the hosts/creators fix that so that it doesn’t continue)
- Every podcast with an audience is doing something special. So what is the podcast you’re analyzing doing that makes it unique, elite, popular or otherwise engaging? What’s the secret to success?
Each criterion will be worth 2 points of your final total for the assignment.
You can select any podcast that you like as long as it conforms to the following two criteria:
- It has to have at least 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher
- Episodes have to be at least 30 minutes long
These are to be the equal of 1000 words (4 pages