Like anything, formats have their place and although often vilified, they are not inherently evil. Formats give structure and are the skeletal basis for a station’s sound – or even a radio show.
How A Format Applies to Your Podcast
What does all this mean to you? Well, you may envision your own podcast to be a wild ride of outrageous proportion. Great! But, remember that people are still creatures that seek out order - even in disorder.
Let's say you've created a podcast featuring Turkish folk music and you will be hosting a show five days-a-week featuring the biggest names in the field. Actually, you just made your first format decision.
Now, as for your show itself, there are certain conventions which can make listening to it easier.
It's not a bad idea to start with some kind of OPEN which explains what people are about to hear and who they are listening to. If you have a sponsor, this is a good place to mention them.
The same goes for having a CLOSE. For those who tune in during the middle or just miss the beginning, the CLOSE lets them know what they were listening to, who, and maybe how to email you or your website address.
These are basic formatics. Now, are you going to take breaks during your show to play a sponsor's recorded commercial or a commercial for your own product or service? If so, how many "stop sets" (commercial breaks) will you integrate and how long will they be? You might have a 30-minute Podcast and stop down for a commercial or public service announcement twice: 10 minutes into your program and then 10 minutes later. By knowing approximately when you will do these breaks you can better plan each segment of your show that surrounds them.
Already the format of our hypothetical show looks like this:
:00 OPEN
:10 Stop Set
:20 Stop Set
:30 CLOSE
Formatting a talk show is very easy and the structure helps you pace the program.
More Advanced Formatting
What if you've decided to do an Oldies show featuring music from the 1980s? Well, you're under no obligation to plan anything but you might want to set up a format that spreads the music out in a way that either:
1. Allows your songs to rotate through the decade equally by year or...
2. Presents music by tempo, creating "hills and valleys" so that the listener doesn't hear too many slow songs in-a-row or fast ones for that matter. This is the art of formatting.
And when you're not talking between songs, will there be production elements that tell listeners what podcast they're listening to? If so, where will you place them so that they don't interfere too much with the music or repeat too often yet play enough to be effective?
All of this is formatting and as sick of commercial Radio as you might be; don't ignore formatting simply because it's been overused. It's not a bad thing to think carefully about your radio show and make constructive decisions on how best to present it.
