The American audio artist Gregory Whitehead famously described the radio audience as an electronic play of “far-flung bodies unknown to each other” (Wireless Imagination,1992). But the podcast audience, deeply connected to the programmes, the producers and each other through the multilayered online platforms of wikis, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter (the social media milieu into which podcasting itself was born), seems to have formed more tangible “communities” that are particularly notable around live recording events. Here For Your Ears Only examines podcast Twitter feeds and listens to producers to quantitatively and qualitatively describe podcast audiences as distinct from radio ones and different from each other.
Today’s podcasters have transformed the passivity of listening into the engagement of fandom. With live events, social media chatter, T-shirt sales and fan art, there is now an active exchange of ideas between audio producers and audiences. In this episode we look into how audiences engage with podcasts differently and hear thoughts from KC Wayland, Helen Zaltzman, Joseph Fink, and Jeffrey Cranor.
Release Date: 11th February 2019
Credits
Written & presented by Lance Dann & Martin Spinelli
Produced by Ella Gray Thomas & Jack F Jewers
Sound by Andrew Duff
Voice acting by Rachael Sparkes & Eion Mckenna
Executive produced by Martin Spinelli
Interview contributors: Alan Hall, Jad Abumrad, KC Wayland, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor & Helen Zaltzman.
Clips featured: Welcome to Night Vale (‘Pilot’)
For Your Ears Only was produced with the support of Arts Council England, Bloomsbury Academic, the University of Sussex, Brighton University, and the British Academy.
Twitter: @earsonlypodcast
Instagram: @earsonlypodcast