The Mysterious Listener

I read the comments. What choice do I have? I work in podcasting, a media realm that for all its “metrics” and “listen time” data, is still mostly akin to leaving a message under a rock and hoping that someone finds it. Comments on stuff I’ve edited are at least proof that someone found what we made, and maybe even listened to and enjoyed it.

Read enough listener comments, and you start to see the patterns: Most are complaints about the ads. Unfortunately, we produce a free product that got stuck as free 100 years ago, a problem on par with climate change in terms of realistic solutions. Other than the ads, many complaints are about the presence of women’s voices. Thus far, podcasting is “solving” for that in the worst possible way.

But you can find useful feedback. I once worked in a place with a podcast whose host liked to show his enthusiasm by interrupting his guests’ answers during interviews. Listeners piled on, and he figured out how to hold his tongue. 

Still, there’s a central mystery at the heart of audience feedback: the audience. What is it, really? The people who bother to make comments are only a small part of it. We producers spend a lot of time making our work, and we want to know how it is received by everyone. How are these conversations and stories reconstructed inside the minds of a wider cross-section of the people who encounter them?