It’s been nearly a month since the podfather released a Daily Source Code.  I’m not trying to give him a hard time – I know he’s got other stuff going on, such as the daily intro video he’s doing on mevio.com, and I’m glad there are now two episodes of No Agenda with John C. Dvorak each week.  But I miss having a daily, hour-long, ranty podcast about nothing in particular.

Enter Adam Carolla. His radio show was recently cancelled when the station decided to change their format to play the same music as every other station in the world.  If I have the story correct, a friend of his convinced him to invest a few hundred bucks into starting a podcast, just to keep in touch with his fans and keep the Adam Carolla brand alive.  Little did he know the The Adam Carolla Podcast would almost immediately become the number one podcast on iTunes.  Just into its second week now distribution is already costing more like a few thousand bucks (a month) to support the millions of downloaders.  At last count I think there were 2.5 million downloads of the shows from last week.  Those kind of number are unheard of in podcasting.

At this point Adam doesn’t seem to be seeking advertisers, and he’s not charging for the show.  All he’s asking from everyone listening is that we tell friends.  Friends – you’ve been told.

So far he’s doing the show every weekday. Each show features a different guest, typically a comedian, and they usually stay for the entire episode (roughly 1 hour).  Guests so far have been Aisha Tyler, Greg Fitzsimmons, Jamie Kennedy, Leo Laporte, Dana Gould, David Allen Grier, Larry Miller, Bill Simmons, Dave Dameshek, Teresa Strasser and Bald Bryan.

I should warn you that Adam Carolla has a particular style of comedy that clearly isn’t for every one. Be prepared to listen to Carolla tell his guests 15 minute stories about going to the bathroom.  Think Man Show – it’s about on that level.  If you’re an Adam Carolla fan you’ll definitely want to catch this show.  I really wasn’t an Adam Carolla fan before this podcast started (I think I heard it about when Leo Laporte mentioned he was going to be on the show) but I’m a regular listener now.  It’s a very funny show.

With the distribution of the show getting expensive Carolla has started talking about charging for the show in the future.  Everyone has been warning him against it, but he seems to feel that since he’s already breaking records the old rules of podcasting won’t apply. He’s not a podcast listener, so I don’t think he really understands the experience from this side, or why the pay model won’t hold up.  It’s strange to me since he comes from radio, which people do not pay for.  He should understand that.

I hope he has someone looking into a peer-to-peer distribution method so the more sophisticated users can torrent the show and leave the expensive bandwidth available for the average listener.

• Get an expensive mic – at least $100
• Keep it short, but not too short.  2 minute pod casts are annoying. 2 hour podcasts are too long.
• Follow a schedule – most of these guys just ramble, which leads to talking about how they’re rambling.  Just don’t ramble.
• Do not read to me. Talk, don’t read.  This isn’t an audiobook.  Unless of course, it is an audiobook. Then go ahead and read to me.  Thanks.
• Long intros/outros, especially if they’re just music, are annoying and serve no purpose.
• Get to the point – don’t spend 5 minutes telling me what you’re about to tell me.  Just tell me.
• Make it available from places other than iTunes, including just an mp3 download from the site.
• Don’t talk about Podcasting. Avoid the word altogether.  Unless your podcast happens to be about podcasting.  Then it’s fine with me, because I won’t be listening any way.
• Have a website for the podcast, even if it’s just a simple list of the episodes.  Sometimes podcatchers or RSS feeds get screwed up, and I don’t know if I have most recent show or not,
• Make show notes available on the website you should have created for your show.  This doesn’t have to be very detailed, just a list of links you mentioned in the show will do.  I know of one podcast that makes transcripts for each show.  That’s awesome.
• Make ads interesting.  If you preroll the same ads week after week I’m going to fast forward them. If you don’t know how to make an “infotainment” style ad, listen to a TWIT Network podcast or two.
• Make every episode back to the first show available somewhere.
• Stabilize the audio levels, especially if you record different segments in different places.  I hate it when the volume goes up and down during a show.