Podcasts: How Long is Long Enough

What's the Sweet Spot?

Attention spans are falling. It's not that this problem is new. As a journalist I was taught to put the compelling information on top. Most readers would drop off before the tenth paragraph. (subheadings helped). In radio, stopset content over a minute causes tune out. Writers of long blogs are doomed. Maybe 5 percent might stick around for the conclusion. The sweet spot for YouTube is about four minutes. Since the inception of the smartphone, attention spans have dropped dramatically. Millennials have an attention span of eight seconds, but they aren't the only ones. 

Length A Barrier?

When it comes to podcast, length is for me. I'll often read the description, look at the length of the podcast, and find myself wishing I could read the text. I would rather skim the article to look for the pertinent information, then, if intrigued, I'll fill in the details by reading other parts of the article. If there is no text, I look at the length and usually decide not to bother. 45, 35 even 25  minutes seems daunting. I'm looking for the CliffsNotes version.

Podcast Sweet Spot

AudacitytoPodcast.com suggests the sweet spot is 30 to 45 minutes, about the length of a commute. That's really generous.

Cision.com claims the average length of a podcast is about 30 minutes with users actually listening 22 minutes. They cite the average commute at 20 minutes. Users prefer podcasts that are 16 minutes.

7 Podcasting Best Practice

Cision's Recommendations

1. Respect People's Time 
2. Plan Your Content 
3. Augment the Audio with Text (the complete text) 
4. Don't Use Listens to Measure Success 
5. Distribute - Promote - Embed 
6. Benchmark 
7. Master the Audio 

Longer isn't always better. In fact, longer doesn't seem to work for readers on the web. Slate found in 2013 that readers can't stay focused. About 5 percent of people who land on Slate pages and are engaged with the page in some way. Attention span is way down. A survey of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span had fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000. We now have a shorter attention span than goldfish.

The #Cost of #Air #Pollution

What if we focus on policy and it's impact on the quality of life?

Easing the Standards

The EPA wants to ease the standards on air pollution. The reasoning is the standards get in the way of economic growth, but there's a trade off.  There's a cost much greater than the cost of clean air standards impose on industry.

According to the World Bank...

Air pollution costs the global economy more than $5 trillion annually in welfare costs, with the most devastating damage occurring in the developing world, according to a new World Bank report. The welfare figure incorporates a number of costs associated with air pollution like health and consumption.Sep 9, 2016

Bad air also costs lives...

What If We Focused on Issues and Policy?

Focus on the event...not the person.

When teaching students about road rage, I counsel, focus on the event instead of the person. The strategy diffuses the rage. The same strategy can be applied to the policies that are coming out of the Trump Administration. By focusing on the issues and coming up with next steps, there can be room for common ground and a way forward.

Recently HUD announced it wants to raise rent for those getting housing assistance. Those getting assistance fall well below the poverty line.

Rents Are Up...Income Is Not

Household Income Not Keeping Pace

Pew Research and APM's Marketplace are reporting that household income is not keeping pace with increases in rent. According to Pew, after the recession of 2007 - 2009 fewer people were able to transition from rentals to home ownership. Add to that the influx of millennials into the workforce increasing the demand for rentals, and the supply of rentals is down while demand is up.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Millennials are taking a double whammy. Home prices stagnated and fell during the recession and its aftermath have rebounded to the higher prices seen during the bubble of 2007. Millenials are priced out of the market. Millennials aren't the only demographic facing the financial pinch.

American Families Face a Growing Rent Burden

17 million are rent burdened and the numbers keep going up. Rent Burdened is defined by HUD as cost-burdened families. Those “who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing” and “may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, and medical care.” Severe rent burden is defined as paying more than 50 percent of one's income on rent.

The Pew study finds 38 percent of all renter households are burdened. Severely rent burdened households—spending 50 percent or more of monthly income on rent—increased by 42 percent. It is now 17% of all renters.


The chart below demonstrates that the problem has been getting worse since 2001.

Less Disposable Income

Households that are rent burdened have fewer dollars to spend. They often make choices between healthcare, food and education. 
According to Pew's findings:
Rent-burdened families are also financially insecure in many other ways:

• Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) had less than $400 cash in the bank; most (84 percent) of such households are African-American-headed.
• Half had less than $10 in savings across various liquid accounts, while half of homeowners had more than $7,000.

The growing disparity is leading to a growing underclass that is on the outside looking in with little hope of reversing their situation.  Our economy is stronger when our citizens are able to participate as individuals and as consumers. Keeping large portions of the population on the outside will only further divide us. 

And there's a growing cost of poverty. The cost of child poverty: $500 billion a year. The United States has the second-highest child poverty rate among the world's richest 35 nations, and the cost in economic and educational outcomes is half a trillion dollars a year, according to a new report by the Educational Testing Service.

End the disparity. Offer hope through living wages, educational opportunities and affordable healthcare.