On Wednesday I posted about the preliminary results of Peter Chen's podcasting and videoblogging survey. Lots of interesting data to see, but one particular stat that caught my eye was the length of time to produce an episode:

The average number of minutes spent producing an episode is almost 260! That's an incredibly high number that we hope to reduce with our solutions. I know how much time it takes - that's one reason I stopped BlogosphereRadio to focus on building the tools!

First, a little back story. Back in September of 2004 I started podcasting at BlogosphereRadio.com, a site I created with a couple friends. It was lots of fun, and I really enjoyed it. We ended up producing around 50 episodes, ranging from short 5 or 6 minute news updates to complete 30 to 45 minute discussions and interviews. Actually I did the producing, for the simple reason that not everyone knows how to put together a bunch of sound files into a coherent show, then properly prepare and publish it. It's hard work, and it takes a lot of time. The four hours that the average podcaster in the survey mentioned above spends producing an episode is right in line with my experience. As you have probably guessed by now, BlogosphereRadio started to take up too much of my time, and there was no one to help. I'd like it to return at some point, but we'll see :)

After BlogosphereRadio. we decided to put our energies into creating tools and services to make podcasting easier and faster. A typical podcaster uses a number of different tools to publish an episode. In one example, the producer might record the content in one application, mix various files together in another, then use another application to encode and tag the audio, yet another app to upload it somewhere, then another program to update the RSS feed for the podcast, maybe a simple tool to create some show notes, and finally the producer likely updates a blog with news of the episode. A lot of steps and different applications creates complexity, and along with that comes major consumption of your time! This is to say nothing of the promotion of a podcast and the communication with listeners, both of which take additional time.

I don't yet have any metrics, but we've come up with some easy to use tools and services that drastically reduce the amount of time required to produce an episode. We also try to make promotion and communication a little easier too! That's all I'll say for now, but rest assured, the goodies are on their way.