Planning And Content
How do you pick the topics for a podcast?
Essentially, there are two ways that the topics get generated for a podcast. If you're not tied to an event-driven subject like pop music, or a sport or something, if it's just coming out of your imagination, then you can just go where you want to go. That's clear. If you're tied to something specific, it's often the case that the topics will be driven and chosen for you by events. You've got recent events to review. More importantly, you need to look at things that are still very much happening. Things are either churning up at the moment, or will be likely to happen in the near future. That's because podcasts are not live. You can do them live, but they rarely are live, because people have to be able to get them at any time. Therefore, you've got a real issue. You've got to try and think about things and talk about things in such a way that they won't go out of date. You might recall the podcast on a Monday morning. People download it, get it, and have it on Thursday. I understand that my own podcast is very popular with people because it's the right length. We chose 45 minutes because it had to be the length of half a football, but it's also a very good term for people who are walking dogs. On Thursday, they're walking their dog out on some common, or on some blasted heath, and they're hearing about things that may have already happened. You've got to be really careful when planning the topics you choose, are going to have a life longer than the first day of the podcast. It's actually quite constricting. Youve got to think about it very carefully.
What is the process for planning a podcast?
If you are lucky like me and your podcast actually has a producer, the process of planning is slightly remote. The producer will sit in the office, chewing the fat with various other journalists and saying, What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Often, in something deeply covered as football, most of the topics are self-evident, in terms of the things you've got to cover. The skill is to find other stories, things that are going on, and getting them in as well. In many ways, this is very similar to TV or radio. You've got the day's or the week's events to try and find angles on all the time. Somebody will then go away and try and find those angles. You need an audio experience, and you need to get more voices on your own. I always have at least three guests in, usually very opinionated journalists, plus you can get other celebrities out there to come into the studio or on the telephone. That all comes in the planning. X is happening. How can we talk about it sensibly or nonsensically, whichever way you are going, but you must decide to do one, two, three, or five - whatever amount of stories you want to do. The trick is to not try and do too much, but also make sure you have got enough that people do not become bored. They need to know, if this particular thing isn't floating their boat, that something else will be along in a few minutes time. That is part of the furniture. You learn from traditional broadcasting - a menu at the top, so that people will know what to expect. If you're not interested in football X or story Y, don't worry, because funny thing Z will be along any minute now.
Do you work from a script when you are podcasting?
I don't have a script. I don't think podcasts, by and large, have scripts. They tend to be people talking about subjects in which they're passionate about, and that works best if people are improvising, arguing, and discussing. We go for a feel of not just three blokes and a woman, in a pub. That's too easy. It's too generic. You want to get the feel that these people know something about it, but are sitting around a pub, or in a wine bar, actually having a proper go at these subjects. The only thing that I have is a running order, to jump from thing to thing to thing. Even that is almost not necessary, because these things are pre-recorded, so you could almost do it chunk by chunk by chunk. It's best to know the order in which these chunks are going to go, because often you can refer back and forward to things. On some occasions, because interviews often come in unexpectedly early or late, somebody rings up, particularly trying to get hold of celebrities or sports stars. You're lucky to get them into the right slots, you will have to pretend, due to the running order of the show, that we've already talked about something previously, and that's quite a skill to learn as well. You're sometimes recording things out of order, and you need to remember that when you're referring back to something or referring forward to something, where you are in time. It's a bit like Doctor Who. You become a time traveller on a podcast. You're always not in the present tense, but you always try to make sure that it sounds fresh, and absolutely in the moment for the listener.
How do you plan an interview?
A good interview will cover the topics that the person listening, not the person who's being interviewed or the interviewer, is passionate about. You need to get to tease out or to ask directly, the things that the average listener would want. Most people who have been doing this for any length of time write down a few key things just to remind themselves. It's a mistake to over plan an interview, you might write out twenty questions, beautifully researched, leaping from one topic to another with absolute elegance, but as soon as you start speaking to somebody, it's a conversation. An interview is a conversation, and as soon as you start speaking to the other person, they're bound to say something that throws you off your carefully prepared script. The great trick for broadcasters is to actually listen and make sure you're listening to the person who's speaking. Whether they're the humblest punter on the phone or the captain of the England football team, you've got to be listening, and you've got to be agile enough to say "wow, you just said that." The example I would use is that we had a few lines put out when we spoke to Michael Owen, the England striker who was injured, talking about what he was doing. I thought we would be talking about rehab and the loneliness of a long-distance runner, and suddenly, he let slip that he spends all his time with his horses at home. If you've got an over-prepared script and you're not listening carefully, you miss that. You'll say "Oh well, that's great" and move on to the next question. The interesting thing for the whole next ten minutes was about his passion for race horses and the fact that he'd got a stable at the back of his house, and had six or seven of these beasts, which he personally was feeding and grooming and all the rest of it, while injured. thus, a few notes to yourself, to make sure that you do hit the desired topics that everyone wants to know about, but are not so constricted by structure that you'll end up actually missing the interesting things that people have got to say.
How much control does The Times have over the content of your show?
I would like to pretend it's a terrible battle between my artistic integrity and the man over at The Times, but it's not like that at all in this particular case, and it'll vary from institution to institution. They wanted the podcast to reflect a bit of spark, a bit of fun, a bit of controversy about the game, the game itself, the section in the Monday section of football in The Times. It's a lot of straight reporting, but it's a lot of interesting stuff in there as well, and they wanted me to stir things up. They've never really had any control over it at all, except in a good way. If you ring up and say, We're from The Times of London, people will want to talk to you, so that's a good control they have over it. They asked us to keep the f-ing and blinding to an absolute minimum because it's not their brand value, and I accept that entirely. The only problem you ever get is not from the newspaper itself, but from the interviewees. They don't want to talk about a certain thing when they come on. For example, when the bung allegations were going around we talked to Harry Redknapp. He was happy to speak about those in general terms, but there were one or two questions about other people that he said, I'll just put the phone down if you start up about that. He's entitled to do that. The control The Times has brought has been very positive. They hired a good studio, got a good producer and proper commissioners everywhere got talented people, in this case me, and said, "Right, let it rip", and they've been repaid by people saying very nice things about it.
What happens if it's been a quiet week?
There's never a quiet week in the world of football. It's such a mad and intense and scrutinized, and let's be fair, bent industry. Something is always going on. Even if it wasn't, then it's about broadcasting skills. I do what I do - the rotating cast of people who help on the podcast, you just want to make sure you've got people who have always got something to say. You've got to be careful, a loud voice does not indicate something to say. One of the people on my podcast, for instance, is one of the most quietly-spoken people you could imagine, but he is a statistician of the very first water. When he speaks, he always engenders something very interesting to talk about. Equally, you want to make sure that people are as passionate about it as you are. There have been times that there's been international breaks, there's been no specific matches to talk about, but there's always issues to talk about. That's the test - whether you're going to do general podcast, or something that's much more specific. If you haven't already had the argument in your head with yourself, then you shouldn't be going out there. You've got to have things to say, and you've got to trust the kind of people you employ and work with, that they have got something to say as well. There's one other thing about that - radio is very much about being yourself. People always say that. Podcasting is very much about being yourself but, it's being yourself plus about fifteen percent. Nobody wants to hear the kind of jibber jabber that you or I would be getting up to if we're just talking in a public house. They want to hear a slightly heightened version of that. Great broadcasters, whether you are talking about Alistair Cook or Howard Stern, that is not exactly how they are, that is a projection of how they are. If I might sum it up more easily, you are not there to appear, you are there to perform, and there is a slight performance about it. You don't want to become some kind of 18th Century Shakespearean, giving it absolutely everything about association football. however, you want to be able to project yourself and have the other people project back and forth, and it should never be a problem with what you are talking about. The danger is to just open your mouth for the sake of hearing your voice. I always say to new guests, and sometimes people think I'm rude; I always say, don't say anything unless you're going to say something funny, or you're going to add something informative to the previous part of the debate. You'd be amazed at how people sometimes think, but once they get going, they realize that's all you're there for.
Can you say what you want?
Podcasting has got a danger inherent in it, because it's on essentially an internet-based activity. The technology will change, and because it's an internet-based activity there is a slight tendency to think "Wow, we're out of control now, we can say what we like." Bad language is probably the least dangerous thing - if you swear, if someone goes mad and starts really f-ing and blinding, two things about that: It might be alright, or secondly you can always take it out in an edit - because it's not live. If it gets through, there's an apology - it's just bad language. But you've got to be very careful in other areas. The laws of libel, slander, and the like still apply even online and in podcasts, however obscure. The chances are that if you are slugging somebody off in a chat room, they are never going to see it, they are not going to come after you. If you are associated with something as big as The Times and start slandering people, libeling people, there is every chance that my learned friends will become involved. But that's nothing new. Whatever part of the broadcast industry you're working in: television, radio, podcasting, whatever it is, you need to have a have a proper feel for the edges of what the laws of libel are. People like you to be edgy. They like you to push up to that edge. Often, your journalistic integrity requires you to imply things, or even to say things you know are going to upset somebody. You need to make sure you can back those things up, or you are saying it in such a way that it is of public interest, or what the other acceptable defenses are all around the world. The law does not change just because you're doing it on a podcast. You can't just say anything you want. You have to work within the premises of the law and whatever levels of decency you think are appropriate for the product you are making.
