Radio Talent Gets A Head Start As Podcasts Go Video.

Radio personalities may have a head start as podcasting's video boom puts more hosts in front of cameras. While podcast producers are scrambling to learn everything from lighting and camera placement to thumbnails and YouTube analytics, Daily Beast Supervising Producer Rachel Passer said one of the hardest pieces — finding talent that can deliver naturally and confidently — is something radio has been developing for decades.

“Working with people from radio has been — those are some of the best talent,” Passer said during a webinar hosted by The Podglomerate and the Association for Independents in Radio examining the move from audio to video podcasting.

Passer said the pressure of live radio trains personalities in skills that become valuable once the cameras are switched on. “You don’t have time to redo it. You got to make sure it sounds great, you got to project, you got to make sure you’re concise,” she said.

Passer knows that world firsthand. Before joining the Daily Beast, she was executive producer of the nationally syndicated radio program “The Julia Show,” which aired in 13 markets.

But radio experience doesn’t make the transition automatic. Passer said hosts needed to become conscious of habits listeners never saw, from looking down to take notes to writing headline ideas while a guest was speaking. And journalists accustomed to a more formal broadcast-news delivery sometimes needed to loosen up for podcasts.

Her advice is simple: “Talk like a person,” she advised.

Ron Dole, Director of Podcast Production at investigative news outlet The Lever, added that the physical setup could also change how talent performs. The outlet upgraded its host’s home office with better lighting, a camera and a teleprompter setup. Doyle said turning on the lights and getting into the setup helped put the host into an on-camera mindset.

Yet the bigger transition for audio producers went well beyond turning on a camera. YouTube Strategic Partner Manager Nick Castner said producers need to understand that YouTube operates differently from traditional podcast apps. Instead of primarily serving episodes to people already accustomed to listening to a show, YouTube’s recommendation system can put a podcast in front of viewers who have never encountered it.

“In essence, the algorithm is looking at two factors. Are people clicking on the video?” Castner said. “And then once they click on the video, do they stay and watch the video?”

That puts much more pressure on how an episode is packaged. Castner said the title and thumbnail helped determine whether viewers clicked, while the topic, storytelling and production quality determined whether they stayed. “There should be a promise made in the title and thumbnail that’s delivered very early on in the video,” he said.

That also means producers shouldn’t automatically use the same episode title on YouTube that they use to distribute through an RSS feed. Instead, Castner said they need to consider how the episode would look to someone encountering the show for the first time. 

The Daily Beast had also let audience behavior reshape its strategy. Passer said the publisher moved away from original illustrations on some YouTube thumbnails and toward recognizable faces after the data showed they performed better. She also cautioned against simply repeating the episode title on the thumbnail. The two could instead use different language that worked together to generate curiosity.

For news podcasts, Doyle said the packaging could continue changing after publication. The Lever sometimes replaces an in-the-moment title or thumbnail with more evergreen language once the initial news cycle passes, giving an episode another opportunity to find viewers.

Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro said going all-in on video was not the only way for audio producers to tap into YouTube’s reach. “If you have the resources to make unique video, do it. It will perform better,” he said.

But for producers who don’t have those resources, he said it was still worthwhile to get their shows onto the platform. Even episodes automatically brought into YouTube through an RSS feed could be repackaged with a YouTube-specific title, description and thumbnail rather than simply carrying over the same presentation used on traditional podcast apps.