Podcasting Through The COVID-19 Crisis

At the risk of sounding alarmist, covert 19 is likely something we will all have to deal with. Yes. Even podcasters and while discussing the viruses impact on podcasting seems a lot trivial. It's good. It's good risk mitigation for us to be prepared.

Hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo. Tara. You know, I really struggled with this topic. I'm not a doctor, but I'm also not a conspiracy theorist, and I'm not a fearmonger. But here we are in this world where the Corona virus now, as we call it, coven 19 is clearly here, and we'll have some repercussions since this is a show that intends to be.

That, which brings you things to think about in the podcasting space. Things that you don't hear other podcasts about podcasting. Talk about having you think through things. I want to think through this coven 19 virus that we're all having to face where we soon will have to face specifically as it relates to podcasting.

Now, what do I mean by the impact it's going to have on podcasting? Well, it's going to come in a lot of different ways. We don't know a lot, but here's the thing about this vaccine, just to set up the, the latest information that we do know, uh, no cure. There's no cure for this. There's not even a treatment.

We can treat the secondary problems that come with this viral infection, but we don't have a treatment. Uh, and there's no vaccine. We can't prevent it. Not yet. Is that coming? I don't know. Maybe we'll see what's happening. So that's the reality we dealing with. We've got a virus that is coming and it's killing like a 2% mortality rate.

Oh. Which sounds like, eh, 2% that's a big of a deal. Well, here's what I want you to think about. Here's the kind of the shock, 2% mortality rate. If you have 300 listeners to your show, small number, right? I mean, six of them will die. If they get the buyers, obviously six wow. That's a big number. When you have 300 that's a big impact to you personally as a podcaster.

Hence, the reason I want to have the conversation today, one of the biggest things that the CDC is telling us to do right now is avoid. As much unnecessary contact as possible. As I say this, I'm getting ready to go attend pod Fest in Orlando, which means I'm going to get on a metal tube filled with 150 people that I don't know and I don't know where they're from.

We're going to be sharing some recycled air, by the way, airplanes have really good air filtration systems, but I've got people left and right of me who might sneeze or whatever else and might land on my. Arm rest or my tray table that I did not have any upright and locked position. And since I'm the kind of person who can't keep his own hands off, if his face going to be touching my face all the time, that's going to happen.

And then I'm going to go to Orlando. I'm going to see people I haven't seen in a long time, and they're all gonna want handshakes and hugs. New people are going to want handshakes and hugs. I'm a hugger. My eating with these people, communing, having drinks, having fun, having conversations, the perfect breeding ground for situations like this.

So that's one of the impacts that this might have to podcasting is will this cause people like you and me who are working podcast or who like to go attend these events? Will we stop or slow down the attendance of these events? Maybe you know, every week, not every week, every month, the Phoenix podcast club, P H X podcast.club if you'd like to join.

We do a monthly social event where we go to a rooftop bar at the Clarendon hotel in downtown Midtown Phoenix, and we just hang out for a few hours and we swap stories and ideas and thoughts and things we're doing these days, and there's a lot of handshaking and hugging and just close proximity stuff.

Will that stop? Will people be less likely to attend those events? I wonder about that. Do you do guests do? Do you interview guests on your show and you know, some of the higher end podcasts like to do in person meetings where they sit face to face with the guest. The good news is we have really great tools like squad cast, for example.

Great tool. I highly recommend it. Squad cast that will let us do remote interviews, but if you like those live face to face interviews, that might be a challenge going down. What happens if the economic downturn, which we've already seen, the stock markets slumping, that was largely attributed to the, uh, the rising concerns of the virus, by the way.

And, and also the disruption of global supply chain. It's not just the concerns. I'm also not a financier, so don't take financial advice from me. But what if that continues? And as I discussed several episodes ago, the recession is that will eventually come is. Made worse because of this. If that happens, what happens when advertisers and all of the companies that are happening to pull back because they don't have the same level of funds they did previously.

I worry a little bit about the global supply chain, but you know, I've got all of my equipment that's all great and fine, but it's more disruption in the services that we use, you know, to make your podcast episodes go everywhere. You're a podcast hosting company, likely has various nodes around the world.

The CV and the content distribution or content delivery network thing is what CDN stands for. Those are all over the world. Um, largely automated, but still they got to have people to support those. What happens if people can't go fix servers in various places? Now the internet is not going to collapse.

It's designed to handle that rerouting, but that slows things down. Could cause localized impacts in lots of places.

The Kovac 19 virus is, it's an, it's an a crisis for all of us, right? They did packs everybody across the world. Right? There's no way to hide, to protect herself from it because we're not individuals. We are individuals, but no man is an Island is really what I wanted to say. No person is an Island. You can't do this on your own.

Especially podcasting. It requires lots of people. It requires the podcasters, the podcasters team of people, requires the listeners on the other end requires all the people in the middle that make the whole thing happened from designers to website hosting companies to delivery units to people that make microphones and video cameras and all.

It's all possibly impacted. All I want you to do. Is, think about it. If you've not been thinking about how coven 19 will impact your podcast, I need you to start thinking about it. No, that's what I would like for you to do. Not how do you prevent it? Not how do you stop the virus from hitting you and your family and people that you care about.

That's all important stuff that you, again, I'm not the person to bring that message, but the reality is that this, I hesitate to call it a pandemic because it's not a pandemic, but this crisis. Is likely to continue. Hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully everybody's wrong. Hopefully the alarmist in this is is unwarranted and it goes away.

But if it's not, are you prepared? It's hard to prepare when you don't know what's actually happening or you don't know what the possible impact is. But thinking through the things I talked about today, can you sustain your show. Your podcasting efforts through this sort of health crisis. Something to think about cause I want you to be thinking about it because we need to think about really good things.

That's what we do here at podcast. Pontifications reach out to your fellow podcasters, find out what they're doing or thinking about this. Tell them you heard this episode of podcast pontifications and you say, Evo said, we need to think about coven 19 find out. Do it virtually. Please do it in real life.

It doesn't really matter. Maybe it doesn't matter who knows what's happening. Anyhow, thanks for watching. Enjoy your Fridays is Thursday. I don't do shows on Friday, but I'll be back on Monday. And then Monday is kind of a short week because again, I have pod Fest in Orlando that's happening and I'll be going to that, but I have shows coming out next week as well.

So with that in mind, I shall see you on Monday for yet another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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