Kids Podcasts Cost More $$$

‘Tis the season for charity triage, and I find myself weighing the merits of which organizations really need support and where my money will make the biggest difference. Disaster relief and fascism prevention are causes 1A and 1B, but supporting an independent press is a close second — and there’s no media more independent than podcasts.

Podcasting writ large is still, for the most part, a labor of love. The creators of kids podcasts put all the more labor into their content. and (as the Knight Foundation notes) the ears they’re reaching are the most impressionable and valuable.

Kids listen to amazing content, and here’s how it differs from most podcasts for grownups:

1. Kids Podcasts are Scripted

There’s obviously a spectrum between scripted and unscripted — just because Sarah Koenig and Ira Glass sound like they’re having a conversation with you doesn’t mean they’re off script. But grownups are comfortable listening to extended conversations and improvised, tangential notions between two or three adults which allows content like WTF with Marc Maron, many of Slate’s roundtable-style shows, and public-radio adaptations to work for older ears.

Kids shows, on the other hand, must be presented in a way that commands a child’s attention and carries it through to the end of the episode — as every teacher, parent, and children’s performer knows (I am all three), if you lose them, they’re gone. Whether it’s the jam-packed information and sound-design heavy Wow in the World, the joke-a-minute romp of WNYC’s new This Podcast Has Fleas, the science-fiction wordsmithery of The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian, or the gentle poetry of Little Stories for Tiny People, the arc of a kids podcast leaves nothing to chance. Some programs do rely on interview-type content, but that brings me to my next point…

2. Kids Podcasts are Meticulously Edited

There are no “ums.” There is no fat. While the average adult podcast can stretch into the better part of an hour, kids podcasts tend to be much shorter, most falling in the 15–25 minute range. And for good reason. Any unscripted content has to perfectly align with the points of the episode (educational, narrative, emotional, or all of the above) for kids to have a fun, informative, or inspirational experience. Shows like Short & Curly (relaunched this week as WNYC’s Pickle), Buttons & Figs, Book Club for Kids, and Tumble all include audio content gathered from speaking with kids and adult experts about the same subject — and any documentarian can tell you how long it takes to cut down two hours of tape into a 10 minute assembly. With teams of editors and producers, it takes grown-up podcasts like Start Up, This American Life, or 99% Invisible weeks or even months to shape a compelling audio journey for a much more forgiving audience.

3. Kids Podcasts are LOADED with Production Value

I love Teri Gross. I love her. And Tom Ashbrook, and Leonard Lopate, and Bill Simmons, and David Chen. But none of them can imagine how many hours are put into every minute of a kids podcast. Sure, most grown-up podcasts do a little research before hopping on the microphone. Maybe they read some twitter or some articles or re-watch a movie. They might think of questions they’d like to ask their guests. They might even get involved in post, drop in a few music bumpers, edit out a few minutes here and there. But even the more easily produced kids podcasts — Sparkle Stories, Stories Podcast, or Peace Out, for instance — involve the writing and editing of original scripts,often the integration of original songs and underscore, and a nuanced sense of pacing and delivery that comes from years of practice, numerous takes, or both. Then you have more sonically rich shows like Brains On, Ear Snacks, The Music Box, and The Past & The Curious, all of which have original music and sound design, multiple types of segments, found audio and recordings from different time periods, and other aural elements to integrate into a layered soundscape that tickles the imagination and lights brain fires. The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel won a Peabody for it’s intricately composed mystery flush with cinematic score and professional child actors voicing the television-optioned script.

This degree of production is almost comical, but it’s true — kids podcasts are much more like Radio Lab than they are like people blabbing on the radio. Here’s to hoping audiences value these shows in proportion to the value creators pour into them.