The Dreaded Rebroadcast (a podcast’s “summer rerun”)

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Podcast Rebroadcasts Blog PostIf you're old enough to remember life before cable - when the major TV networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, and maybe FOX) were where you went for the majority of your viewing - then you remember summer reruns.

UGH.

These days, when a TV series doesn't have a new show to air, they just skip it. They don't air a rerun. They usually even announce it at the end of the current week's episode (like, "In two weeks on XYZ Show").

They set an expectation for you so you aren't disappointed.

Sadly, not all podcasts set proper expectations, and sometimes you wake up, and open your podcast app expecting a brand new episode of a show...and you see that they "released" a rebroadcast.

What's a rebroadcast? It's a summer rerun. And it's the worst.

To be clear: I get it. I'm sure that recording a unique podcast every week and booking guest interviews is a huge task. And people have lives - they need vacations and days off. But I wish they would just tell me ahead of time and set the expectation!



Sometimes you're lucky and the episode title or description includes the word "Rebroadcast" ( the America's Test Kitchen Radio podcast does this.) In that case, your hopes are quickly dashed, but at least you know.

Other times, though, there isn't any way to identify that an episode is a rebroadcast, and you start listening to it only to realize that you've heard it before. To me, it's maddening. Two of my regular weekly podcasts are guilty of this: Dear Sugar Radio and This American Life.

Another regular, Reply All, doesn't run rebroadcasts, but they do set the expectation by ending the latest episode with "we'll be back in two weeks" or releasing a 1 minute update to say "no new show this week" (thank you, PJ and Alex!)

What's the point of this post? I guess it's to rant.

Perhaps it's in the hopes that the podcast gods will read it and magically make all podcast creators approach rebroadcasts in a way that makes me happy. Maybe the point is to put this out there and see if it's just me, or if podcast rebroadcasts make other people crazy, too.

Do you hate podcast rebroadcasts? Please leave a comment so I know that I'm not the only one!

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