The inside scoop: How German broadcaster BR conducts in-house podcast reviews to boost quality and reach

A “podcast midwife” is how Kathi Roeb describes her job at Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), or Bavarian Broadcasting, one of the bigger regional members of Germany’s ARD public broadcasting network. Her official title is podcast coordinator, but as her preferred title suggests, she helps in the podcast birthing process. When a team starts working on a new podcast at BR, they come to her for inspiration, coordination or help with a strategy for moving from the drawing board to the recording studio.

These days, an important part of her work is conducting reviews for BR shows already in production. That area has been taking up a lot of her mental space these days, she says, figuring out how to improve shows, reach diverse communities and connect with audiences.

Kathi has been at BR for eight years now, having started off her broadcasting career as a radio host before transitioning to podcasting as a host and writer. That happened in 2019 when BR hosted a two-day in-house podcast camp which involved a “sprint” where participants developed a podcasting idea in a very short period of time. Hers, called Klassik für Klugscheisser, or Classical Music for Smarty Pants, is still being produced today.

That experience taught her that podcasting required she put the needs of listeners first, a different way than she was used to working in radio. She liked it and dove straight in. She used to host BR’s LGBTQ+ podcast Willkommen im Club (Welcome to the Club), although she’s handed over those particular reins to a new team.

BR's Kathi Roeb

DW Akademie: Does BR have certain criteria that podcasts need to meet in order to be considered successful? In other words, what constitutes a “good” podcast at the media outlet?

Kathi Roeb: That's very interesting because we tend to look for numbers when we think about a good podcast, but we at BR also have a mission to portray all of society, and not overlook a certain demographic or community. (Editor’s note: BR is taxpayer funded.)  Now our big question is how we combine the qualitative criteria with the qualitative side. Also, we’re looking at how we can reach those communities in our region that we are not currently reaching.

Let's walk through an example of your review process. What does it look like?

We get together with the production team and we do a little reality check. We look at metrics and ask ourselves if they’re where we want them or if we want to see a change. We designed a little bot where you can enter your feed and get six reports of numbers, and we teach the team how to interpret them. There’s also a little education involved because as you can imagine, not all of the creators we work with are strong in Math!

I completely sympathize with them. So what are some of the things you’re looking at in these reports?

We sometimes compare episodes that have been out for two years and others that came out three weeks ago. We call that the long tail and include those numbers in our review because, say, you have a podcast with a big name like Napoleon in the title. Often, it’s listened to over a long period of time more than it was even in the first week it dropped due to how people search for music and shows on Spotify.

Which metrics do you look at really closely?

Really closely would be: Where are we portrayed and who is talking about us? A rule we have is that we have to name another BR podcast in every episode, do a cross-promo. Then we look at the ranking of our cross-promo partner. Another thing is any conversion from social media. Which, by the way, we find is sometimes impossible. Like at TikTok, their priority is keeping people on the platform, so it didn’t make sense for us to have a TikTok account for a show. We tried it, but you know, it’s good to learn from your failures.

BR's popular LGBTQ+ podcast Welcome to the Club has built a strong, engaged community

Back to this question about what you consider a success. Are you looking for big numbers? Or is stability important, or maybe steady growth?

That depends on the product we're looking at. As I said, it’s very important that we portray the whole society. If a podcast covers more of a niche, it's okay if the numbers aren't that high because the other goal of portraying society counts more.

With podcasts, we have the big shows and then the smaller categories where more modest metrics are just fine for them. It doesn't seem like you can use the same standard for everybody, because they're just so different. They reach different audiences and have different goals.

What about on the qualitative side?

We look at the host, the level of community interaction, etc., and the production team itself if very much part of the process, giving their own opinions. The cool thing about these reviews is that you get an idea of the people you're doing it for, and you can learn about what they did that clicked or maybe what didn’t so much. So out of those qualitative analyzes, you can create tiny little goals. For example, for the next season, we’ll put more effort into distribution, and things like that.

Does BR push the community-building aspect, getting your listeners involved in shows in different ways?

We have a podcast festival. And we try to pick the podcasts with a qualitatively strong community. Topics that are more emotional, for example, our psychology podcast runs quite well, or our queer podcast, Welcome to the Club, both have strong communities.

Who makes the painful decision that a podcast is just not really working, and it's time to pull the plug? The review process, it's all great, but then sometimes the review isn’t good, right?

Yes, exactly. And we’re discussing roles right now. The plan is to establish a review person for a show, so they really know the details about the numbers and help the person responsible for the product with the review. We’re working on a kind of grading method now with a traffic light model but haven’t finalized it. But right now, the person breaking the bad news would be the person responsible for the budget who has to think: Where do we put our energy? Where do we spend?

BR has a lot more resources than most podcasters and its own in-house analytics tool. How should those with limited means approach the review process?

Just look really carefully at your podcast. One thing you can do if resources are limited is to ask your community what’s working or what’s not. You can use things like Google Forms or there's another platform called easyfeedback.com. Or ask your community in your show notes: “Hey guys, how are we actually doing? When are you listening to our podcast? Is it long enough for you, or is it too long?” You can ask those questions you would normally ask in a user test and look for feedback, and then out of that, you get an idea of how invested your community is in making it better. If your podcast is on Spotify, I would really consider you looking at the analytics tools they have there. Now you can check out the retention rate. So how long were the people actually listening to the podcast? It’s a good tool.