The cost of doing things right
In preparation for my post/lecture/rant “5 Reasons Why Your Podcast Sucks” (I’m working on it, promise), today’s inspiration comes from Kent Nichols, one of the minds behind the wildly popular video podcast Ask A Ninja.
Ask A Ninja is one of the simplest show types to produce and just the hard costs of overhead (not paying either of us) is over $6k/episode.
Didja year that, kiddies? The costs of filming a single episode of Ask A Ninja is above six thousand dollars. That’s right. A camera. Some lights. And 3 - 5 minutes of professionally produced and edited video costs over $6,000 to get out the door.
Guess which part is the most expensive? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the PROFESSIONAL part.
How much do you invest in the PROFESSIONAL part of your podcast — audio or video?
This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under 5 Reasons Why Your Podcast Sucks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on March 21, 2008 at 11:28 am Victor Cajiao wrote:
Evo you could not be more correct. I don’t spend that kind of money but 99% of my effort goes into making the most highly produced and easy to listen to show I can. We are in these peoples ears for God’s sake. I don’t want shit in my ears do you? I’ve invested 99% of what I’ve made in podcasting into equipment and services to make my show something I’d listen to.
on March 21, 2008 at 12:11 pm Douglas E. Welch wrote:
I would like to see a breakdown on the $6K/episode figure.
Are they renting a studio? Renting cameras? Renting lights? Hiring crew? I just don’t see where they are spending that much money.
I think I need more info before I totally grok that figure.
Douglas
on March 21, 2008 at 12:40 pm Mad Marv wrote:
This number seems high, but video production costs are not comparable to audio. I sat in on Alex Lindsey’s PME session where he did break down the costs to produce professional quality video and the high end of that range is $1000 / minute of finished video. And the example he used was the Food Science podcast . Some of the green screen and 3D visual effects are purchased on a per episode basis. The cost of the intro and outro effects are spread out the same as the cost of the software to render, edit and transcode each episode. Alex mentioned specifically that these costs did not include labor for the on screen talent. I don’t think he included administrative or distribution costs in that $1000 / minute.
on June 17, 2008 at 2:15 pm Chris Hvidsten wrote:
A lot of people say content is king, but I agree that all the content in the world won’t amount to much if it sounds like crap.
Admittedly I haven’t spent too much on my setup, but people who listen seem to think I sound OK for now.