A podcast isn't just competing with other podcasts — it's competing with the kettle, the traffic lights, and the runner's mile marker. Here's how six British shows engineer their audio for the room their listeners are actually in.
Podcasting has no press complaints commission, no ombudsman, and no formal corrections framework. When Britain's biggest shows get something wrong, the response ranges from the silent re-upload to the dedicated correction minute — and the gaps in between reveal a structural problem the medium is only beginning to reckon with.
ISDN is gone, Skype is gone, and a handful of web apps now decide what a long-distance guest sounds like on Britain's biggest podcasts. We compare Riverside, SquadCast, Cleanfeed, Zencastr and the awkward fact that Zoom is still here.
The cold open — that interval of voice-only audio before the theme tune drops — is the most rewritten, most-replayed, most-fought-over part of any modern British podcast. Seven flagship shows, compared on craft.
Roughly four in ten UK podcast listeners now play shows above 1.0x. We measured the words-per-minute and engineering choices behind eight British podcasts to see which were quietly built for the speed listener — and which were not.
Most British podcast producers won't tell you what's on their second monitor at 1am. We pull apart the AI tools quietly sitting between the raw recording and the polished file — and ask which decisions hosts still insist on making by hand.