The Power of the Table Read
It’s often listed as a production best practice, because they are magical. But everyone (including me) often lets them slide.
Welcome to Dispatch #60 of The Audio Insurgent.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asked a number of times “Will I see you at the HotPod Summit?” or “Will I see you at On Air Fest?” or “Will I see you at Podcast Evolutions?”
The answer to all these is no. There are a few reasons for that.
First, in the time leading up to and after the publication of Make Noise, I was speaking at every podcast conference you can imagine. It was really fun to meet so many people and see friends/colleagues in person, but I got pretty burned out on podcast conferences…and still am. I attended Podcast Movement last summer and realized I still wasn’t feeling it.
But there is a larger issue, if I’m being honest.
I just don’t find a lot of value in them.
For a number of years, I attended every HotPod Summit, often traveling to do so. But by the time it landed at The Wythe Hotel and was attached to On Air Fest, it just stopped being fun (too many people in a space that isn’t very comfortable for a big crowd of people who really want to network and hang out). And, if I’m being REALLY honest, over the last couple years, the programming has not been very good. Think about the people who have been interviewed or featured in recent summits. How many of them are still working in podcasting anymore? How many of their businesses are even in business any longer? Not many. After the flash has gone away, so have they and the things they were promoting.
Podcast Movement has also changed its character in the past few years. I don’t think this is a negative, just a natural evolution as the industry has expanded. Podcasting is too big now to have one conference where everyone feels they fit. Again, totally fine and normal. Podcast Movement seems really positioned for the semi-professional or aspiring professional podcast influencer, which is a huge need and base. But that just isn’t my scene. I used to also attend because they brought in so many impressive people that I know and admire as speakers, but as they have changed their focus, that seems to have had less value too.
I think the lack of appeal of podcasting conferences is just another quiet side effect of the state of the podcasting industry right now: risk averse, focused on monetization and value extraction—not as much on creativity, enterprise, and value generation.
At their best, podcast conferences should be exciting and empowering. Even for someone like me who has been around podcasting and knows a lot of people—a great conference introduces me to people, ideas, and ways of thinking that are new, inventive, and inspiring to me. I want to see ideas that work and can show receipts on how and why they work. I want a place where ideas, old and new, can be pushed back on and vetted. The best podcast conferences leave me feeling like I can’t wait to get home to try all the new things I’ve learned and been exposed to. I want to encounter smart things that CHALLENGE me and my ways of approaching my work. And I’m just not getting that lately.
Just as I hope that podcasting itself recaptures some of its swagger this year, I equally hope that podcast conferences see their role in pushing the industry forward by what they chose to shine light on and honor.
That said, Jesse and I are both planning to attend The Podcast Show in London this May, which I hear excellent things about. So, if you needed proof that I am, at heart, an optimist–there you have it.
Today is a “get back to basics” dispatch. But first, a word from our sponsor…you!
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[TODAY’S MAIN THING: TABLE READS] Life is full of things you are supposed to do: floss your teeth daily, recycle, help old ladies across the street--stuff like that. But it often embarrasses us how often we let those things go when they fail to be convenient. In my radio years, the “supposed to do” item that always got skipped was airchecks. For those who don't know, airchecks are a regular sit down with talent (on-air announcers, reporters, and others who spoke on your station) where you’d play tape of their pieces and stopsets on-air and give them feedback.
But life gets busy, and airchecks are often the first to be sacrificed. Yet when you talk to radio programmers, often the top item on their best practices list is “conduct regular airchecks with staff.” If you ask these managers, they claim to do them with everyone regularly. But if you talk to the staff, they say they rarely happen.
Podcasting has its own version of this too: table reads.
While I don’t think I mentioned them directly in my book, I did talk about the importance of group listening and sharing your work with as many people as possible.
For those unfamiliar, table reads are just that. This works best for scripted content (though there is a variation you can do for live conversations that I’ll share below--it’s kind of similar to radio’s airchecks). For a table read, you bring a group of people together (more than three, but less than a dozen) and you have your talent basically perform their script. A producer plays out the tape clips at the right point in the script. The group listens in silence and takes notes. Then afterwards, you leave time for group conversation.
We have a few rules for them at Magnificent Noise. First, we leave two minutes of review time for every minute of script--so a 30 minute episode will get up to an hour of review afterwards. There is no need to fill all that time if you don’t need to, but more often, you have the opposite problem: you don’t leave enough. Too often people spend all their table read time reading the episode out, but leave little space for conversation.
And speaking of conversation, we do try to make these conversational. Instead of just listing what doesn't work or offering a “plus one” to what earlier reviewers have said, we try to make sure the conversation focuses on solutions. If we don’t like something, what are some of the group’s ideas to improve it? While you could just send the talent and producers off with a list of what people didn’t like, just like the table read conversation itself, you can get a lot of that work done in the moment.
Another rule we have for table reads: when the group gives their feedback, we have more junior or less experienced producers go first, then save the most senior people for last. It isn’t a hierarchical thing, but more that we want to make sure the more junior producers have space to be heard before a bunch of other opinions get piled on. Also, if anyone should be rushed because you’re running out of time, let it be the senior people. They’ll have other opportunities to be heard.
If we are doing multiple episodes over several separate table reads, we’ll change the order up, but regardless, the most senior people always go last. In a good table read, those senior folks won’t need to cover what other colleagues have discussed and can just offer a few extra points. Most times the more senior staff would have made all the points mentioned earlier, but part of being a good boss is giving your staff room to solve things and come up with things on their own. It all doesn’t have to come from you.
But, let’s be honest here. I am as guilty as anyone of bypassing table reads. On a recent project, we found ourselves with about six weeks less than we expected on our initial production calendar. We needed to get things done faster and with more hustle. The first things we let go: the table reads. Literally I went through the production schedule and just deleted them all.
A few weeks later an editor on the project said to me, “It would be a great idea to do table reads.” I agreed, but told her that we were scrambling and working on a compressed schedule. She gave me a look--didn’t say a word--just a look. Her look told me, “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
And so I went through the schedule again and built in table reads for every episode of the series. We’ve done four of them so far, sometimes with five people, other times we’ve had more than ten. And at the end of each one, I quietly want to kick myself. The episode coming out of the feedback session is so much better, so much tighter, and has so much more punch.
There are some who get nervous about doing table reads. They get anxious and worried about sharing unfinished work with their colleagues and friends. Sometimes the feedback is hard to hear, but it is still always helpful and constructive. But the great majority of what’s said is validating and affirming. You have confidence in what you are doing and have identified areas for improvement (as well as having a number of ideas on how to address them). Most times, you come out of a table read feeling really good about your work. And who doesn't like to feel good about their work?
And if you are part of a small team and shop, you can invite others to the table read who don’t work with you. That’s another unwritten rule of Magnificent Noise table reads: we always try to have at least one person who is coming in cold, knowing absolutely nothing about the project we are working on and is hearing this for the first time (like a listener).
I’d mentioned earlier that there is a variation on this for those who aren’t working with scripts and tape. Let’s say your podcast is a live conversation. Whether or not you edit it afterwards (and you should--not editing is like not flossing your teeth daily--another thing you are supposed to do, btw), you can host a listening session to review a previous episode. Gather a table read-like group, follow similar rules, and listen to a recent episode. Talk about what works, what doesn’t, what you can do to build more great moments and solve for what isn’t so strong. Make sure to leave enough time for conversation and make sure it's set up so everyone has a voice.
And I promise you the first time you set this up, everyone will complain about it and not want to take the time out of their day to do it. I equally promise you that after you do it, everyone will think it was a great idea and use of time.
[CAN WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE?] A few people have written lately to ask where I’ve got the images accompanying the last few dispatches. I’ve been using ChatGPT 4 to generate them, which isn’t that unusual. Except what I’ve done for the past few dispatches is I paste the entire post into ChatGPT and ask it to come up with an illustration based on what I’ve written. The results have been so much better, surprising, and fun doing it that way.
Okay, that’s it for today.
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Make great things. I’ll be listening.
--Eric