The number of famous people who are starting their own podcast is growing rapidly. Adam Corolla jumped into podcasting when his radio show was cancelled. Veteran comic Marc Maron has stated his gigs are starting to fill up with people who listen to his “WTF” podcast. Today I came across Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show which is a live streaming talk show he does on ustream.tv and then turns into a podcast.

 The Kevin Pollak chat (along with Maron’s WTF) do something you don’t see on the tonight show or other “talk” shows. They actually talk. The guest isn’t set to plug their movie or music in 30 seconds or less, there is no pre interview, and people sit down like regular people and talk. What a concept. Both Maron and Pollak have extensive showbiz backgrounds (with Pollak is both a comedian, and an actor).

Pollak actually goes for close to three hours when he is live on Sundays. The somewhat “bad” news is if you watch these shows on an ipod, you are going to kill the battery in record time. Many shows are over an hour long. Keep in mind this is a video show. This means it takes forever to download, and you can watch two episodes on your ipod before the battery is dead.

Maron (who has done radio in the past) has stuck with audio, and fills his podcast with behind the scenes access to his thought and life and then has a guest. He had some phenominal interviews with Robin Williams, Carlos Mancia, Jeffery Ross, and many other comedians. As I listen to podcasts in my car, I’ve listened (more than watched) Kevin’s show and did not miss the visual.  The audio of Kevin interviewing Dana Carvey worked with audio only.

 

In doing a quick search, I see where Kevin is selling these interviews on DVD at Amazon.com for 10 bucks. Interesting. I still wish he had an audio only version.

 

So if you are contemplating doing video, I urge you to ask, “Does this really need to be video?” Not only does it take longer to produce, it takes longer to download and it kills the batteries in your iPod in record time.