Managing the recording and editing of the Empire Film Podcast has doubled Chris Hewitt’s workload, the journalist told PodPod.
Hewitt, along with colleagues James Dyer and Helen O’Hara, co-hosts the award-winning show for Bauer Media, and is responsible for editing and publishing new episodes, as well as organising guest interviews - all in addition to his role as executive editor for the wider Empire brand.
“Basically I'm doing two full time jobs,” he explained in an interview with PodPod as part of the latest episode. “It's not the way we set out to do the show, it's just the way that things have evolved naturally over the years that as things went on, I guess I started to do more and more of the admin on the podcast.”
“In terms of fitting into my schedule, honestly it's been really, really tough. And I don't think that I would have persevered with it this long had I not really grown to love it.”
His co-host Dyer, who similarly manages Empire’s Pilot TV Podcast, also shares this experience.
“Bear in mind that we have the Empire podcast, we have the Empire Spoiler Special podcasts, which are behind a paywall, I do the Pilot TV Podcast, which is our TV spin off podcast, as well. So there's a lot of content that we as a brand produce.”
The Empire and Pilot TV podcasts are two of the best-known shows from Bauer’s magazine brands, but the company also maintains a strong podcast footprint via its radio arm, which includes stations such as Absolute Radio and Scala Radio. Podcasting is becoming a greater priority for the organisation, as demonstrated by the recent appointment of Heat magazine’s editor-in-chief Lucie Cave as chief creative officer of podcasts and commercial content.
This tallies with the growing importance of podcasting within the wider news and media industry, and almost three-quarters of publishers also report that podcasts will play a larger role in their 2023 strategies.
