055 Beware the Fraudcast — Podcasts that Charge Guests

Lochhead rants about a topic for a raging debate within part of the podcast community. He puts in his two cents on the subject of the fraudcast — podcasts that charge their guests to come on. “We have never once been paid by a guest to come on this podcast and I think when podcasters do that, they break what you might think of as the social contract with their audience.” - Christopher Lochhead The Conversation on Fraudcasts Recently, Christopher’s buddy and fellow podcaster Eric Hunley, host of Unstructured, invited him over for a discussion with another award-winning podcaster Super Joe Pardo. The topic of the conversation? There are certain podcasts like Super Joe’s that for a while now have started the practice of charging guests who come on the podcast. “I call these podcasts, fraudcasts. And to put it mildly, I think it's bullshit for a podcaster to charge the guest to come on.” - Christopher Lochhead Christopher’s Personal Guest Criteria Every single guest that comes on Christopher’s podcast is someone he is dying to have a conversation with. And all of them, he hopes, are people the listeners would love to listen to. This is the very criteria that he uses, and he does not care whether the guests are big celebrities or not. “We have many legends whose names you don't know and these are just people who I think are doing legendary shit that's different, that's courageous, and that’s fundamentally interesting, and I’m dying to have a conversation with them.” - Christopher Lochhead The criteria that he does not use is how much they paid him. Gray Areas in the Fraudcast Discourse Of course, there are some gray areas in this discussion. One is that it is fine for guests to pay you as long as you disclose it to your audience. It is no podcast Christopher would personally listen to. But there are people who would willingly sit through hours of O Shopping Network’s infomercials. To each their own, after all. To hear more about this hot topic of fraudcasts and relevant information from Christopher, download and listen to the episode. Links: Eric Hunley’s Unstructured Podcast: Should Podcast Guests Pay? Payola Radio Scandal Payola: Influencing the Charts A Brief History of American Payola We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!