The perennial topic and the existential crisis of making the pivot away from audio podcasting to favor video is back! Under these extenuating circumstances, there seems to be a perfect storm brewing, and much of is pointing straight to online video. The data on podcast consumption during the crisis is mixed, highlighting some uncertainty around download numbers. Then there’s the impossibility of going through a day without catching a reference to Zoom or another video conferencing service/app.Add in the launch of Quibi, a much-lauded and finally launched short-form video-based entertainment app.Top all of that off with a huge uptick in YouTube consumption. It's 2020, and it’s still a lot easier to watch YouTube on your TV than it is to listen to a podcast on your smart speakers.So yes, this looks like a perfect storm. These reasons and more seem to indicate it might be time for podcasters to make the switch to video. But looks can be deceiving.Most podcast episodes make for terrible video content that most people don’t want to watch. This isn’t idle speculation on my part. It’s a measurable phenomenon you can test yourself, and I call it the 90/10 Rule Of Video:90% of viewers are gone before they've watched 10% of the video. I’ve yet to find a consistent exception to this rule. I’ve worked with several podcasters who post video versions of their podcasts’ episodes to YouTube. In every case, they discover a tiny, tiny retention rate when they dig a little deeper into their “view counts”.Successful video producers know the importance of making visually-compelling content. With very few (if any) exceptions, an un-moving video shot of one or two people talking is not visually-compelling. Our brains, which are attached to our eyes, need near-constant changes to stay stimulated. Our brains aren't good at watching talking head videos.If you're thinking of making the pivot to video, please understand you have to do something more than stare at a camera and talk. No, getting a second person on camera via Zoom isn’t what I mean by “more”. That’s just two different talking heads, and it’s equally as boring to the visual processing center of our brains.If you feel compelled to try your hand at video, podcaster, then by all means: go for video! But please do something compelling, interesting and amazing with that video. That's the only way you're going to make video work for you.Do you know a struggling YouTuber who’s unwilling to make the investment in cameras, switchers, and all of that post-production work that's much harder in the video than in audio? Suggest to them that they make the pivot to podcasting. And if having them listen to an episode or twenty of Podcast Pontifications...