Podcast Production Workflow Template
Three documents and three sheets that gate an episode's Published status on a filled Clip Log, not on how good the recording was.
Free download · No account needed
Episode Pipeline
Every episode, gated the same way
Published is a status the sheet has to earn, not a box anyone can check.
| Episode | Guest | Stage | Clip Log |
|---|---|---|---|
| required | |||
| required | |||
| required |
No row in the Clip Log column, no move to Published. A finished edit is not the same thing as a finished episode.
Podcast and video-show consumption keeps setting records: 130 million Americans listened to or watched a podcast in the last week, per Edison Research's 2026 Infinite Dial survey. Audio and video are now a dual-format medium rather than two separate audiences. What ranks for "podcast production workflow template" is a Kanban board: discover, outreach, scheduled, recorded, published, with clipping folded into a fifth stage called grow. The stages are correct, and the board still lets an episode reach published with an unbriefed guest and no clip plan, because nothing on it actually stops that.
This pack ties both gaps to the pipeline directly instead of leaving them as habits to remember. The Guest Brief goes out with the angle, the questions and what to prepare, and the Guest Register logs the date it actually went out against the scheduled recording date. On this pack's own worked quarter, every guest briefed five or more days out came in clean: no missing material, no scramble. Guests briefed inside two days came in clean once out of three, and the other two cost real edit time recovering from an unprepared guest.
The same discipline runs on the other end. The Clip Log gates the pipeline's own Published status: no episode moves there until it carries a row for every planned channel, a declined row with a reason counting as filled. The ten published episodes this quarter logged 63 clips against a 20-clip baseline of one show-notes post and one social cut each, a 3.15x difference, because the log is a required stage, not a separate project. For repurposing one existing recording instead of running a weekly show, see the content repurposing pack.
What's in the pack
Episode Brief
The angle, the ordered questions with an anchor marked, and what the guest is not the right person to answer, written before the recording like a content brief for a conversation instead of an article.
Guest Brief
What actually gets sent to the guest: the questions in advance, what to prepare, and the technical requirements, logged with the date it went out.
Guest Register
Every guest with their brief's lead time against the record date and the recording outcome, so the lead-time policy is provable, not assumed.
Episode Pipeline
Every episode's stage from booked to published, with a locked GUID and a Published column gated on the Clip Log actually being filled.
Show Notes Format
The fixed structure every episode's notes follow, including the GUID rule that keeps a directory from ever showing one episode twice.
Clip Log
One row per planned clip, required before an episode can move to Published; the standard channel set includes a newsletter blurb, which is raw material for the newsletter program pack once that show has a list to write to.
How it works
- 1
Set cadence and lead time
Cadence, format and the standard clip channels get set once. The guest-brief lead-time policy defaults to five days, the point where this pack's own worked quarter turned clean.
- 2
Book, brief, and log it
The Guest Brief goes out built from the Episode Brief, and the Guest Register logs the date it was actually sent against the scheduled recording.
- 3
Move the episode, stage by stage
Booked, briefed, recorded, edited, clipped, published. Each stage is a real status change on the Episode Pipeline, not an assumption about where things stand.
- 4
Clip before the gate, not after
The Clip Log gets a row per planned channel before the episode can move to Published, so clipping happens on schedule instead of whenever someone remembers.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes, the Word and CSV download needs no account or card. Edit with AI installs the pack in River and sets up the pipeline from whatever is already booked for your next recording, guests included.
How is this different from a Notion or Kanban podcast planning board?
A board tracks stage names: discover, scheduled, recorded, published. This pack makes two of those stages earn their status. Published will not move without a filled Clip Log, and Briefed is not real until the Guest Register shows a brief actually sent, with the lead time that predicts whether the recording goes clean.
How is this different from the content repurposing pack?
The content repurposing pack maps outputs for one long-form report or recording, commissioned once. This pack runs a recurring show: guest booking, an episode-by-episode pipeline, and a clip log gate built into a schedule that repeats every week, with guests to prep and a cadence to hold.
What if an episode genuinely doesn't support one of the standard clip channels?
Log it as declined with the specific reason, rather than leaving the row off. A guest's echoey audio might rule out a stand-alone audiogram; that still clears the Clip Log gate, because the show decided the channel does not apply, instead of simply never getting to it.
Does the Guest Brief work for a panel with more than one guest?
Yes. Each panelist gets their own copy with the shared angle and anchor question, plus which of the ordered questions are aimed at them specifically, so nobody arrives having only skimmed a brief written for someone else.
Is this only for audio shows?
No. The pipeline, the Guest Brief and the Clip Log apply the same way to a recorded video interview show. The Show Notes Format doc's GUID rule comes straight from Apple's own RSS guidance, which governs video enclosures the same way it governs audio ones.
Run the show without production becoming the job
Send what's booked for the next recording. River sets up the pipeline and drafts the Guest Brief with your lead-time policy already applied.
Edit with AI